Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death

Throughout history, art has been used to reflect society.Literature, in particular, is often used to represent the negative side of life. Edgar Allen Poe's microcosmic "The Masque of the Red Death" is one such work. A story of a group's attempt to escape the plague that is devastating the countryside, Poe
focuses on the ironic, yet morbid, theme of the characters' having walled in death in a frenetic attempt to wall it out (Thompson 123). The author uses the characters, imagery, and setting of the story to portray his own dim view of society.

Ignoring the plague that is sweeping across the land, Prince Prospero withdraws into the seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys with the thought of escaping the "Red Death." Despite the problems of the outside world,"the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious"(Poe 75). A kind of "demigod," Prospero can create his own world, and he can people it, but time still exists (Ropollo 140) and death must inevitably follow.

As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that its people, dressed in their elegant clothing, are "eminently human, fashioned like the inhabitants of the macrocosmic world" (Ropollo 140). Fearing the plague that is devastating the countryside, and desiring an environment in which they can indulge their fancies, the prince and his guests lock themselves behind the abbey walls, creating thereby the conditions of their "own premature burial"(Halliburton 308). Like any faced with a problem, these characters try to pretend that it does not exist."The revelers are the living, who seek to bar out death by being gay and carefree, only to discover that death must inevitably conquer all humanity"(Ropollo 138). Despite the prince and his party's efforts to create a more perfect world, time still exists and, no matter what they do to escape, death will eventually take them.