Edgar Allen Poe and The Masque of the Red Death

Mr. Poe's mastery of gothic writing and his literary philosophy are clearly seen in his story The Masque of the Red Death. The inevitability of time, disease and death seem to be the principal focal points and facts of this masterpiece (Mondragon). The story was narrated to give it the quality of a symbolic myth while being structured to allow Mr. Poe to expound on topics of disease, time and death (Hoffmann). Mr. Poe shows the reader that time is something to be paid attention to and when it runs out this always leads to certain death. Death may be blocked out of the mind of any man as he goes on living his momentary existence but he will eventually be reminded of its reality (Roppolo) (Tis). Mr. Poe clearly shows in The Masque of the Red Death the finality of time passing and the inevitability of death as events that no one can avoid.

Edgar Allen Poe's writings are intimately connected to the time period he lived in (Roppolo). Mr. Poe watched his beloved wife Virginia die slowly over a period of time; this probably stimulated Poe's self-destructiveness and has been translated into his stories (Mondragon). Other writers theorize that Poe may have drawn parallels between the events of his youth and tales from Greek and Roman mythology; then added his own interpretation to create his stories or poetry (Dameron) (Tis). A probable influence on Mr. Poe's writing were the deaths of three women he knew; they died of tuberculosis; this was a familiar disease of the period. Particular evidence of his real life experiences influencing his writing can be seen in a letter from Edgar Poe to George Eveleth in 1848 in which he mentions the episode of his beloved wife bursting a blood vessel and coughing up blood during a visit with friends. Mr. Poe wrote The Masque of the Red Death shortly after that incident (Mondragon) (Tis). Mr. Poe may have been inclined to create stories with certain themes because of these many personal incidents (Mondragon) (Wilson).