Literary Analysis [Final]

Victoria Gothic
English 1102
7 October 2008
Beasley
Word Count: 1442

Edgar Allen Poe’s Setting in The Masque of The Red Death

The setting in “The Masque of The Red Death” not only defines how the characters in the story see their world, but also elaborates Poe’s views on life and death. This dualism plays an important part throughout the work as it balances the material and metaphorical worlds in a medium made simple for the reader to see. In this way, Poe adds great depth to the entire story by giving everything more meaning than the obvious doings of each character and plot element.

Prince Prospero remained blissfully ignorant within the secure halls of his abbey as “it was folly to grieve, or to think” (442). This is a clear parallel to how each man chooses to view life. The Red Death is final death; the end result of our culmination of life. Prince Prospero chooses not only to ignore his eventual and final death, but in a twisted way, to defy it. He chooses instead to focus upon what he has before him, and not to worry about the death around him. While the Red Death symbolizes death, the ebony clock is a constant reminder of that death. “But in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel” (444). The party goers quite enjoyed themselves and their escape from The Red Death ravaging the lives of those outside the walls, but at every hour when the clock chimed, it reminded them of their impending demise. Everyone, regardless of their state or condition would stop and hearken to its call. In this case, setting is used to elaborate that death’s impending nature can reach out to where ever people may go to escape it.

The structure and design of the Abbey in particular adds to Poe’s use of setting to elaborate his plot and meaning. Each room is brightly colored, and accents the persons inside it. The Black room, with its blood red windows, however, attracts no visitors. This contrast of where the party goers choose to remain indicates to us their wish to distance themselves as much as possible from the concept of The Red Death; “…the western or black chamber…was ghastly in the extreme…that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all” (443). While the isolation of the Prince and his guests from the outside world is the first and most obvious example of their attempts to escape death, the aversion to the black room elaborates how man never wishes to revel in the fact that his final death lies inevitably before him. Despite the party goers disinclination to ‘face death’ in the black room, the large ebony clock within its scarlet halls chimes thought the party- a constant and ominous reminder of death.

But the fact that the essence of death has a room to call its own is a meaning in and of itself. Each room is colored and lit in various ways, from the green, to the blue to the black room, they may all be different, but they are all equal rooms in the abbey. If the black room is already recognized as death, what does that make the other rooms? On a base level, life, but since there is more than one room not attributed to ‘life’ they take on particular meanings. Specifically, each color represents a different perspective on life, or in the context of “The Masque of The Red Death,” a different distraction from the true aspects of it. Each brilliant color is a way for the typical party guest of the prince to enjoy the life they have before them, allowing them to be interrupted by the ebony clock hourly instead of waiting in the black room obsessing over its every motion. The setting denotes how mans inclination is to ignore death until a time when it is forced upon him, but also how this ignorance can make him foolishly waste the time he has.

Throughout the story, Poe presents the reader with characters reacting to the setting as their environment, thus adding to the metaphorical depths they represent. As the plot progresses, the clock, the ever vigilant keeper of death, tolls midnight. At this time, the party participants become aware of the masked figure in their presence. This figure, clothed in burial garbs and wearing a mask made to resemble that of persons killed by the Red Death, moved through the crowd until it relocated to the black room, the setting of death. This enhances the deep meaning that each room possesses, the black room, attributed to death, also signals death with its large clock, and is where the Incarnate of the Red Death goes to unleash the plague. Prince Prospero leaves the blue apartment to confront the man who would make a mockery of him. Because of the setting, Prospero’s actions can have more meaning than that of his mere doings. He leaves the blue apartment, a neutral room of no danger, for the black room, associated with death because of its appearance. Prospero advances towards the figure unafraid; within the context of setting, knowing that The Red Death is final death, he approaches foolishly. Before he can even attempt to strike the figure with his dagger, Prospero dies, instantly and without struggle.

When taken in context of the entire plot and setting, Prospero has been cowed by the one thing he could not control- life. The prince built the Abbey to keep out the Red Death, and in doing so, came to think he had power over it. This is parallel to Poe’s moral, of how men will build up defenses to think they can control life, but when they must truly face it, they inevitably fail. This ideal applies not only to the men who chose to ‘defy’ death, but is the inherited legacy of all mankind that none may escape; “…and died each in the despairing posture of his fall…And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (446).

The ideals on life are expressed by moral in the story, that death is inescapable, unavoidable, unstoppable, and to be respected and feared. In a way, it is a more specific application of hubris, in that the man who had no respect for the limitless power of death itself was to be singled out and chosen for extermination. Death is a equalizing power; it ravaged the country sides inhabited by the poor in the same way it devastated the colorful halls of Prince Prospero’s sanctuary. Men like the prince were condescending, believing himself to be above the peasantry in his secure abbey and believing himself to be above reproach by confronting the intruder, but despite all this, he would die in a manner exactly like that of the layman languishing outside his walls. In this sense, death is the fairest of all essences, especially more so than life. Life creates men unequal from the start, some fit, some lame or blind; some capable, and others wholly dependant. Throughout life, this cycle continues, as the rich hold influence and power and the poor are led through their lives like so much cattle through the stockades, but in the end, death takes them each in the same manner. While the reader only sees the inside of the abbey, Poe introduces the story explaining that the Red Death had already spread across the land; “The Red Death had long devastated the country…” (422). The reader only sees the final effects of it during Prince Prospero’s last moments. In this sense, Poe uses setting not only to give every aspect greater metaphorical meaning, but to make the story as a whole, a metaphor. Despite the advantages man is given by birth or by the chance of life, death is the great equalizer that none are above.

“The Masque of The Red Death” is the epitome of setting as the defining factor to shape every aspect of a story. The setting is so deeply intertwined with the plot, symbols and moral that every aspect of it holds some intrinsic value to the overall development of plot and meaning. Poe’s use of setting as much if not more than actual characters develops a moral unlike any other; not a moral defined by a character, by actions of one man, but a moral crafted by the environment its self, a kind of universal truth applied to all and escaped by none.

Work Cited

Edgar Allen. Edgar Allen Poe Fiction And Poetry Complete And Unabridged. New York: Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2006.