In The Masque of the Red Death, the author, Edgar Allen Poe, uses a combination of foreshadowing, diction, and symbolism to reveal a struggle for power and the desire to escape death in Prince Prospero’s castle. Selfishness will always get back to their owner, and the Red Death manages to sneak into the castle to kill everyone in there. Poe’s usage of literary devices has lured many critics and debaters to examine this short story. Foreshadowing is a literary device that the author uses in two ways. First, to provide the reader with some idea of what is going to happen in the story. Second, foreshadowing keeps the reader interested to discover what happens throughout the story. Edgar Allen Poe’s usage of foreshadowing does by of these to keep …show more content…
The clock not only foreshadows, but also acts as a time bomb to the guests’ death, as the clock counts down their death. “The fact that the narrator overlooks the necessity of his own death mirrors and mocks the cherished illusions of immortality that art gives to both artist and audience.” (Dudley, 19-20). As David R. Dudley puts it, the narrator is foreshadowing his own death. 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. Poe’s negative diction starts as he first describes the