Dec 26, 2009

The Masque of the Red Death | Themes

Death
While this story is literally about a pestilence called the Red Death, it can be read at an allegorical level as a tale about 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 clutches of the Red Death. The Prince employs "all the appliances of pleasure'' in order to distract his guests both from the suffering and death outside their walls and from thoughts of their own vulnerability to the Red Death. The...