The Masque of the Red Death

One could reasonably argue that the most important theme in "The Masque of the Red Death" is the inescapability of death. All those rich, aristocratic guests who've rocked up at Prince Prospero's...

Edgar Allen Poe was a master at hidden meanings in his works. There have been many discussions and theories of what the colors of the 7 rooms mean. Most of the conclusions all seem to mean the same...

Throughout Poe's short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero is portrayed as a wealthy, arrogant, selfish man who believes he can overcome and outlast the deadly plague by locking...

The unsettling, disturbing, and "gaunt" figure that enters Prince Prospero's bizarre masquerade is the personification of the deadly pestilence and symbolically represents death. Prince Prospero...

In Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero and a thousand of his closest aristocratic friends barricade themselves inside his magnificent castellated abbey in hopes...

Poe provides a fair amount of detail for each of the seven rooms. Firstly, he wants the reader to understand that the layout of this particular suite of rooms is unlike those in other palaces,...

In the story, a huge black clock stands against the westernmost wall of the last room in Prince Prospero's hall. The last room is shrouded in black velvet tapestries, and its window panes are...

The message of Poe's story is that no artifice can prevent the inevitability of Fate. While death inevitably comes to all mortals, there are many who seek to defy this fate. As one of the many who...

The Red Death is very similar to the Black Death that wiped out a good portion of the European population in the 1300s. In this story, the theme or message is that there is no hiding from the Red...

It could also be argued that Prince Prospero symbolizes hedonism and the human desire for pleasure. When the Red Death decimates his kingdom, Prospero's reaction is to gather together all of his...

The uninvited guest who attends Prospero's masked ball is the Red Death, which has penetrated the walls of the prince's confined, secluded estate. At the stroke of midnight, the uninvited guest...

Prince Prospero has done everything in his power to bar death from his castle, so when he sees a man seemingly dressed up in imitation of a corpse that has died from the Red Death, he is shocked...

The striking of the clock in the seventh room of the castle of Prince Prospero produces a harrowing effect upon the guests as it arrests both the musicians and dancers, and it reminds them of the...

In "The Masque of Red Death," the masquerade represents the guests' desire to escape the inevitability of death. Remember that these guests have come to Prince Prospero's to avoid catching the Red...

The seventh room of Prospero's imperial suite is by far the most unsettling and disturbing room inside his castellated abbey, which is where the prince and his close friends die at the feet of the...

When the abbey is first introduced in the text, the narrator comments that it represents the Prince's wild and "eccentric" design tastes. (This is further confirmed later in the text when its...

What's worth being aware of, where personification is concerned, is that it can operate on two different levels. On the first level, there is personification when it is used purely as a form of...

In "The Mask of the Red Death," the major difference among the guests of Prospero (his name suggests it) and those left outside the palace is wealth and social position. Those who do not...

It is also believed that the seven rooms of seven colors may represent the seven deadly sins, which are: sloth (laziness), lust, gluttony (eating too much), avarice (greed), pride, anger, and...

The story “The Masque of the Red Death” ends when Death crashes the party and kills all of the guests. The story is about Prince Prospero, a wealthy royal who spends more time worrying about...

The narrator foreshadows from the start that this fortress of pleasure will be invaded by the horror of the Red Death. First, the indifference and callousness of the prince towards the sufferings...

This is, as many of Poe's short stories are, a very symbolic piece of fiction, where you would be advised to look for how events, characters and the setting operate symbolically. It is clear from...

In the opening paragraph of the story, we learn that Prince Prospero invites one thousand of his friends to the abbey. These friends are drawn from the "knights" and "dames" of his court. The...

A metaphor is a comparison of two unalike things where one thing is said to be the other; a simile is a comparison which is of somewhat lesser strength because it depends upon the use of the words...

Most critics and readers can only assume why an author constructs a specific text. Only those texts in which an author details exactly why the text was written offers any real explanation. Outside...

