Opinion on Poe's "Masque"

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"The Masque of the Red Death," by Edgar Allan Poe, can be interpreted as a figurative tale about the foolishness of human beings in the face of their own inevitable deaths. If the Red Death symbolizes death in general, then Prince Prospero's attempt to escape the plague is symbolic of the human desire to resist death. Poe when writing this story might have considered historical examples such as the "Black Death" or the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages, and the cholera epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia and Baltimore in the 170's. However, in this story, the plague takes the unusual form of the "Red Death" instead of a black one so that blood, the very substance of life, becomes the mark of death.

The story takes place in an unnamed "country," in no specific time period or geographical location, which has been ravaged by a deadly " pestilence." The uncertainty of the exact setting lends the story a "once upon a time" element, and places it in the realm of a fable. It covers a period of approximately six months during the reign of the red death. The action takes place in "the deep seclusion of one of Prince Prospero's castellated abbeys." The "masque" takes place in the imperial suite, which consisted of seven very distinct rooms.

Prince Prospero is the central character of "The Masque of the Red Death." His name suggests happiness and good fortune; however, ironically this is not the case. Despite the fact that the plague is killing everyone in his country, he invites "a thousand friends" to seal themselves in an abbey of his castle, to protect themselves from the horrible pestilence. Inside the castle, Prince Prospero holds a masquerade ball to distract themselves from the killings occurring outside the castle walls. It seems that Prince Prospero may be a mad man, and that the entire story is his dream and the characters of his dream are figments of his imagination.

While this story is literally about a pestilence called the Red Death, it can be read at an allegorical level as a tale about a man's fear of his own mortality. In the story, Prince Prospero and his "thousand friends" seal themselves into an abbey of his castle in an attempt to "defy contagion" and escape the control of the Red Death. In order to distract his guests from the suffering and death outside the castle walls, the Prince employs "all the appliances of pleasure," upon them. Prince Prospero's actions symbolize the ways in which all humans tend to focus on material pleasures in order to distract themselves from the knowledge that everyone must eventually die. Also, the fact that the Red Death sneaks in like a thief in the night to claim the lives of everyone at the ball symbolizes the fact that no one, not even the powerful Prince Prospero, can escape death. Cheap Custom Essays on Opinion on Poe's "Masque"

The connection of time with death is indicated by the placement of the "great ebony clock" in the seventh room of the abbey, which is the room connected with the images of death. The passing of time marked by the chiming of the clock each hour symbolizes the limited time each person has to live. The guests at the ball are forced to think about their own death, even with all the distractions provided by their sophisticated festivities. The hour of midnight, marking the end of the day, thus symbolizes the end of life. In fact, the Red Death is first noticed by he guests at the masquerade shortly after the stroke of midnight, signaling the soon to come death of all the partygoers. In addition, the death of the guests and the breakdown of the ebony clock were simultaneous.

"The Masque of the Red Death," can be interpreted as the interior monologue of a madman. G.R. Thompson states that Poe was "the master of the interior monologue of a profoundly disturbed mind." If this story represents the "interior monologue" of a mad Prince Prospero, the narrator must be Prince Prospero himself. The narrator first mentions the possibility that the Prince may be insane because other people were stating that "there are some who would have thought him mad." But the narrator distances himself from this opinion by stating "his followers felt that he was not" mad.

If the entire story represents the figment of one man's mad imagination, then the guests are not real people; they are characters part of his own crazy dream. In fact, the guests are described as "a multitude of dreams" and even as "fantasms." If the guests of the Prince are reflections of his own mad imagination, it also makes sense that even they are eventually referred to as "mad" in the phrase "mad revelers." Even the masked figure of the Red death is described to be making "mad assumptions."

The use of language in "The Masque of the Red Death," brings to mind a biblical story with implications of the apocalypse. The story draws images familiar from the Bible; the "pestilence" that has devastated an unnamed country described in the opening paragraph recalls images of God having sent a pestilence upon the land as a form of punishment to humans for their sins. Prince Prospero and his "thousand guests" seem like likely candidates for divine wrath, as they show no sympathy for the suffering and deaths of their fellow countrymen. The final paragraph of the story takes on a biblical tone, as "the language, rhythm and allusion are unmistakably Biblical." (Cheney) Most importantly, the closing sentence provides apocalyptic images of complete devastation "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all." However, Cheney argues that, unlike the Bible, where God always ultimately triumphs, in Poe's story it is the forces of evil, which suggest triumph over goodness.

