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Fear In The Tell-Tale Heart And The Masque Of Red Death

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Fear can be very advantageous when it comes to surviving. Fear inhibits you from doing risky actions that can put you and others in danger; it keeps you cautious and careful. Even though fear helps you when surviving, fear can harm you in life. Fear can cause paranoia that keeps you from enjoying life. You start to obsess over minimal things leading to hallucination. 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. …show more content…

For example in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the author explains the appearance of the man’s eye: “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture” (pg. 74). The old man’s eye symbolizes the man’s obsession over judgement. The man thinks the old man is watching and judging him. He’s so afraid of judgement that he creates an uncontrollable obsession over the eye. His crazy obsession makes him kill the old man just so he doesn’t have to see the eye anymore. In “The Masque of Red Death”, the author includes 7 rooms, one being black, which is where the Prince locks himself in: “There were seven-an imperial suite… The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls…” (pg. 58). The seventh rooms shows how death is always there and always will be. The Prince fears that he’s going to be contaminated, so he does everything in his power to avoid death. The Prince creates an obsession over escaping death, what he doesn’t know is that death has always been there and always will

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Poe uses irony in his stories to demonstrate how fear can distort the mind and what the result of that fear looks like. In Poe’s story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero locks himself and other wealthy people up in his castle, leaving only the castle to live in: “They resolved to leave any means of ingress or egress…” (57). This is ironic because by locking himself and other wealthy people up in his castle, he secured his death and the death of everyone else he lives with. Prince Prospero’s fear of Death leads him to make these decisions. In the same way, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is ironic in that the old man bars his windows and makes his bedroom dark because of his fear of death, however, death is already inside.

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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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The inevitable is something that can’t be escaped, no matter what the circumstances. Throughout Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, fate is a common topic, and associates directly with his theme. This can be viewed through his protagonist, Prince Prospero. Prince Prospero has cleverly, or so he thinks, isolated himself and one thousand others into his castle, to escape the red death. The Prince uses this isolation as a denial of reality to escape what is truly going on in the world around him.

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Fear changes us and makes us do things we would not normally do. Fear is powerful and merciless. Fear can also be used as a weapon. It has power over everyone so know someone ’s

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“The Tell-Tale Heart” vs. “The Haunted Palace” Death and sorrow has entered everyone’s life at some point, but it can definitely have different effects on us. Edgar Allan Poe’s two short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Haunted Palace” both deal with death and evil, which raises a question, how has evil effected Poe in his life to drive him to write pieces of writing such as these. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a man taken over by insanity and killing an old man because of it. “The Haunted Palace” is about this beautiful Palace that was then taken by evil and turned into a place of sorrow. Edgar Allan Poe’s

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The narrator is not only the storyteller of The Masque of the Red Death, but also a guest that was killed in the process of this escape from death. As Poe shapes the narrator through words, his use of very melancholic, mysterious, and painful words also foreshadows a mass massacre in the castle. The author’s diction, the way the he or she writes, can create a sense of many different moods in the story. Poe in The Masque of the Red Death uses a negative diction.

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The setting in "Masque of the Red Death" is a symbol for Prince Prospero's mind and his isolation from the phobias that haunt him. The story takes place in a palace that is completely walled off. Everyone in the castle is oddly cheerful even though there is a disease killing people outside the castle walls.... In actuality, the castle represents the Prince's mind and his mental isolation from the phobias that haunt him. Prince Prospero is goes insane due to obsession and barricades himself in a place he thinks will keep him safe,

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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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The ins and outs of life seem to be apparent to everyone; yet we all make the same mistake of ignoring what all of our lives have in common, death. Using symbolism, Edgar Allan Poe writes ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ around the theme that life is a masquerade till death. The reader gets the first sign of this symbolism when Poe introduces the different apartments. Each apartment is decorated with a specified color and “..windows ..of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations..”

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I agree that both “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe can be described as short stories that value symbol over plot. Poe uses various symbols to disclose information or details to the reader, while also leaving components of the story open to interpretation. This symbolism tells its own story within the overall plot, rather than it being explained clearly by the author, cleverly adding to the interest of the read. This effective allegory allows the reader to question their literal understanding of the story, once faced with the deeper philosophical ideas. This means that in the case of these two short stories, symbols are valued over plot.

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Many people believe that fear can result into harm or negative emotions. Fear helps to prevent harm, creates more awareness, and has an instinct that can save lives. On the other side, fear can cause paranoia, obsession, hallucination, and can take away the fun in life. Throughout the stories, Poe uses symbolism, irony, and imagery to define how fear can limit the narrator's minds and lead to fear.

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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

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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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In The Masque of the Red Death, the Red Death could be a killer or a disease. They have been conspired to be “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death. “ Each word means something different. Moreover, The Darkness could be the killer, the Decay could be the disease, and the Red Death would be them as a whole. In a different point of view they could be one thing that have started from another, rather than being separate things.

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Despite the belief that one can live forever, death is certain. Edgar Allen Poe wrote his short story, “The Masque of the Red Death” with a greater meaning than simply the Red Death, or plague. He wrote this story, symbolizing the stages of life. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the symbols of the hallway, the rooms, and the braziers, to enhance the allegory, and to show how death is inevitable and one can not spend their life worrying about it.

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