Commentary on The Masque Of The Red Death Essay

The Masque Of The Red Death

The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there was beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the Red Death(246). In the story Masque Of The Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe set the tone of the story with a creepy and unnatural atmosphere. Edgar Allen Poe targets the mood of the story by using intense descriptions of the castle, the gigantic clock, and the masked figure.

The castle is like a huge prison. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in(246). Around the walls are iron gates that had been bolted and hammered together. Once in the castle a gothic mood is created. There are seven chambers which is set up like a maze that created the feeling as if you are in a cryptic puzzle. The hallways are long with sharp turns at the end. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers(246). There are tall narrow windows with stained glass and blood colored window panes. A tripod stood outside of the windows blazing with fire. The rays of the fire was shinning through the windows giving the castle a dark and gloomy appearance. The princes castle is more like Count Draculas house.

The timepiece was also a major tone setter in the story. It was enormous with a large pendulum that swings back and forth, with a dreary, heavy, and repetitive clang. The clock sounded every hour. When the timepiece sounded the musicians of the orchestra stopped playing and the party came to pause. The air was filled with tension as the guest watched their surroundings waiting for something to happen. All the guest appear to be filled with anxiety accompanied by the grim phantasm of fear. You could see people growing pale as if they were staring their time of death right in the face.

Last but not least I would like to discuss the masked figure. The arrival of the mystifying masked figure intensifies the sense of the creepy feeling in the guest. He is tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave (248). His face was stiff just like a real corpse. His vesture was dabbled in blood- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror (248). The masked figured represented death itself. The people are afraid of the unmask the figure, because they are afraid to stare death right in the face.

Like so many of Poes stories, the setting in The Masque Of The Red Death is inside a closed environment.With all the appliances of pleasure and security the prince provides within the walls of the castle, Edgar Allen Poe still manages to set the tone of the story as creepy and unnatural. With the iron gates locking the guest in, the gigantic clock sounding as if it was counting down, and the unknow masked figure appearing out of no where the guest are baffled. The entire story is boxed within the confines the mysterious castle.

Work Cited

Poe, Edgar Allen The Masque Of The Red Death. Literature: An introduction to reading and writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. 3rd Compact ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2006. 4-11.