Essay On Fear In Tell-Tale Heart And The Masque Of Red Death

Fear can either paralyze people-or wake them up. Essentially, it keeps us safe and drives us to survive. Fear makes us more conscious and strengthens our instincts. However, fear can cause crippling anxiety. Not allowing any enjoyment out of the bounds of what is perceived as “safe”. Fear can also cause obsession, hallucinations, and fits of constant paranoia. Edgar Allan Poe uses objects that each character obsesses over to induce fear. Though each character subjected to Poe’s devices react differently they are all connected through irony, symbolism, and theme.

Poe utilizes cruel irony to catch his character in their own self-righteousness. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of Red Death” the Narrator’s and Prince Prospero’s choice to act on their strongest emotions bit them in the end. The Narrator in “The
He’s so confident in his sanity that he forgets who he is trying to convince. He tries to convince the audience that he is sane by recalling every detail and safeguard in his plan. The Narrator battles his guilt on whether or not he should confess. However, with each detail he is sinking himself deeper into the quicksands of guilt and insanity. Despite being the ruler of a diseased Kingdom Prince Prospero is a coward that cares very little for anyone other than himself and his court. The Prince took a “strong lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron” he later welded the bolts on the gates as well. After the Red Death hits his Kingdom the Prince locks him and his hierarchy in his castle with no means of entering and no way to escape. Prospero was so absorbed with hi At Prospero’s annual Masquerade Ball the embodiment of the Red Death appears. “Besprinkled