Edgar Allen Poe was always acutely aware of mortality, both his own and that of people he loved as reflected in many of his poems and short stories. He wrote of the death of his beloved in both “The Raven” and “Annabelle Lee”.
In his short stories, more often he wrote of the consequences associated with putting others to death as in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. But never does he personify death and most directly deal with the fear of one’s own mortality as he does in “The Masque of the Red Death.Scholars have asserts, probably rightly so, that Poe borrowed his story idea from the history books and accounts of the Black Death, the plague that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages (Womack, 1997). To understand the allusion to history and the depth of Poe’s allegory about man’s fear of his own death, we must then first recognize how the very setting of the story harkens back to the years when the bubonic plague ravaged the world, then we must examine the stages of Prince Prospero’s party and how they tie to the stages of life, and finally we will discuss the mask and the party itself.Clearly, Poe intended this short story to draw men’s attention to their own inability to face their nature. To understand the choice of the setting for the story, one must only look at history to see the role that monestaries played in the actual battle against the Black Plague.
Poe clearly stole his setting from the pages of history. “But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys” (Poe, 1842). Prince Prospero, the only named human character in the story, summons 1,000 of his closest and most party-worthy friends to a celebration and ball in a secluded monastery to avoid the plague.
Historically, a very similar scene was played out.In Italy, the clergy were originally called upon to help bury the dead, but as the plague began to devastate the countryside, the clergy retreated to their abbeys and locked the doors against the sick (Boccaccio, 1350). In “The Decameron”, Boccaccio writes that Florence and other cities barred the ill from entry in an attempt to protect themselves from the spreading plague, the that they too were eventually struck by the plague (1350-1353).In a modern era where the means of spreading the plague are better understood, it is easy to understand how someone who was ill, but not yet infected, or one of the fleas carrying the plague could easily slip into these seemingly secured places, but in Poe’s era it could well have seemed as mystical and frightening as it did in the Middle Ages.Death could have, in essence, donned a mask and joined the party.
In writing a story of this nature, Poe would have considered such historical examples as the Black Death or the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages as well as the cholera epidemics that ravaged Philadelphia in the 1790's and Baltimore in his own lifetime” (Womack, 1996). It seems obvious then that in choosing the setting, Poe was alluding to these historical tendencies of people to try to isolate the ill as a means of protecting themselves from death as though by not seeing death, they could prevent it.Further completing the setting as an allegory to both the historical treatment of death and to the view of life itself is the idea that within the abbey were seven chambers, each representing a stage of life. “Poe's story takes place in seven connected but carefully separated rooms. This reminds the reader of the past significance of the number seven.
(The history of the world was thought to consist of seven ages, just as an individual's life had seven stages.The ancient world had seven wonders; universities divided learning into seven subjects; there were seven deadly sins with seven corresponding cardinal virtues, and the number seven is important in mysticism. ) Therefore, an allegorical reading of this story suggests that the seven rooms represent the seven stages of one's life, from birth to death, through which the prince pursues a figure masked as a victim of the Red Death, only to die himself in the final chamber of eternal night. ” (Womack, 1996).Seven then was a number of mystical significance, of luck and divinity, and the best representation of the progression of life itself.
“The rooms in which the ball is held are significant. Poe describes the rooms to us by moving us through them from the East to the West, mimicking the path of the sun, which suggests the movement of life from dawn to dusk. The rooms shift colors in the following order: blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, purple, black with red light” (Howard, 2008). At times, the story is even a bit heavy-handed, making no attempt to disguise its nature as an allegory about life and death.Ultimately, it is the presence of the ebony clock that most directly relates the concept that man’s life is ever ticking away and that regardless of where one is in the progression of life, when death comes, it comes.
“. In the seventh room, we have the great ebony clock whose chimes strike out the passage of life and can be heard in every other room of the entire suite or allegorically every other stage of life. As the party goers, enjoy their revelry, they are forced to pause every time the clock rings and so are reminded that life is short” (Howard, 2008).Poe makes no attempt here to hide the metaphor, the ticking away of life that is felt throughout our existence, from the earliest of our days.
