The Aspects of Death in Edgar Allan Poe's
...dread of becoming victim to the disease (Ransome ed. 71). The contrast between this opening paragraph and the following paragraph is much like that of a love—hate relationship. The idea of the main character in the tale, Prince Prospero, being "happy and dauntless and sagacious" in the second paragraph makes the death-related words in the first paragraph that much more horrific. The "iron walls" blocking out the plague make for a strong contender, but the final two sentences of the second paragraph prepare the reader for the inevitable, "All these and security were within. Without was the 'Red Death'" (Ransome ed. 71-72). The idea that the plague can be held out forever becomes the certainty that "Death cannot be barred from the palace…because it is in the blood" (Kennedy 202). Considered Poe's "most lavish evocation of fatality," The Masque of the Red Death shows the futile attempts by a prince and his guests of a party, which happens to be Prince Prospero's ball of "unusual magnificence", to isolate themselves from the contagion of the Red Death plague (Ransome ed. 72). The themes of the uncertainty of death, and the efforts made to run from the inevitable, show the uncertainties Poe had about death. The themes also show to what extent Poe thought about death. In The Masque of the Red Death, Poe writes a "parable of the inevitability and universality of death, the human condition of man's fate, and the fate of the universe" (Zayed). Poe uses many different symbols in his representation of this tale of death. Many things within the items represent various aspects of life or death. The seven rooms in the tale represent the seven ages of man; the gigantic ebony clock with the "dull, heavy, and monotonous dang" emphasizes the passage of time (Ransome ed. 74). The spectral image, representing the Red Death plague in the story, is described as follows: The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers [sic] around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. (Ransome ed. 77-78) The apparition, in the winding sheet smeared with blood, hidden behind a mask which appears to be a person with the Red Death plague, is the personification of death, or "man's…self-aroused and self-developed fear of his own mistaken concept of death" (Zayed). This description of the "mummer," a word typically described by words like actor, juggler, or a masked or costumed merrymaker, takes on the evil interpretation of the word. The "mummer," in symbolizing the unmentionable, violated a taboo, and brought death into the open. The death of Prince Prospero forces the masqueraders to fall upon the intruder, attempting to catch "death." The discovery of the revelers that the mask and clothes hold no physical being, "enacts the nineteenth-century perception of death as pure negativity, a nothingness resulting in the separation of the body and soul" (Kennedy 203). The presence of the Red Death plague at this point in the tale shows how Poe makes use of the nineteenth-century perception of death. His use of this concept that people held at the time made the tale an even more horrific one to read. The fear that that is how death occurs may be a more terrifying thought than that of the death of the prince and his guests at a party. The rate of death, only a short half hour from exposure to the plague, also makes the tale seem more ...