Poe establishes the mood from the opening paragraph with a description of the death itself. It is "fatal" and "hideous." It causes a "profuse bleeding at the pores" and kills victims within a half...

In the seven rooms, there are no sources of light whatsoever. Instead, in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire,...

The central conflict in "Masque of the Red Death" is man vs. nature. Prince Prospero, who is "happy and dauntless and sagacious," tries to escape the natural process of death by sequestering a...

Prince Prospero's kingdom had been swept with the Red Death, a terrible disease that struck without warning and killed its victims within thirty minutes: There were sharp pains, and sudden...

Although each of the first six rooms is draped in the same color that appears upon the windows, the walls of the final room are hung with "black velvet tapestries," and the room has window panes of...

In the second paragraph of the story, Poe gives us a vivid description of the castellated abbey in which Prince Prospero and the other nobles hide from the devastating plague that stalks the land....

The point of view in "The Masque of the Red Death" is one literary area that sparks much discussion. It actually seems to shift from 3rd person to 1st person. It starts out sounding very clearly...

In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero has taken one thousand courtiers with him to a castellated abbey in order to avoid a plague. One night, he has a...

The clock has a really sudden and curious effect on everyone at Prince Prospero's masquerade. It's chiming produces so "peculiar" a note that the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to...

The short answer to your question is: no. The masked figure is not an actual person, because his mask and costume, to the horror of the revelers, are found to be empty, "untenanted by any tangible...

Prince Prospero’s name is ironic because he dies at the end. It is not hard to determine the significance of Prince Prospero’s name. “Prospero” sounds like “prosper.” Prince Prospero tries to...

The chimes from the clock send a wave of unease over the guests at the party. When the clock chimes, the musicians stop playing, leaving the chimes to be the only sound throughout the rooms. Poe...

The purple room in Poe's The Masque of the Red Death represents the second Deadly Sin, which is Greed. Greed, or avarice, is insatiable, excessive desire for wealth and all material goods. All...

I would actually go for the very last paragraph of the story, which, to my mind, makes explicit what has been implicit throughout the tale. The story has been a putting off of the inevitable, as...

Setting is crucial in qualifying Gothic literature; typically there is a gloominess with death and decay evident. From the opening sentences, we are presented with a gruesome death that is gripping...

Poe creates mood, the emotional atmosphere, in these three stories through his word choice, connotation, symbolism, and even irony. Consider the opening of "The Masque of the Red Death": the...

There are many quotes about the ebony clock in The Masque of the Red Death. Just after the paragraph describing the colorful rooms and what they contained, there is an entire paragraph about the...

If you are wealthy enough to be in the prince’s inner circle, you are more likely to survive the Red Death for a little while longer. The Red Death kills indiscriminately. It does not care whether...

Blue: a cool color, the color of lifegiving water, or calm blue skies. Green: the color of nature and life.Purple originally was associated with royalty. This was because it was very expensive;...

Every time the clock strikes an hour, everyone stops to listen and reflect. Prince Prospero does not seem to care much about his people. Rather than take care of them during a time of trouble, he...

This scary story about how everyone is mortal and death is inevitable takes place in the 14th century in Europe. Prince Prospero, the narrator, has gathered 1000 other wealthy people and friends...

The abbey to which Prince Prospero invites his guests for a secluded and highly decadent retreat while the common people die horrific deaths outside his castle walls is described aptly by Poe early...

Prospero gathers 1,000 of his aristocratic friends, seeking out those who are healthy ("hale") and optimistic and fun loving ("light-hearted") and seals them in an abbey to escape the red death,...

The ”lesson” of Poe’s story, perhaps, is that death comes for everyone, no matter how hard one tries to keep it out. But to me, the symbolic nature of the story and the seven rooms has more to do...

In the 14th century, Europe was ravaged by a deadly plague which came to be known as the Black Death. This disease spread rapidly across the continent, wiping out somewhere in the region of sixty...