The Masque Of The Red Death Literary Analysis

When an unstoppable epidemic spreads across the land, especially in a medieval era, there is often little hope for survival. Many try to flee from it, but most cannot, and those who can are merely delaying the inevitable. In the story “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe, the author, uses plot developments to drastically change the story’s initially positive atmosphere with a bleak one until the climax puts the final nail in the coffin. The story begins with Prince Prospero locking himself and a thousand friends away in order to escape the Red Death. The author makes the building that they are in seem masterfully crafted and impenetrable.
“This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric
In the abbey, there is a huge ebony clock that rings every hour. Each time it rings, the musicians of the orchestra temporarily cease their performance and the rest of the partygoers also pause whatever they are doing. Bits of negativity begin to arise in the reader’s mind when they find out that the “giddiest grew pale” during this moment and that the “aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation.” An observant reader would notice that perhaps things are not as happy as they seem. The partygoers might be realizing that, with each passing hour, the disease claims the lives of the people outside. They could also be thinking about their own eventual deaths. The clock chimes several times, and each time, they laugh and say that “the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion”, which turns out to not be true. “After the lapse of sixty minutes...there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.” This demonstrates that the partygoers fail to stop themselves from breaking composure each time the clock rings, confirming the fact that things do not seem
to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter... turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry... the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death... one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over