The Masque Of Red Death Irony Analysis

Fear is equally positive as it is negative. Fear offers restraint, alertness, and survival. However, like all good things fear also has a bad side. It also causes paranoia, paralyzation, and irrational thoughts. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of Red Death,” the main characters are deeply affected by fear. To show us fear can distort the mind and ultimately lead to death, Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism, irony, and personification.

Poe uses symbolism to show how fear distorts minds and the irony of fear in “The Masque of Red Death” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” The “Pit and the Pendulum” has multiple symbols, the pit and the pendulum. The pit is a very grotesque place that emits a sense of danger

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses irony to again prove how fear can hurt the mind. The old man’s “...room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened, through the fear of robbers)...” (75). The old man had tried to keep evil outside his home with shutters. However, he did not know that evil was already inside his house. It would be expected that the old man would be safe in his room, escaping the evil that lingered outside. The old man was not safe, despite his precautions to stop robbers or anyone outside from entering. The narrator had killed the old man because he had a creepy eye. Shortcoming had been the reason for his death and his eye was his flaw. Edgar Allan Poe leads to believe that it is possible that anyone could die because of their shortcomings, even if that man is loved. The narrator had loved the old man yet he still killed him. It did not matter to the narrator that the old man was good to him. The narrator felt as if he was doing a deed by getting rid of the vulture-like eye, that he felt haunted other people besides himself. Death comes in many forms; you cannot keep it out or stop it because there will always be a possibility of it. The old man’s massive amount of fear towards the evil outside caused him to forget about the evil inside. In “The Masque of Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe uses a significant amount of irony to prove his continuous

In “The Pit and the Pendulum” the narrator uses his fear to save him; Edgar Allan Poe proves this through personification. In the center of the narrator’s room “...yawned a circular pit from whose jaws (the narrator) ...had escaped” (67). By giving the pit jaws, Poe is comparing the pit to a wild animal wanting to eat. The pit had tried to eat him. Poe emphasizes this when he tells us he escaped the pit’s jaws. Poe is suggesting that the pit is trying to eat the narrator like an wild animal might have. The narrator was trapped by the pit and he had to try to escape being devoured by, the pit, his obsession and fear. Poe is trying to show his readers how bad of a punishment the pit really was, how gruesome and violent it was, and how much like a monster the pit was. Edgar Allan Poe was using figurative language to show us how the narrator was not letting his fear gorge him. Poe also uses personification to justify the narrator's fear. The narrator was afraid of something that almost everyone would be afraid of. The narrator wasn’t going insane. He stayed calm, all the while aware of the threats nearby. The narrator didn’t cry in hysteria, bang on the walls, or yell. Instead, he acted as any stable minded person would have. In “The Masque of Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses personification to increase the