Similarities Between The Cask Of Amontillado And The Masque Of The Red Death

The stories “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allan Poe are similar in their setting, mood, main characters, and topics such as symbolism, conflict, and foreshadowing. Poe has a specific writing style that makes his works similar and easily identifiable. Poe tends to write about sickness and death. These topics reflect greatly on his life and show through in many of his works. When Poe was young he was adopted by a rich family, Mr. and Mrs. John Allen; he did not have a very good relationship with Mr. Allen. When Poe was older and a struggling writer, Mr. Allen refused to financially support Poe. Many people died in Poe’s life including his mother,

They all have an eerie and mysterious feel that creates tension throughout the story. For example, in “The Cask of the Amontillado”, Poe writes, “We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs.” The catacombs and walls of piled skeletons are creepy. Similarly, “The Mask of the Red Death” takes place I a castle that has seven creepy rooms. “The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect.” In the description of the house in “The Fall of the House of the Usher” is very displeasing as well. “…And upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—which I can compare no earthly sensation more properly then to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium.” Even the narrator describes a depressing feeling from the look of the Usher house. There is a similar eerie setting in “The Man of the Crowd.” The narrator is following a man through a city in London on a dreary night. Poe writes, “It was now fully night-fall, and a thick humid fog hung over the city, soon ending in a settled and heavy rain.” All four stories have a similar mysterious and eerie

Poe sets a dark tone in the beginning of “The Man of the Crowd” when he talks about people and their secrets. “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking the piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of the throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.” This is similar to the uneasy, dark mood in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Poe describes a normal night in Prince Prospero’s castle, he shows this dark feeling though the way the guests act. “And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things before. When people are dancing and having fun they don’t stop because a clock rang; this shows that there is something dark like death on the guests mind. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator’s thoughts set a dark mood. “...I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with a grim phantasm, FEAR.” This dark mood is also demonstrated though the thoughts of Montresor in the beginning of “The Cask of the Amontillado.” The quotes, “…he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of