The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death

Daniel Ange

Professor Bell

English 102

February 14, 2012

In the short story, The Masque of the Red Death, written by Edgar Allen Poe, the Red Death is a symbol for a plague that was sweeping through the kingdom. The mood of the short story immediately starts out just like every other Poe poem and short story, very dark and ominous. Poe always was known for how mysterious and dark his works were, so there was no shock at all when this one started and ended the exact same way. Both mood and setting were so prevalent in the story that, at times, they were each virtually palpable.

This story takes place in Prince Prospero’s kingdom. The kingdom has been overrun with a disease called The Red Death. The Red Death had been sweeping through the population and devastating all the townspeople. The terrible disease brought on “sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores” (231). Acting as a coward, the Prince decided to basically quarantine the kingdom by sealing off the castle and not letting anyone else in. The purpose for this was that he could then hopefully keep the disease out of his environment and, although spineless, survive and outlast this plague.

Poe goes on to talk about the seven rooms in the castle that the prince decided to decorate for a masquerade ball that he was throwing for the people in the castle with him. One of these was a blue room, with a blue stained-glass window. Another was a green room with a green window. The first through sixth rooms were all a certain color (blue, green, purple, orange, violet, and white) and each had a coordinating colored stained glass window. This pattern continued through each room up until the final black room, which had a dark scarlet colored window, symbolic for death and blood. Poe says, “Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum” (232). This establishes the mood as ominous because a mental picture is immediately...