JOSE VALLEJO
The Masque of the Red Death [unformatted] Over the course of history, death has played a very integral part in literature, art, and human life in general. Portrayed by any in a very wide array of styles and techniques, one overarching theme that usually comes along with the use of death is the very simple, yet very existential one; “no man escapes death.” This theme is very apparent in the short story The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. The work is about a strange “plague” that has been overcoming the kingdom of a prince known as Prospero, a prince with a rather ironic and unfortunate name, whom rather than addressing the issue of this plague, decided to isolate himself in his kingdom and “escape” this death that
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Poe uses the simple, yet effective technique of allotting the main character with a name that foreshadowed their fate. In this case, Prospero, a king whose name is symbolic and allusive to the word prosperity, is the ruler of a country that has been overcome by an unstoppable plague that is quickly and surely killing his subjects. This leads him to recede into the safe isolation of his kingdom, theoretically keeping him safe from the plague. His isolation allows him to prosper and thrive, safe from the death of that has overcome the outside world. For the first half of the piece, his name is very fitting seeing as how he has managed to escape the grasp of this plague, host a massive ball, and keep his health and wealth all too himself while everyone outside of his doors suffered. But very quickly we see his name from being very appropriate, to grossly ironic. A name symbolic of his prosperity and ability to thrive suddenly becomes the situational irony that separates this story of a prince and his ball from the others. Poe creates a major twist in the story when the uninvited guest enters the party. Prospero goes from being the “big man on top”, to being an angry party host trying to get rid of a party-crasher. What Prospero isn’t aware of is that pretty soon his prosperity is going to be cut short and much like …show more content…
Man has always told stories of his attempt of escaping death, but surely enough is met with an untimely fate, and this story is no different. A major symbol of this is a very large pendulum clock that resides in the black room at the end of the hall. Like most large pendulum clocks, this one would produce a loud sound every hour on the hour. In fact, the sound of this clock was so loud that during the ball, every time it chimed, the party would come to a halt and the music would pause until the reverb of the clocks chime came to a halt. This clock is a very clear symbol of death, as intended by Poe. With its constant chiming every hour, reminding the guests that as time passes, death is getting closer and closer. As the night passes, the clock periodically stops the party until the uninvited guest arrives, leading Prospero to stop everything at the wave of his hand. It was midnight when the guest symbolic of the Red Death arrived as stated by Poe; “But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened.” Not only had the clock been counting down the hours until his arrival, but also the time is very significant- Midnight. A time recognized as the ‘witching’ hour by many due to its nature of
All people wish to avoid suffering, and those with wealth usually take too long to realize that they cannot avert it. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe tells the readers of death, and how the upper class deals with it. In this story, Prince Prospero and his wealthy friends hide away in a castle to evade death. This obviously does not work, as death is inevitable, but of course, they attempt to save themselves anyways. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the courtiers, Prince Prospero, and the stranger to symbolize the members of the influential upper class and their habit of using their power to postpone their own impending doom.
Poe develops his theme that no one can escape death through the narration or in general the narrator. We do not know nor do we learn who tells the story even at the end when all the people are stated to have died. There are many ways to look at this to see if we can get some hint to who is the narrator. Is the narrator a person that was there in the abbey which is hard to see because we read at the end that all of the people die but as David Dudley states in his article, “He reveals himself overtly only three time. . .” which shows that he had to be in the abbey . It also can be told by “…one of Prospero’s dying guests…last sentence could be read as the equivalent of Hamlet’s…” which could also have been possible (Dudley). Either way, when death comes at the end no one can escape it unless it is death itself.
Poe is trying to get across to the reader that death will come to all, rich or poor and we should not overlook the needs of those less fortunate. Even though Prospero thought his fortune could save him from the Red Death, ultimately he also was faced with
In the story, “Masque of the Red Death” it covers six months during the Red Death.It takes place in a castle which has seven different colored rooms.In the beginning of the story it describes the main character prince Prospero as happy,fearless and wise. Towards the end of the story a new guest appears to the party and everyone is scared and Prospero goes from being happy to mad and in the end the new guest kills Prospero and everyone dies because he was the Red Death. The message in this analogy ,”The Masque of the Red Death “ by Poe is life passes by so quick that you don't realize what's going on until it's your time to die.
Madeline Kincer Mr. Thompson 1302-4200 March 12, 2015 The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe There is an exuberating, whimsical expression that comes throughout reading “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. The gothic imagery is personified and leaves an eerie chill down the readers’ spine. ” The Masque of the Red Death” is a short thriller about a plague terrorizing the country. The “Red Death” began by only killing the poor and weak members of society, the high class people were becoming concerned, so they attempted to hide from the Red Death.
