Edgar Allan Poe The Masque Of Red Death Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe has earned titles such as the Master of American Macabre and the Father of Short Stories, during and even decades and decades after his prime. His trademark is founded on his deep understanding of what are typically considered to be negative parts of human psychology and emotion. He has outlandish views on common human concepts or beliefs, and gives light to these through grotesquely detailed situational stories.

He 's far from a stereotypical writer— Poe has brought out very distinct and unconventional opinions about death. This could be attributed to the fact that Poe has been surrounded by and affected by the workings of death almost his whole life. The trail of death in his life first began with his blood-mother, then

LIFE VS. DEATH The phrase "the great divide" is used for a lot of things that could connote a major point of division—one of these being the crossover from life to death. Life, of course, is the contrast to death; Poe emphasizes this in his story, The Masque of Red Death.

The Masque of the Red Death is said to be inspired by the Bubonic plague (also known as the the Black death), a rodent-carried disease that massively broke out at around the time of the story 's conception.

Arai (n.d) explains that Poe stresses on the binary oppositions between life and death, found in the form of details within the story. The inside of the abbey is associated to security, versus the outdoors and death. The power of symbolisms are played to an advantage in the story with themes such as happiness and grief, pleasure and horror, east and west, a clock 's ticking and silence, colors and monotone, to draw a line between life and death. He frames all the positive details and life as a dream, while the dark details and death as the inevitable reality. (pp.

His works—specifically The Cask of Amontillado—show that death is accepted—maybe even necessary, when one is harmed. He uses the human tendency to feel a need for revenge in a very technical way—as if it were some sort of rule, and that its execution was always to be exact and mechanical. He finds that if the revenge is to take place, it would not make sense that the enemy would be given the opportunity to defend himself; therefore, a revenge must be total, infallible, merciless, meticulously planned and free of human errors (Fossemò, trans. Cirigliano, n.d.). Poe (1846a) establishes these ideals within the very first