Compare And Contrast A Rose For Emily And The Masque Of The Red Death

In stories both fiction and nonfiction, the author’s choice in the structure of the said story can greatly affect the meaning given to it, as well as the reader’s response to the story. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, Poe uses chronological order as well as metaphors and allegory to create a particular feel. Similarly, in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, the author uses different structure - beginning with the end, then going more chronologically - to create a different feeling. Both stories would be completely different if it were not for the methods the authors chose to use for their stories’ structure.

In The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, the author uses allegory, metaphorical speech, and chronological order to create the desired feeling in the text. For instance, the seven rooms in the story represented a certain time in a person’s life. The first blue room represented the beginning, while “the seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls… upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows… were scarlet --a deep blood color,” and represented the end, or death (paragraph 4, Poe). In this room, to further the aforementioned representation, “...there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the