The Red Death – a plague that causes a swift and agonizing death. Reminiscent of diseases and plagues of reality (such as the Bubonic Plague), this plague symbolizes death as it rapidly attacks and spreads the fictional kingdom’s found within Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death.” This picture, included within Poe’s short story, illustrates the scene where the Red Death appears within the castle of Prospero, who looks on in terror. Written in 1842, the short story follows the Red Death, a vicious plague that has swept the land and killed half of the population. The land’s ruler, Prospero, does not try to help his people survive, but instead finds “one thousand healthy, happy friends” and brings them into his castle, where he then bars the gates, preventing anyone from coming in – particularly the Red Death. Within the castle walls, Prospero and his friends have a spectacular masquerade, taking place in seven rooms coloured with seven different colours – blue, purple, green, yellow, white, violet, and the last of black. Yet while the first six rooms’ windows shine with the same light, the seventh room shines with a sinister red akin to blood. A large black clock hangs within this sinister seventh room, which the dancers avoid. The night goes on, and the clock strikes many times. Eventually, it strikes, and a new masqueraded form appears. This figure is an “outsider” – the Red Death (Roth 50). Although Prospero attempts to kill the Red Death, he instead drops dead, along with everyone else. The tale ends with “…darkness and decay a[s] the Red Death ruled forever over all” (Poe 5).
This story is heavily symbolic, with a lot to take from it. One of these key themes includes the appearance and dominance of the Red Death – which symbolizes the plague, death, life, and an “outside force,” from which Prospero and his friends attempt to shelter themselves from. The tale depicts the scenes with heavy imagery and metaphorical meaning – the dancers depicted as “troubled dreams,” the use of the coloured rooms and how the dancers “took” those colours, and more (Poe 3). It also maintains the insinuation that with the retreat “inside,” there is nothing left outside, at least not of any more importance: “All these were within the wall, and within the wall they would be safe. Outside the wall walked the Red Death” (2). This figure of death “designates a nominal boundary which cannot really be sited. And if this figure represents the Red Death, so has everyone that has ventured within the precincts of the…room” (Roth 52). Death is shown to be so unavoidable, that even when trying to shut oneself away from it, it still displays itself within yourself and others. This inevitability and overwhelming force of life and death shows how there is no escaping our fates.
Works Cited:
Barzun, Jacques , Cestre, Charles and Mabbott, Thomas Ollive. "Edgar Allan Poe". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Feb. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-Allan-Poe. Accessed 21 March 2024.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death.” 1842. Poestories.com, https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_mask_of_t…. Accessed 18, March 2024.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Masque of the Red Death. 1842. Wordpress.com, https://hornbakelibrary.wordpress.com/tag/edgar-allan-poe/.
Roth, Martin. “Inside ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’” SubStance, vol. 13, no. 2, 1984, pp. 50–53. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3684815. Accessed 22 Mar. 2024.