Poe was able to portray the parallelism of death and evil in his story by providing the reader a feeling of horror and death and the concealing of plague into a physical appearance, making Prince Prospero and his friends tremble of despair to remind them that evil brought by selfishness, avarice, and inhumanity do not bring any positive effect, that not even their power, will save them from dying. The romantic influence from the Vanitas genre demonstrates how the mundane pleasures of our existence weakens our soul by letting evil enter into our lives as a villain without us being aware. The same issue will happen with death, because it does not matter how much an individual tries to prevent it, and how much a person evade danger, death is going to come and our clock is going to stop ticking as it happened at the end of Poe’s story.
Poe sets the scene by detailing the horrendous plague that is ravishing the unnamed country. After the disease has killed half of the population of the country, Prince Prospero decides to invite 1,000 of his friends, who are healthy, into seclusion with him in a castle. The location of the abbey is not named either. The absence of the location of the country or abbey makes the reader feel that the story could happen anywhere and makes it more personal. The name of the main character, Prince Prospero, also helps with the setting. Prospero, obviously, implies wealth, prosperity, and a fortunate place in the hierarchy of the system. While most of the country is dying, the Prince wants to lock up himself and his friends and forget the chaos occurring in the outside world. This is the foolish idea of a wealthy person who thinks his status in life and his money can save him from the plague. The s...
... color red to represent the plague with the fact that the red death is symptomatic of bleeding from the pores. When the prince is going to face the death he shows cowardice which makes him rage with anger."that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice." Time is essential in this story, reminds the people of when time is running out and death is unavoidable. Masque of red death is a gothic literature, with dead, unexplainable mysterious frimes.While him and his guest were safe, his people were dying miserably, it shows a lack of character in his part. Instead of seeing the prince as a cold heartless man, you can also see it as just a scared man not wanting to face reality, leading to creating a imaginary world. When poe bring together both worlds at the end of the story, the poor and the rich, it creates a immediate climax.
Each line, every detail seems to tie into a deeper meaning that carries the reader throughout the story alongside the narrator and partygoers, all the while laden with hints and deeper meanings that progress rapidly toward the awaiting “horror” of death. With the introduction of the story alone, Poe has already set the stage with the background on the horrifying “pestilence” and its effects on the human body. By aptly naming it the “Red Death,” Poe is already conjuring images of the gruesome, painful deaths of history’s great plagues, particularly the black death which nearly shares its name, as well “the redness and the horror of blood” (Poe 438). It is here that the story takes a turn with the introduction of Prince Prospero himself, momentarily placing thoughts of the Red Death on the
Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death is an elaborate allegory that combines
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” the symbolism of the mummer, the masques, and the fortress convey the idea that no matter how much one tries to control death, fate will override. There is nothing man can do to control all aspects of life. “Frail humanity can never escape the inevitable ravages of time” (Zimmerman par. 12). Poe’s story serves as a lesson to the reader that when they try to change their fate , they will drop, and die in the despairing posture of their
...th the impression that Prospero represents Poe’s image of the artist who insists on creating an ideal artwork, but whom is permanently imprisoned by the time-bound nature of life. Poe emphasizes that the artistic effort to transform temporality into spatiality is condemned to failure. Even the seven rooms, which suggest a orderly pattern of static placing, become misshapen into an image of the time span of life when Prospero follows the Red Death through a time-based development from birth to youth to maturity to old age and finally to death. It is when Prospero must confront the reality of the temporality of life that he inevitably must confront the death that life always insists on. “The Masque of the Red Death” should not be relinquished as a simple gothic horror story, but rather should be understood in terms of the aesthetic concept that dominated Poe’s work.
The castle is a safe hold from the world that high up people go to for protection. When the Red Death kills half of Prince Prospero's dominions, he takes his rich friends, and seals themselves away from the world in his castle. Poe writes, “When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light hearted from among the knights, and dames of his court, and with these retired the the deep seclusions of one of his castellated alleys”(Poe 82) The castle
...agraph, the author mentions that the disease had come "like a thief in the night," but this statement is entirely untrue. Poe wrote a cohesive story which acknowledges the fear of trapping oneself in a doomed situation. Ironically, the very place the Prospero built to keep himself safe led to his hideous destruction. However, the audience was never permitted to believe that the prince would escape death, because even Poe's choice of environments reflect the triumph of the plague; the isolation and quarantine of the abbey, the fever and delirium of the masquerade, and finally the progression of time and eventual death. The clock strikes midnight, and with its shadowy expiration, "the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all," (213).
Edgar Allan Poe is known for his masterful writing on all aspects of mortality, but his famous short story “The Masque of the Red Death” proves to be more than a simple story about death. While it is about death, Poe’s short story can be read and applied as a cautionary tale whose purpose is to illustrate a worthy way to live and die by portraying the opposite of both. This interpretation comes about when the story is viewed through the lens of New Criticism. This viewpoint shows how the story uses its formal elements converge to create one complex theme. Poe’s short story develops its theme through the use of paradox, tension, irony and ambiguity, all of which come together to identify