The Masque of the White Plague Humans tend to run away from the inevitable, which causes worry about the events to come. Although death is an event that all will eventually have to face, it is one of humanity’s most widely feared phenomenons. Death presents itself to society in a variety of ways, such as war, disease, and natural disasters. Society’s fear of death is an inspiration for many authors who have turned it into a work reflecting humans’ temporal nature and fear of the unknown. Edgar Allan Poe is a quintessential example of literary reflection of human mortality, as his short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” reflects the tuberculosis epidemic of the nineteenth century.
The events of Edgar Allan Poe’s life greatly influenced his writing. Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston,
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In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe tells of a prince that rules over a disease-ridden kingdom. In an effort to escape the disease, which Poe refers to as the red death, the prince welcomes the rich people of the kingdom into his castle and invites them to wait out the threat in comfort and extravagance. However, a figure appears in the castle just before midnight who embodies the red death. "He is wrapped in the sort of material used for dead bodies; his face, says Poe, looks like that of 'a stiffened corpse.' Blood is spattered all over him." (Dyer 1286). At the end of the story, Prince Prospero gathers the courage to attempt to kill the figure, but he drops dead before the task is complete. When the palace’s guests unwrap the cloth surrounding the figure, they find nothing underneath. The figure’s red blood allegedly signifies the blood coughed up by tuberculosis victims, which inspired Poe to write this frightful