Writers of allegory employ a variety of literary techniques in order to convey an underlying message or theme called an allegorical message. In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” he employs uncomforting diction to create an objective yet ominous tone; his grotesque visual imagery helps to create a mood of impending doom. Also, by including archetypal symbolism related to the seven stages of life, by personifying death as masked stranger, and by including a universal symbol for human mortality--his clock, Poe conveys the allegorical message that wealth and social status give people the false sense of security from death, even though we already know that death cannot be prevented; sometimes we might be egotistical and forget to help those people that are in need.
To start, Poe’s use of unpleasant and bizarre diction in a matter-of-fact tone helps to establish an ominous mood that is appropriate for the story’s tragic ending. Describing the embellishments of the prince’s Masquerade helps to
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As the speaker describes the seven rooms, he accentuates the unappealing features of the person who walks through that path. The narrator in the allegorical story, “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, manifests the idea that “ upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all… also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony”(2). This imagery helps augment the mood and the ominous tone. The rooms each represent the stages from birth to death; nobody wants to go to the last room, which is death, because they don’t want to admit that they will eventually die. This archetypal symbolism shows the grotesqueness of life, but also sets the tone, by foreshadowing that an unfortunate event will occur in the last