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What feeling do you think Poe wanted readers to have at the end of the story called "The Masque of the Red Death"? Give reasons for your opinion.

There is no doubt that Edgar Allan Poe wanted to inspire a feeling of horror in his readers by the end of "The Masque of the Red Death."  Poe was a great believer in the concept of "single effect" which means that Poe believed that every character, detail, and incident in a story should contribute to this one singular feeling.  I believe Poe's exact words on the  matter are as follows:

In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design.

In regards to this specific short story, the ending is a perfect example of Poe's desire for single effect. 

And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.

The focus here is on the death of every single member of Prospero's party who thought he or she was safe, all dying within the "blood-bedewed halls."  Yuck.

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.

Not only the human life, but even mechanical and chemical life expired.  Here is yet another disturbing concept that adds to the single effect here (and one that most readers would not have considered).  This is my favorite part of the ending because it was the first thing to really challenge my own perception of the story.

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Could there be a better way of ending a story of horror with a single effect of horror?  I think not.  It ends in darkness.  It ends in decay.  It ends in death.  Worse, it ends with those things holding "dominion" over all else.  Single effect?  I think so!

This question asks us to look both at Poe and the story, "The Masque of the Red Death".  It is no secret that Poe, at the very least, had a fixation on death-largely due to his own life experiences.  As his poem "The Conqueror Worm" suggests, death ultimately trumps everything.    In "The Masque of the Red Death", prince Prospero dares to celebrate in the face of death because he believes he can escape it.  When Death appears in the person of the "grim reaper" type character and obliterates Prince Prospero, Poe has shown us that death ultimately wins.  It appears that this is the theme with which Edgar Allan Poe wants to leave us.

This story is different from many others by Poe in that the initial feeling one gets is of awe and wonder.  It is true that Poe was ultimately after the "single effect" thing, but in this story there is an underlying sense of poetic justice, which is not present in his other stories (at least the ones I've read).  The Prince and his guests thought themselves over and above the plight of other people throughout the country and their "fortresss" was the physical manifestation of their isolation, insulation, and indifference.  As things turned out, Death came to them just the same, disguised as one of the merrymakers. The moral behind all this is the reminder that certain things are universal and part of the human condition, from which no one can truly escape. Death, of course - and at its hour and not ours - is a part of this.

Poe sought to inspire both horror and irony with his ending of this story. Horror at the sheer numbers of dead, the image of diseased bodies all strewn about the castle, and the final death of the prince who sought to escape from reality. The irony is that by locking himself and his favorites away from the carnage outside of his castle, Prince Prospero doomed all inside to suffer the same fate as those who were excluded. Death is indeed the great equalizer is the sentiment that I came away with on my first reading of this masterpiece of short fiction.

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.

That quote from Poe's "the Masque of the Red Death" parallels John Donne's Mediation in which the bell tolling indicated death, and Hemingway's "For Whom the Belll Tolls."

But in this case it is taken a step further in that the clock stopped tolling in which all existence perished. It doesn't become more finite than that.

Perhaps it is as simple as this:  the wealthy attempted to escape the plague and illness resulting in the deaths of so many commoners by walling themselves away and "partying" while others died.  The realization that Death does not discriminate and will equally attack the wealthy as he does the poor is a shocking, but leveling judgment.  What if Poe wanted to knock the wealthy down a peg or two?  It reminds me of the carvings in the cathedrals of Europe--the tug of war between angels and demons for the lives and souls of those of us on earth depict kings and queens on both sides.  They are not all with the angels heading for the divine life of heaven.