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Irrationality In The Masque Of The Red Death

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“(Edgar Allan Poe) was born without human emotions, or with them so submerged in his intellect that he could almost be said to have been a man without a heart.” (Yewdale 695) Poe 's intense interest with the phenomenon of death and the afterlife started when he was merely two years old, when his mother and father both died of tuberculosis. In his youth, “Poe was so morbid that he used to go at night to the graveyard and sit near the grave of one of his beloved friends.” (Yewdale 690) Throughout his work, Poe argues the irrationality of fearing death through his exploitation of human fear, his dissection of the powers of the human mind, and the irrationality of irrationality itself. Poe utilizes fear to diminish even the most powerful of …show more content…

His vesture was dabbled in blood-and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.” (Poe 303) Robert Shulman writes: “Poe often seeks to find metaphoric equivalents for his explicit theoretical concerns - with identity and oneness in unexpected guises, with the importance of analogy, with the life and death power of writing supernatural and finally fatal visions, with the terror and awe of moving from life to death...” (Shulman 250) Prince Prospero’s ill-fated attempt to escape the plague only led him to inevitable death, only in a more gruesome manner than the plague. Poe writes about the event, describing the Prince Prospero as he chases the cloaked figure around with a knife, full of rage: “Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers... He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.” (Poe 304) Poe follows this with a confrontation between the personified Red Death and the Prince, which inevitably ends with the Prince, dead on the ground. Prince Prospero is unable to escape death, supporting Poe’s CONSISTENT THEME OF THE INEVITABILITY OF

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On the other hand, even though Prince Prospero tried his best to escape the horrible reality of the plague, in the end he died because of it. He failed to realize that the Read Death had entered his castle in the form of the masked figure. The masked figure clearly represented Death. The figure was “tall and gaunt,” wore “habiliments of the grave,” and had the “countenance of a stiffened corpse.” The “black velvet room” also hinted the presence of a mystery figure that would bring nothing but misfortune.

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There are days when the world feels like it 's falling down in fiery bits and pieces on top of one’s head, and then there are the days when the world is actually falling to pieces. Humans have often constructed their own protective barriers, and carried on amidst what would be deemed apocalyptic circumstances. These circumstances are viewed as having no other purpose other than making life extraordinarily hard and discouraging humanity to continue their existence. Instead, tragedy and suffering through it serves to unite all of the human race by tugging on the heartstrings. Compassion and empathy makes suffering a continually melding experience of humanity.

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Poe demonstrates this by showing how Prince Prospero challenges the “Red Death” as a character. Prince Prospero faces a time when an intruder, the Red Death, gets inside like a thief at night. The Red Death goes through all the rooms and makes his final move at the black with red room. At the black and red room the Red Death disappears and instantly Prince Prospero dies. He falls to the floor and dies.

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Rough Draft Analysis Some people think that running away from problems in life is an amazing way to get out of them. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, expresses how the effort of running away from a disease is not possible. The people believed that now that the prince, their loyal friend, had let them into the castle they were all safe from the terrible disease called “Red Death”. Everyone was having a good time at a ball that the prince had made for his friends.

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The authors’ use of strong imagery invokes strong emotions that give the audience a personal connection to the characters and events. In the “The Masque of the Red Death”, the theme is mortality. Poe shows how people are vulnerable to death, even after taking every possible precaution. Poe writes, “The mask ... was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse ... gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood - and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror” (6).

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In Poe’s stories, the main characters experience fear, but they all handle it distinctively. Poe uses irony, symbolism, and imagery to show how fear affects the narrator’s mindset, along with their future.     In “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of Red Death”, the main characters try to isolate themselves from evil, but Poe uses irony to show that death is inevitable.

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But one of Poe’s stories, The Masque of the Red Death (1842), relies heavily on themes of death, pestilence, human nature, and religion. Through these themes and symbolism, Poe explores the darker side of humanity and the meaning behind life. “The Masque of the Red Death” is a story about Prince Prospero and his kingdom that

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995 Words | 4 Pages

In the short story, “Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allen Poe manipulates timeless imagery, forcible diction, and archaic allusions to engross the reader in a power-avid war between Prince Prospero’s court and the indigenous presence of death. The court seeks to outsmart death by hiding away, only to find out death draws nearer by every tick of the ebony clock. Poe handles imagery in a manner that illustrates the cowardice towards death in the minds of Prospero’s court, which in turn, causes them to be semi-ignorant to the alfresco of Europe. The story reads, “When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys” (pg.3). This first creates an active image of a dying kingdom, then the image shows a prince turning his back on the helpless citizens of his rule so that he and his most dear nobles may have the chance at eluding death.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Exploration of Love and Grief Death is a sensitive and rather serious subject that most people cannot look past the devastation long enough to perceive beauty in. It is common for a writer to explore the dark aspects of death and the process of grieving, but less familiar is the love and undying adoration that has to be present in order for someone to experience loss. A love that transcends death, in the sense that the absence of a loved one can alter a life in such a substantial way, truly demonstrates the power of human connection and love. This can be seen throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s work, including poems such as “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee,” as he explores the beauty that accompanies both love and grief.

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Death was a constant theme in Poe’s personal life, which presented itself as another major theme in “The

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Death can never be escaped no matter what. In “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe shows the theme of death, a suspenseful mood, and an ominous tone. Through Poe’s use of literary devices, the reader can discover tone, theme, and mood. Throughout Poe’s life he experienced death with two of his mother’s and his young wife. Death is shown how inevitable it is with Poe’s writing and experiences combined together.

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Though Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories like, The Cask of Amontillado, to his poems like, The Raven, Poe’s shows his writing style to use physical imagery and connotative syntax to show ,imagery in his writing. Throughout his life, Poe had always lived through the most chaotic and evil of time. His parents died while he was 3 years old. After his parents died, he lived with another family member who never accepted him as their own son. Later on in life, Poe had served in the military and at that point he started writing poems.

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For Poe, this genre might have offered him the chance to write about his sorrows, since, at the time The Raven was written according to Joy Lanzendorfer of Mental Floss6, his wife was deathly ill, he had already lost many to tuberculosis and he must have known, in his bosom’s core, that he was to sadly let another one of his beloved go. This is where both the genre and a dark, ebony omen come into play. It can be said that the gothic genre allows us to discuss quite painful subjects through use of copious symbols and parallels and that we can see the effects of such heartbreaking things on the human mind, that we can gradually follow the decline, the decay one might go through after the traumatising event of losing someone close to oneself. The raven, further, is of importance for it, according to Poe, symbolised “mournful and never-ending remembrance. ”7, the type we see in the poem when the bird repeats ‘nevermore’.

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The entire short story can be envisioned as a scary dream. Poe sets the tone of the story in the very beginning, stating, “The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood,” (Poe 3). This sets an emphatically dark and horrific tone for the reader, which carries into the plot of the story.

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The Masque of the Red Death: Essay The Masque of the Red Death is a short gothic horror story. Overall is about a prince who thinks he is invincible, while having a party one night a mysterious guest appears and all the party-goers are very frightened of him. In the end this red death man kills the prince along with many other people at the party. This story became more horrific because the setting was in a castle, there was supernatural elements, and there was revenge.

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