Similarities Between The Masque Of The Red Death And The Raven

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” and short story “The Masque of The Red Death” Poe illustrates a fear of death. Death has taken away the people he cares about most in his life. As an author of fear and death, Poe's own life was the inspiration for his spine tingling poems and stories. In his poem “The Raven” Virginia was the influence for Lenore, whose death the speaker is grieving. In Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” the red death is a representation of tuberculosis which his wife as well as his mother, foster mother, and brother all obtained and die from.

Poe uses the symbols of the Red Death and Prince Prospero to show that death is inevitable. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.” This quote tells the reader that the Red Death was a very dangerous disease and was horrifying. While the people of the town were dying, Prince Prospero tried hid in his abbey for month. One day, Prospero noticed a strange figure walking through his party. He chased this figure until it stopped in the last black and red room. “There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero.” After months of hiding, Prince Prospero, who symbolizes humanity’s efforts to prevent death, was finally killed by the Red Death figure, who represents inevitable death. Prince Prospero tried to hide from death by building reinforcements around his abbey. There were walls of iron and the doors were welded shut, but the Red Death figure somehow reached Prince Prospero. This proves the thesis because it show how the Red Death and Prince Prospero represent how a person cannot hide from

In the story “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe expresses the theme that death is inescapable or inevitable. He expresses this theme through rhetorical devices such as symbolism and allegory. For example, Prince Prospero’s chambers were allegorical because of the rooms’ arrangement which was from east to west. The east represents the beginning of life, while the west represents the end of life. The Darkroom, which was at the end of the hall, symbolized death. It was the room that the guests didn’t want to go in and eventually was the place that they were killed by the Black Death. Another example of symbolism is the clock which as a symbol of the time-lapse of life as a human being. It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony...and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily (Poe 374). This sentence expresses how compelling the clock is and how it attracts the attention of the masqueraders. The author also uses imagery to build suspense upon the reader. An example would be how the author describes the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood-and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror (Poe 378). This describes the dreadful

“The Masque of the Red Death,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, tells the story of Prince Prospero and his futile attempts to prevent death. During his masquerade party, the prince notices an unusual figure, dressed as the Red Death, and, enraged at the sight of it, Prospero tries to kill it. Poe uses the seventh room, the ebony clock, and the Red Death itself as symbols of death throughout his story.

The symbols in the story “The Masque of the Red Death” function in the work, revealing characteristics and themes of the story as a whole in many ways. Edgar Allan Poe uses a variety of symbols for characters, objects, and even thoughts in his story. These symbols express his ideas, clarify his meaning, and enlarge his literal meanings as he explains how death has no escape. Several of Poe’s symbols include the series of seven rooms, the clock, and the abbey.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, is the tale of a young selfish prince who is trying to escape the Red Death by secluding himself and 1,000 of his closest friends. The Red Death is a horrible, and highly contagious, disease that causes the pores of the skin to ooze blood until death. What makes the story so appealing is the irony and symbolism behind the castle and the rooms in which the prince designs. Although Edgar Allan Poe is not known for his use of symbolism, he does portray quite a few different symbolic examples of life and death in “The Masque of the Red Death”.

Dark Romanticism is a subcategory of Romanticism. It is quite similar to its parent type but has a darker perspective. Romanticism and Transcendentalism are as similar as they are different. There are many similarities between Romanticism and Transcendentalism. One of the similarities between the groups is the incorporation of nature.

Allan Poe creates a dark, chilling mood for the reader. Acting “...happy and dauntless and

Using The Masque of the Red Death as an example, Poes' use of literary devices has the reader biting their nails throughout the entire piece. He uses symbolism skillfully in regards to the coloured chambers. Poe represents the seven stages of man, as well as using symbolism in the colours themselves (blue meaning birth or beginning and finishing with black meaning death).

In the story “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, it shows a prince trying to hide from a plague in his castle with the rest of the royals. In the castle there are seven rooms that are lit in different colors, each room to the readers mean something or have a meaning. Some say that the rooms mean nothing and are just colors that were choosen, but if you look at Poe’s history and the struggles he went through then you will see that those colors do have a symbolic representation of his emotions. Every room in the castle is a representation of what Poe felt throughout his life and still did up to that point.

The first way that Poe uses symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death” occurs when he introduces the setting. The seven rooms which Poe describes at the beginning of the story each have a different distinct color (Poe 342). These colors each symbolize a different stage in the life cycle. Also the rooms are organized East to West, symbolizing the

Although Transcendentalism was the first great American literary period, Dark Romanticism followed closely behind, bringing a dark twist to the previous writing style. Dark Romantic writers, such as Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, saw Transcendentalism as overly optimistic. Dark Romantics wanted to change literature written during the time. While Transcendentalists wrote about the need for social reform, Dark Romantics wrote about characters failing at change (VanSpanckeren). Both styles believed nature held a spiritual force, but Dark Romantics viewed this force as evil and mysterious.

Poe’s use of symbolism is very evident throughout the story of “The Masque of the Red Death”. Much has been made about the meaning of the rooms that fill Prince Prospero’s lavish getaway. One such critique, Brett Zimmerman writes, “It is difficult to believe that a symbolist such as Poe would refuse to assign significance to the hues in a tale otherwise loaded with symbolic and allegorical suggestiveness” (Zimmerman 60). Many agree that the seven rooms represent the seven stages of human existence. The first, blue, signifying the beginnings of life. Keeping in mind Poe’s Neo-Platonism and Transcendentalism stance, the significance of blue is taken a step further. Not only does blue symbolize the beginning of life, but the idea of immortality is apparent when considering these ideas. “Perhaps ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ then, is not quite the bleak existential vision we have long thought it to be”, expounds Zimmerman (Zimmerman 70). Poe’s use of each color is significant to the seven stages

Have you ever read a story where fantasy is the reality and things do not quite make sense? This is true for “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. In it is a version of the black plague, which is called the “Red Death”. Prince Prospero secludes a thousand friends and himself from the death around them, but finds that he cannot avoid the inevitable. The author uses many literary devices to create an interesting and meaningful story. One of the devices used is imagery, which evokes the events of the story clearly in the reader’s mind. Another is allegory, which is used by Poe to create another story within his, as it is filled with double meanings. Lastly, Poe utilizes symbolism to give the story meaning. Edgar Allan Poe uses

Dark romanticism is a subgenre of writing that took a different approach to the fantasy, and it submerged into American literature in 1800-1860. And it emphasized humans weakness and vulnerability to sin and destruction. The main characteristic of this genre was horrific themes and creepy symbols. Since many famous writers wielded it into their writings such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickenson.