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   ms-mcgregor Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   Liz Brent, in "Short Stories for Students", The Gale Group, 2000, suggests "the narrator may be identified as a personification of Death, a divine being or an insane individual." "G. R. Thompson, in 'The Dictionary of Literary Biography', has pointed out that Poe was ‘‘the master of interior monologue of a profoundly disturbed mind." Thus Brent reasons that, just as in "The Tell-Tale Heart", Prince Prospero was imagining the entire story. She writes," Furthermore, the narrator specifically refers to the Prince's 'friends' or 'followers' as literally 'dreams,' as ‘'To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.’The guests are later referred to as ‘'an assembly of fantasms.’' In other words, the 'bizarre' figures which populate the Prince's masquerade ball may merely be figments of his mad imagination."

   Leonard Cassuto, ‘‘The Coy Reaper: Un-masque-ing the Red Death,’’
   suggests that the narrator was Death, even perhaps the Red Death itself. He points out, "Given the presence of a narrator, it is clear that he can be nowhere else but present at the festivity. There
   would be no other way for him to describe a pause in the activity at midnight: ‘'And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted'

   As always, this subject is open to interpretation but you can find more information in the link below. Look for "Essays and Criticism"

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/masque-red/

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   Posted by ms-mcgregor on Tuesday January 6, 2009 at 6:12 PM