The Masque Of Red Death Figurative Language

Poe essay
Fear is a natural instinct that could potentially save your life, but that doesn't mean it’s always a good thing. Fear can lead to paranoia or obsession, and then it can engulf your sanity. If you become so fearful in the face of danger it could possibly cause paralysis, cloud your rational thought, or cause you to faint. However, it could potentially save your life by holding you back from irrational acts, making your more alert, or offering restraining from making hazardous decisions. In the stories “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of Red Death,” the author, Edgar Allen Poe, uses figurative language, irony and symbolism to teach us that fean can distort the mind, and cause paranoia and obsession,

Irony is used to throw the reader off track and make the story more alluring. In “The Masque of Red Death,” Prince Prospero’s castle walls “had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within,”(57). When all entrances are sealed most would think that nothing could get in. That's what Prince Prospero thought, however the Red Death still could get in. Prince Prospero’s mind was distorted because of fear. His big fear of dying by the Red Death clouded his rational thought, so much that he excluded ever commoner and left them to die. As a result of him isolating himself from the disease, it came and found him. Prince Prospero didn’t realize that death is inevitable no matter what. Irony is the opposite of what you would expect and it can show how distorted the brain can get when reaction to fear. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” “His room was a black as pitch,” says the narrator, “with the thick darkness (for the shutters were closed and fastened, through fear of robbers,)”(75). The irony here is that the old man puts up the shutters in fear of being robbed or killed by people coming in, however, he didn't expect the threat to come from the inside. Fear led not only the old man to shut himself in, but also for the narrator to kill the old man

Symbolism is used to convey messages that are harder to show without saying it directly. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” The old old man’s “ eye’s is resembled of that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it,”(74). The narrator had a fear of the eye and compared it to that of a vulture's: hideous, cold and always looking to snatch something from the ground. He is a psychopath and doesn't understand that the old man has a disease. The fear of the man's eye becomes and obsession and gets to the point til that's the only thing that he can think about. His obsession for this eye leads nowhere pleasant. After seven nights of stalking the man, he finally kills him. In “The Masque of Red Death,” The ebony clock is very symbolic: “And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay,”(61). The ebony clock emblematizes time and life. When the clock stops the life of the party and Prince Prospero does too. When the time came the ebony clock died with Prince Prospero. Fear is what made Prince Prospero lock himself in a castle. Prince Prospero wasn’t afraid of death alone, he was afraid of time itself. When the ebony clock struck midnight, everyone stopped. They were reminded of something the wish the had not been. They knew that time meant death and death was inevitable. The life of Prince Prospero’s kingdom was represented by the clock because when the clock