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The Masque of the Red Death
Prince Prospero’s guests know that if they remain outside the walls of his castellated abbey, then they are likely to wind up dead, as so many people in this benighted land have done. There’s a...
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The Masque of the Red Death
According to critic H.H. Bell, Jr., the abbey symbolizes a man's life, with the seven chambers within each symbolizing a decade in that life. The first chamber is on the east side of the abbey,...
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The Masque of the Red Death
"Masque of the Red Death" is a masterpiece of Gothic horror fiction. The story is filled with symbolism and literary references and is tightly woven around a terrifying plot, leading up to a...
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The Masque of the Red Death
I would describe the conflict in "the masque of red death" as control vs. fate. While Prospero was trying to take control of the situation by isolating himself in a castle with his friends, and...
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The Masque of the Red Death
A really good bet for this theme would be the section which describes the clock. It's longer than I will include here, but these parts convey the information most crucial to your idea: There stood...
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The Masque of the Red Death
As the surrounding countryside suffers the devastating effects of the deadly pestilence known as the Red Death, Prince Prospero and a thousand of his most revered knights and dames seclude...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In order to be able to properly answer this question, it's important to have an understanding of the overall context of the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe. As Poe...
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The Masque of the Red Death
While the deadly pestilence known as the Red Death ravages the surrounding countryside, Prince Prospero and a thousand of his wealthy, aristocratic friends party inside of his massive castellated...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The setting for "The Masque of the Red Death" is a castellated abbey in a country devastated by a mysterious plague. The setting of the abbey fulfills at least three functions. It is a magnificent...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Prince Prospero is desperate to kill the intruder because he believes that he's infected with the Red Death and will spread the deadly disease among his guests. The strange masked figure is the...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Poe vividly describes Prince Prospero's fantastic masquerade ball as a bizarre affair and refers to the dancing aristocrats as dreams, who frequent the strange, fascinating rooms of the imperial...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero invites his most hale and hearty courtiers to his abbey, where he has prepared a massive party. The decor consists of seven rooms, running east to...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The hourly chiming of the big, black clock makes Prince Prospero's guests extremely nervous, to say the least. Each chime acts as an uncomfortable reminder to the assembled throng that they are all...
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The Masque of the Red Death
This is a very interesting question. We learn in the story that The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero holds an elaborate, eccentric masquerade in his imperial suite and instructs his guests to dress in bizarre costumes....
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Edgar Allan's Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe isolates his characters away from the larger society, in the castle of Prince Prospero. This allows Poe to focus his attentions on the...
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The Masque of the Red Death
As your question implies, there are several motifs in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." Motifs in literature are, by their nature, recurring—actions, images, even phrases, that appear throughout...
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The Masque of the Red Death
As your first question suggests, in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," his allegorical tale of the futility of attempting to avoid death set in a "crenellated abbey" is itself a symbol of defense...
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The Masque of the Red Death
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...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Appropriately enough, given the story's title, Prince Prospero and his guests are all finished off by the red death, that deadly plague which has been stalking the land, leaving death and misery in...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The horrific short story "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe tells of a country that is devastated by a deadly contagious disease known as the Red Death. When people contract it, they...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero invites a thousand of his aristocratic friends to seclude themselves inside his magnificent castellated abbey to survive...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero invites a thousand of his closest aristocratic friends to seclude themselves inside his castellated abbey while the...
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The Masque of the Red Death
At the beginning of the story, Poe explains that the disease known as the "Red Death" has "long devastated the country" and that no disease has ever been "so fatal, or so hideous." He then...
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The Masque of the Red Death
We learn that the prince and his one thousand friends are in seclusion for five or sixth months before the prince throws his masquerade ball: It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month...
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The Masque of the Red Death
It is possible that the author, Poe, chose to write about this dark subject—a fatal disease that runs its course through its victims within thirty minutes and is defined by how much blood its...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Prince Prospero, for example, left his castle and court to retire to "the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys" with one thousand of his most "hale and light-hearted friends" in order to...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," Prince Prospero invites a thousand of his aristocratic friends to seclude themselves inside his castellated abbey while a deadly...
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The Masque of the Red Death
A tragic hero must possess some tragic flaw, a negative trait (like pride or ambition) that eventually leads to his hamartia—his error in judgment—which leads to the peripeteia, or reversal of...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The gigantic ebony clock on the western wall of the seventh chamber symbolically represents the inevitability of death and serves as a constant reminder to the revelers that they have a limited...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Prince Prospero is depicted as a bold, arrogant ruler who selfishly barricades himself and a thousand of his closest aristocratic friends inside his castellated abbey while the pestilence known as...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The short story "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe tells of a horrific plague known as the Red Death that ravages a certain country. To protect himself, Prince Prospero abandons his...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Analepsis is often referred to as a flashback, when some event from the past appears in a narrative out of its place in chronological order. Authors often use analepsis to share background...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The mood, which is a mixture of revelry and terror, is the whole purpose of this particular story, which differs from many of Poe's other stories in relying so heavily on description with little...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Poe's own life was filled with death at a very young age. His mother died when he was young and his father abandoned him so he was an orphan who was later adopted by the Allan couple. Then during...
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The Masque of the Red Death
When we think of Gothic literature one of the first things that comes to mind is setting. Eerie towers at night, spooky graveyards, haunted houses, deserted mansions and so on. Then we have to...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The ebony clock is a symbol. A symbol is an object, name, person, etc., that represents something more than its literal meaning. First, ebony is the color black. The color black is often...
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The Masque of the Red Death
While imagery is most prevalent in “The Masque of the Red Death,” similes and metaphors are also used. One example of a simile is found on page 6 of the enotes etext, where Death’s mask is...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Prince Prospero has several responses to the red death. The first response is isolation, a form of self-quarantine. He gathers 1000 friends and they all take refuge in an abbey. They were...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The long list of precautions taken by the prince and his thousand healthy and carefree friends, immediately following the description of how deadly and awful the Red Death is, seems to foreshadow...
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The Masque of the Red Death
Initially he is frightened; however, he overcomes that and is outraged. He storms after the masked figure, ordering his revelers to seize him, though they refuse. Overcome with anger at such an...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death, the black chamber has come to represent death. The fact that it is the one room that many of the guests at the ball are reluctant to enter adds some...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In all, it takes about half and hour to die from the red death. This doesn't sound like a particularly long time, but for those poor unfortunate souls afflicted with this diabolical disease, it...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The foreboding ebony clock in the seventh room of the imperial suite symbolically represents mortality and death in Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death." During Prince Prospero's...
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The Masque of the Red Death
One approach that you can take for this comparison/contrast essay is by first researching the basic tenets of each writer. For instance, as a Transcendentalist, Emerson held many of the views of...
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The Masque of the Red Death
We know that the clock was located in the red room, and that its clang was neverending. It was imposing, and it could be seen by everyone. This is a grim reminder that time goes on, and our minutes...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In general, excessive luxury and constant merriment are common companions for royalty, so Prince Prospero had probably become accustomed to that kind of lifestyle at a very early age. In addition...
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The Masque of the Red Death
The prince truly believes he can avoid the Red Death. He is aloof enough to think that he can invite only his close (rich) friends into his place and outlast the disease. These qualities are not...
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The Masque of the Red Death
A clue to the answer to this question can be found at the very start of this short story. The "Red Death", a hideous pestilence that causes bleeding, red stains, pain, and "dissolution" in its...
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The Masque of the Red Death
In "The Masque of the Red Death," the protagonist is the Prince and the antagonist is the Red Death. However, since this story is an allegory, Prince Prospero is symbolic as the pestilence of the...
