Use of The Allegory in The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe Even though Edgar Allen Poe has publicly stated his dislike for the technique of allegory (a type of metaphor abstract). Uses of it can be found in his short story "The Masque of the Red Death". Two that are evident are; the clock that signals Deaths approach, and the repetition of the number seven to implies life's end. In the story a prince named Prospero is ruling in the mists of a plague that has killed half of his population. But instead of helping his people during their time of need, Prince Prospero decides to gather a thousand of his friends, host an extended quarantine party until the plague had run its coarse. In his castle, Prospero has nearly everything of the outside world, music, drink, food, and performers. Everything except the "Red Death". The Guests spend their time in masquerade, where they dress in costumes of fantasy. The masquerade takes place in seven rooms, each its own color, with the seventh room being a blood red, and containing a clock that's hourly chime causes a brief moment of s...
Edgar Allan Poe's writing style is based on the supernatural and the unknown. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero invites the revelers to come to the castle to party until the danger of pestilence is gone. The party was interrupted by an intruder who was dressed in all black (like the Grim Reaper) and was associated with the plague of the "red death." The reaper killed everyone one by one in the end. The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. An allegory is symbols that are presented in the story that have two levels of meaning. An example can be the clock in the story. The clock told time and represented the time they had left before they died. There were seven chambers that were different colors, and the last chamber was black, which was the last chamber that represented death. I think the seven rooms symbolized the days until you die and the clock symbolized the time until you died.
“The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face of the victim, caused terror in those watching the afflicted” (7). The story starts off with the prince getting away to a castle with his healthy friends. They were going to throw a masque party, and all was going well until the masker showed up. Everyone was scared including the knights. As the masker made its way from the blue room to the black room, nobody moved. The prince felt like it was his job to get up and take control. He entered the black room with the Masker and that’s when everyone heard a scream, the prince was dead. Eventually, all his friends dropped dead too. In “The Masque of the Red Death” the seven rooms represent the seven stages of life; infancy, childhood,
The Masque of the Red Death was very serious from the beginning to end. The story never pulled away from the sense of a looming threat. Poe did not waste anytime, he cut straight to the point and set the tone right away. The tone relates to people language and the specific words that he uses to create illusion and imagery. Poe uses different times of words to define his language which is called Old English today. Poe sentences are also short and they are practically identical in the simple structure. Poe is a very different writer than most writers today, he has a unique way about his language.
In “The Masque of the Red Death,” the location of the rooms represents the cycle of life and death, with the bright blue room all the way to the east, where the sun rises and the day begins, and the black, morbid room all the way to the west, where the sun sets and the day ends. The reader comes to understand that the most eastern room represents the beginning of life, while the most western room
Zimmerman, Brett. “Allegoria and Clock Architecture in Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.” Essaysin Arts and Sciences 29 (Oct. 2000): P 1-16. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 April 2012.
Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, "The Telltale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death" are two very different stories. One is about a simple man, perhaps a servant, who narrates the tale of how he kills his wealthy benefactor, and the other is about a prince who turns his back on his country while a plague known as The Red Death ravages his lands. Yet, there are some similarities in both. Time, for instance, and the stroke of midnight, seem to always herald the approach of impending death. Both are killers, one by his own hand, the other by neglecting his country. One seeks peace, the other seeks pleasure, but both are motivated by the selfish need to rid themselves of that which haunts them, even at the expense of another's life. However, the point of this critique will show that their meticulous plans to beat that which torments them are undone by a single flaw in their character - overconfidence.
Literary genius Edgar Allan Poe lived a troubled life. During his forty years of existence, Poe struggled with the deaths of countless family members, including his cousin-wife. These bruising events caused him to develop the mental illness depression. In his short story “Masque of the Red Death,” the views Poe developed during his tumultuous life are reflected in his writing. The theme of this short story emphasizes the inevitability of death in descriptive details because Edgar Allan Poe has encountered death so many times. He also makes social commentary on materialism and the value of life because he was raised in a wealthy household where he received more allowance than love. Poe’s melancholy overtone in this story can also be attributed to the sickness and death he watched his wife succumb to. The depression Edgar Allan Poe developed due to his turbulent and unfortunate life is depicted in his story “Masque of the Red Death” in the way he addresses death and the materialistic nature of human beings.
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.
Firstly, The Masque of the Red Death is a short story that dwells on a wide variety of societal issues. On the other hand, The Raven adopts the form of a poem, which is especially notable for its dramatic and melodic properties. The poet uses the refrain of “Lenore” and “nevermore” in order to emphasize the narrators’ troubled interaction with death (Poe, The Works of Edgar Allen Poe). Furthermore, The Raven employs allusion in its attempt to explain the mysteries surrounding death. The poet seeks to know whether there is “balm in Gilead” in reference to the hope of life after death demonstrated in various religious faiths such as Christianity. In The Masque of the Red Death the author addresses death’s inevitability and its wider implication on the society (Poe). The short story addresses the ability of epidemics to wreck havoc on populations. Furthermore, the short story addresses the authority’s selfishness and incompetence when it comes to addressing pivotal issues affecting people. Instead of finding ways of protecting people from further infections, the prince selfishly runs away from the rest of the population. Whereas death finally catches up with everybody regardless of one’s social status, the short story plays a pivotal role in highlighting leadership discrepancies that plague many civilized
... 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.
“And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall” (Poe, par. 14). After the mummer kills Prince Prospero, the masqueraders in the abbey perish one by one until the ebony clock runs out and none remain. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the symbolism of the iron fortress, the masque, and the mummer to reveal the theme that man does not have control over their fate, and they cannot run from death.
Time Takes Its Toll on All in Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe
In the "Masque of the Red Death," the first sentence, "The Red Death had long devastated the country," sets the tone for the whole story. Poe describes the horrors of the disease, stressing the redness of the blood and the scarlet stains. The disease kills so quickly that one can die within thirty minutes of being infected with the disease. To create a frightening effect of the revulsion of this disease, Poe uses words such as "devastated," "fatal," "horror of blood," and "sharp pains and profuse bleeding." In summary, the story relates the prince, trying to be safe and away from the horrible death, invites a thousand friends to be in seclusion in his abbey away from the disease. During a celebration , a masked ball at the abbey - with incredible described rooms and moods - a surprise masked intruder causes death to all.
Poe's narrator describes the "Red Death" as having long devastated the country; “In fact, no pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood” (1). The image of blood and time throughout the short story also indicates corporeality. The plague may, in fact, represent typical attributes of human life and mortality by implying the entire story is an allegory about a man's useless tries to getaway from death.
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