Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg

Edgar Allan Poe′s 
"The Masque of the Red Death"

by

Kristina Maul

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Physical Features of the Abbey

3. Symbolism 
3.1 Blood 
3.2 Rooms and Colors 
3.3 Time 
3.4 Death and the Masque

4. The Narrator of "The Masque of The Red Death" 
4.1 The Narrator is one of the dying revellers 
4.2 The Narrator is an ′impossible narrator′ 
4.3 The Narrator is Death himself 
4.4 Conclusion

5. "The Masque of The Red Death" and the Grotesque

6. "The Masque of the Red Death" - An Allegory, A Memento Mori 
6.1 Allegory 
6.2 Memento Mori

7. Final Remarks

8. Bibliography

1. Introduction 

"The Masque of the Red Death" first appeared in May 1842 in Graham′s Magazine. It is generally grouped together with three other of Poe′s stories, namely "King Pest", which first appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in September 1835, "The Cask of Amontillado", published in Godey′s Magazine and Lady′s Book 33 in 1846, and "Hop-Frog", published in The Flag of Our Union in 1849. Since all these stories take place during the carnival season, they are called "The Masquerades". In her book "The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation", Marie Bonaparte takes a Freudian approach to Poe′s stories, Sigmund Freud himself wrote the preface, and claims that all the above tales are connected to Poe′s father complex [Bonaparte; 507]. In her interpretation of "The Masque of the Red Death", the figure of the Red Death is an incorporation of the father who returns to punish the son. This is just one reading of the story. Much has been published about "The Masque of the Red Death", one of Poe′s most read tales. Scholars have tried to find its roots, like Burton R. Pollin, who assumes that Poe used his own "Shadow - A Parable" as a source for "The Masque of the Red Death". Others attempted to compare the story of Prince Prospero and his followers to other great works of art, for example Christopher Brown, who saw parallels between "The Masque of the Red Death" and Henry James′s The Portrait of a Lady. A lot of research has also been done on the narrator of the tale - I will only elaborate on the most plausible theories on who it is that is telling this tale. Equally important, "The Masque of the Red Death" is said to contain one of the most exact definitions of the grotesque in the literary sense. Finally, as almost all of Poe′s tales, "The Masque of the Red Death", too, contains an incredible amount of symbolism. Everything from the significance of blood over the importance of the number seven in mysticism to the meaning of colors can be traced in this tale, which must also be read as an allegory and a memento mori.

2. Physical Features of the Abbey 

Poe has always been concerned with the atmosphere that can be created by decorating a room in a certain way. In "Philosophy of Furniture", first published in Burton′s Gentleman′s Magazine in May 1840, he explained some of the principles of interior decoration that he deemed fundamental. Some of these principles already foreshadowed the decoration of the abbey in "The Masque of the Red Death". He wrote: "The soul of the apartment is the carpet. ... Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque" [Poe; 463; emphasis added] and arabesque the decoration of Prospero′s vaults is. The Prince created seven rooms - the significance of the number seven will be discussed in detail later - which were so "irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one room at a time." [Poe; 269]. They were probably connected by a hallway, which turned after every twenty or thirty yards to reveal a "novel effect" [Poe; 269]. Alongside each room and hallway wound a corridor which was not accessible to the revellers inside the abbey. In these corridors were the only sources of light, braziers of fire, which were set on tripods. The quality of this light has also been described before in "Philosophy of Furniture": "In truth, even strong steady lights are inadmissible." [Poe; 464]. The light fell into the rooms through "tall and narrow Gothic windows" [Poe; 270], which were situated "to the right and left, in the middle of each wall" [Poe; 270]. The color of the windows was always according to the prevailing color of the room. The windows in the black chamber are the only exception to the rule: they were of "a deep blood color" [Poe; 270]. The effects caused by these windows inside the room were so frightening "that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all." [Poe; 270].

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