"The Masque of the Red Death" is considered an allegorical story. Britannica Online explains that an allegory "uses symbolic fictional figures and actions to convey truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience." More specifically, this story may be read as a "parable", a sub-category of allegory in which, according to Britannica Online, "moral or spiritual relations are set forth." As a parable, "Masque of the Red Death" is symbolic of how humans respond to the knowledge of their own mortality. The reaction of Prince Prospero and his "thousand friends" to the presence of the Red Death is an attempt to use their material privileges in order to escape the inevitability of their own deaths. The fact that the masked figure sneaks in "like a thief in the night" is symbolic of the fact that no amount of wealth or power can exempt a person from death, no amount of entertainment or distraction can completely eliminate the fear of death, and no amount of security, like the abbey of the castle, can keep death from arriving at one's doorstep. This story shows the senselessness of man in his intricate attempts to deny his own mortality.

The seven chambers of the abbey, according to H. H. Bell, Jr., represent the seven decades of a man's life, so that the final chamber, decorated in red and black, represents death. Bell interprets the seven chambers as "an allegorical representation of Prince Prospero's life span." The color symbolism used to describe the seven rooms can be rather vague, however, there appears to be enough evidence in the story to determine certain conclusions about the rooms.

The first room, colored blue and located in the East, symbolizes birth because it is the direction from which the sun rises, and the last chamber is located in the West, which symbolizes death, as the sun sets in the west. The second room was purple, a color worn by those who have achieved something in the world or society. This color could be representative of that period in Prospero's life when he has accomplished a little something in life, perhaps moving into maturity. The third room is colored green, which associates with being verdant, relates to man who is in the prime of his years. The fourth room is orange and quite easily suggests the autumn life. Prospero could well be considered here to be beyond his prime, but by no means old yet. The fifth room is white, and if we follow the same pattern of life, it would suggest the silver or white haired period of old age. The sixth room is violet, a color that symbolizes chastity. And the final room, the seventh, is black, a color easily associated with death. In addition, Poe tells us that this room is the most westerly of all, and the association of conclusions, ends, and death itself with "West" are too much to mention.

Bell interprets each of the colors of the seven rooms (blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet) as symbolic of "Prospero's physical and mental condition in that decade of his life." The seventh room is the location of death, as it is chillingly decorated in black and red, black being a color associated with blood, and in this story, the Red Death. Meanwhile, in the first six rooms "beat feverishly the heart of life." In a historical point of view, it was thought that the world consisted of seven ages, just like a human's life has seven stages. The ancient world had seven wonders; universities divided learning into seven subjects; there were seven deadly sins with seven corresponding cardinal virtues, and the number seven is important in mysticism.

Located in the seventh room, the ebony clock can be read as a symbol of the limited time each person has to live. Therefore, the stroking of the clock each hour is a reminder to the guests of the limited time left in their own lives. Midnight represents the hour of death, because it is at midnight that the "masked figure" is noticed by the guests. These symbolic details conclude in the death of the Prince, in the seventh room, shortly after the stroke of midnight, at the precise moment when he literally "faces" his own death. The clock as a symbolic representation of human life is also indicated in the closing lines, as "the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay." Although the clock is an object, it quickly takes on human aspects as the author describes it as having a face and lungs from which comes a sound that is "exceedingly musical" but "so peculiar" that the "dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand," in a momentary inflexibility that anticipates the final one.

Prospero is very angry at the intrusion of a masked figure and asks "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?" He also commands his guests to "seize him and unmask him-that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise from the battlements!" It should be noted that Prospero was standing in the "blue" room when he shouted these words; in that youthful period of life when a man is braver toward death than he is later on, when it is closer upon him. In this anger, Prospero rushes toward the figure of death with the intention of stabbing him to death, ironic isn't it. In doing so he runs through every period of life, in this case every room, only to be stricken dead in the seventh room when he catches up with his intended victim. Since Prospero is standing in the blue room when he sees the figure representing death, and since one knows that it is impossible to see very far into this apartment because of its windings, one may conclude that the figure of death is in either the first or second room. Allegorically this could very well mean that people become aware of death at a very early age.

Lastly, it might be pointed out that Prospero in his last fateful, plunging rush at death is probably acting from a self-destructive urge, attracted to that which he at the same time fears. In any event, with Prospero's death comes the death of all the people in the Imperial suite and the tale ends with the victory of death over all.

Bell, H. H., Jr. '"The Masque of the Red Death''An Interpretation," South Atlantic

Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 4, 17, pp.101, 104

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Broussard, Louis. The Measure of Poe. University of Oklahoma Press Norman, 16.

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Cassuto, Leonard. "Criticism." Short Stories for Students. 14 ed. Vol. 8

Cheney, Patrick. "Criticism." Short Stories for Students. 14 ed. Vol. 8.

Kennedy, Gerald J. The Tales of Poe. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House

Publishers, 187. 118-11

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