44 pages • 1 hour read
The Masque of the Red Death
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Literary Devices
Allegory
An allegory is a fictive work that reveals a hidden meaning about real-world events or beliefs, usually through facets of its structure. For example, the farm animals’ rebellion and Napoleon the pig’s rise to power in George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an allegory for real-world dictatorship. Though this is never mentioned in “The Masque of Red Death,” the progression of events makes the analogy clear: The story is an allegory for our inability to avoid death. This allegory is structured through the symbolism of the setting, which progresses from the innocent and bright colors of day in the first rooms to the dark colors of night and death in the final room, where the clock tolls the hour of everyone’s demise. The direction of the rooms east to west enhances this progression from life to death by analogizing it to the sequence of a single day, sunrise to sunset.
Allusion
Allusion is a reference to something that is widely known outside the world of the text, such as another text or artwork. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe alludes to Shakespeare’s The Tempest through the name of his protagonist Prospero. In The Tempest Prospero is a duke and sorcerer who is exiled from his court and lives on an island. Like Poe’s Prospero, he also holds a masquerade ball in this secluded location. In considering the similarities, we may see the two Prosperos as two takes on the same character type. Both are rich and stubborn, but Shakespeare’s Prospero ultimately survives through the help of his daughter Miranda, while Poe’s Prospero meets a gruesome end, one that critiques wealth and society and affirms the power of death above all.
The Gothic
A literary form popular in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, the Gothic inverts the typical facets of Romantic literature by juxtaposing the high literary style and romantic plots of these stories against dark and often death-focused themes. Common elements of the Gothic are monsters and the supernatural, madness, secluded castles or otherwise haunted or maze-like estates, and the decline of great families or rich individuals toward death. Poe is considered to be one of the first practitioners (and indeed, creators) of the American Gothic, a subform of Gothic literature created by American authors. Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” uses several of the themes of European Gothic fiction and shows itself as an important point in the genesis of American Gothic in taking an obviously European setting, focusing on a castle, its prince, and courtiers.
Poe’s style of the Gothic is somewhat unique, characterized equally by plot elements (such as the apparition of death at a party) and intense description that mixes an ornate linguistic tone with macabre imagery. Adjectival description like “blood-bedewed” (743) and descriptions of “arabesque figures with unsuited limbs” (741) are not mandatory for the Gothic, but they exemplify how Poe formulates this genre. The effect is the picture of an authorial mind much like Prospero’s—one fascinated by the bizarre and populated with horrific décor.
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By Edgar Allan Poe