Man knows that he is mortal, and that there will be an end, but poe argues that as in the story, man tries to hide from death, attempting at times to chase it away or understand it, as Prospero did when he discovered a party-goer dressed as the Red Death (Poe, 1842). But despite the attempts to understand death and chase it away or barricade oneself in an abbey to hide from it, at the proverbial stroke of midnight, death comes for all men.In her piece “Allegory in Masque of Red Death: Decoding Edgar Allen Poe’s Short Story”, Melissa Howard argues that the modern translation of the lesson that Poe is attempting to relate is “Life’s a Party and then you die” (2008), but perhaps a better translation is this: life is what you make of it and then you die. Prospero and his party goers knew the virulence and contagion rate of the disease that they were fighting. Yes, they hid from it, hoping to avoid death by avoiding people who were dying, but in the end, they all know that death could come for them.
They chose, lead by Prospero, to spend their final days in celebration and with all the best comforts surrounding them, rather than dying in the streets as so many others had done. Given the cholera, consumption and other epidemics of his own timeframe, it seems equally likely that Poe was telling people that constant mourning for the dead or living in constant fear of death does nothing to avert the final end. “Death held illimitable dominion over all” (Poe, 1842). The final portion of the allegory to examine is the presence of death behind the mask interacting with the partygoers.In the research for this discussion, little commentary on this aspect of the story was discovered, yet this seems in many ways to be the most central element of the story. “Human happiness (as represented by Prince Prospero) seeks to wall out the threat of death; however, the Biblical reference (I Thessalonians 5:2-3) at the end of the story reminds us that death comes "like a thief in the night," and even those who seek "peace and safety.
.. shall not escape. " (Womack, 1996). This interpretation too seems superficial, lacking in the depth of understanding that Poe intended.Perhaps this is because of the disdain the author had expressed for allegory (Womack, 1996), but in essence it seems as though the other trappings of the allegory are there simply to support the idea that death walks among us all the time, even in momemts of human happiness.
Several scholars discuss the use of the name “Prospero”, indicating happiness and prosperity, for the Prince who tries to elude death and other point to the efforts to wall themselves away from the threat of death (Womack, 1996; Howard, 2008).However, it seems obvious to this reader that Poe intended those facets, even including the constant presence of the ebony clock, as mere stage dressing for the underlying theme that death can choose it’s time and location, regardless of efforts to the contrary. Womack points to Poe’s description of the Red Death as evidence of the gothic setting and the imagery that Poe was trying to create. “Even when the "Red Death" enters, the author refers to this character as a "figure" or a "mummer" who "was tall and guant, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.
The mask... was made.
.. to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse..
.. 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.
" When the mummer is seized toward the end of the story, all "gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpselike mask... untenanted by any tangible form. " (Womack, 1996)However, it seems equally likely that Poe was pointing out that Death chose this form, possibly to invoke fear in his victims and possibly just because it saw the irony in selecting that imagery. He describes the mask as a representation of the corpses that had suffered from the Red Death and that the creature chose this persona.
This leads the reader to believe that had death chosen to, it could have gone undetected among the partygoers, disguised as one of them in rainment and a mask that would not have attracted attention.This is Poe’s subtle and yet very important step away from the overall allegory that death comes for us all in the proper time to the idea that death can be hidden in the most unsuspecting of places. Given Poe’s background and the untimely deaths of several people around him, it seems likely that the author might want to point out that even when one tries to hide from death, it is impossible to always recognize where the threat might lie. This idea an also ties back to his choice of setting for the story as the deaths of many people during the bubonic plague seemed almost mystical in its ability to strike.Often, people would have had no direct encounters with the infected, but would find themselves falling ill.
Furthermore, his personification of Death as an entity that could walk and think also ties back to the Middle Ages view of the plague as a mystical creation, perhaps even witchcraft, that was striking them down without warning. Ultimately, the assessment that the theme of “The Masque of the Red Death” is about man’s fear of his own mortality is perhaps an oversimplification of the message Poe sought to give.His message is about the very nature of mortality, not simply man’s fear of it. He wants the reader to understand that they cannot hide from death, chase it away, delay its coming or even always identify its presence. Death, as presented in this story, is an inevitable consequence of life and may be hiding around any corner of life’s maze or may simply be waiting for the stroke of midnight. Poe’s message is that no matter how hard man tries to understand its nature, death simply is.Works Citedhttp://www.themiddleages.net/life/decameron.htmlhttp://www.online-literature.com/poe/36/http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/masque/
