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The Night Circus Literary Analysis

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Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is a bestselling novel that holds magical wonders and revolves around a deadly game between two magicians. Morgenstern’s novel is filled with romance that contrasts with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Unlike Morgenstern’s novel, Poe’s short story is centered around a prince trying to seek out safety from a deadly plague. Strangely enough, these two literary works hold a similarity in symbolism. Morgenstern and Poe each use a clock to signal the ending of either a game or life. In The Night Circus the Wunschtraum clock is seen as a symbol for the amount of time left till the end of the game between Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair. As the game plays out between Celia and Marco, they are seen to use the circus as their main location which therefore causes the Wunschtraum clock to be a significant symbol. The clock represents the circus’s wonders and it serves a purpose of reminding the characters that time is not unlimited and that all things must come to an end. Incidentally, once Celia and Marco’s game continues to drag out the clock is there to inform them that time does not wait for them to make a decision, eventually the game must end and a …show more content…

Each time that the clock chimes in the castle it is seen to have a great effect on the guests there. This could be because the ebony clock serves as a reminder that time continues to move forward and that death is always coming closer as time fades away. Even with Prince Prospero attempting to distract his guests from the truth, the clock’s purpose is set to make sure that they do not stay oblivious to the truth. As a result, Prince Prospero’s effort to keep out the plague from reaching them is futile since the clock conveys that death cannot be controlled by anyone or any methods. In the end, Poe’s ebony clock is seen to contain a grand

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