Poe consistently emphasizes the grandeur of Prospero’s abbey and the decadence of the masquerade throughout the story. These details of elegance and opulence contrast with the horrifying description of the Red Death’s symptoms.
The masquerade is the ultimate symbol of Prospero’s wealth. After being secluded for five or six months, according to the text, Prospero has enough resources and employees to host an extravagant bash for his numerous guests. Meanwhile, people beyond the walls of the fortified, closed-off abbey are dying in droves.
Prospero’s isolation from the common folk—and this the plague—indicates his narcissism and indifference. Prospero cares only for himself and his rich, noble guests. The rest of the world will “take care of itself,” as the story states. He is unconcerned for the welfare of any beyond his abbey, a point proven when he reacts angrily to the presence of the mysterious masked figure.
Prospero thinks someone is...
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mocking him for shutting out all of those whom are left susceptible to the fatal pandemic. This shows that Prospero’s ego is fragile, and it is his narcissism that leads to his downfall. By having the Red Death incarnate crash Prospero’s party, Poe represents the karma that Prospero was destined to receive for resigning himself to isolation while the rest of the world suffered.
The prince's desire to escape the devastation of the Red Death can tell you a few things about him: his fears, his irresponsibility, and his naivety. When the prince flees to the abbey and locks himself and his friends inside its walls, he reveals just how afraid he is of the Red Death, or even just of death itself. In his decision to hide from the disease, you can see his irresponsibility to his people; as a ruler, he should have been trying to do something to quell the disease, or at the very least to reassure his people—instead, he runs away and hides, leaving his people to fend for themselves. And it was incredibly naive of him to think that he and his friends could hide from a plague by locking themselves in an abbey and entertaining themselves, as if the disease would just go away if they pretended it did not exist.