Analysis: Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Premature Burial"
Edgar Allan Poe was a significant part of the era that consisted of the Romantic style of writing. His consistent use of themes, symbolism, fantastic imagery and unusual stories established him as one of the most popular American writers in history as well as one of the most influential. His contributions to the literary world are vast; included are the short stories “The Red Masque of Death” and “The Premature Burial”, both notable for their discussions on the subject of Death as well as other themes.
The story of “The Masque of the Red Death” is about an area that has succumbed to the disease known as the “Red Death”; a disease that causes the afflicted pain, dizziness and lastly, bleeding through the pores of the body until death, within a half an hour’s time. To avoid this terrible death, Prince Prospero has retreated into a castellated abbey with a thousand of his friends, locked away from the disease-ridden world, where they dance and celebrate the days and nights away with no concerns. However, on the night of the biggest masquerade, a mysterious stranger makes his way into the locked abbey and disrupts the dance. Upon seeing this intruder, Prince Prospero chases him through the colored rooms of the abbey until reaching the last room, where he dies, followed by the deaths of his fellow partiers, victims at last to the “Red Death” (“The Masque of the Red Death” 319-323).
The main theme of “The Masque of the Red Death” is in its title: death. However, the story is not about the idea of death but more so that it cannot be escaped by anyone, rich or poor, man or woman. It is only natural for humans to avoid death; often going to extreme measures to avoid it. Prospero and his friends lock themselves away in an abbey and party as though death could never touch them (“The Masque of the Red Death” 319). To reinforce this theme, Poe uses language that adds to the feeling of dread and doom throughout the story; he uses terms such as “ghastly” (320), the characters “stalked” (321,322) instead of walked, and refers to the clock striking as “stricken” (320) instead of the typical usage of struck. The use of symbolism, specifically the clock and the black room, also refer to death; this is why the partiers are so afraid of both. These things create fear, a sub-theme to death. Fear and death are often intertwined in real life and within Poe’s stories.
A secondary theme is that of foolishness. Prince Prospero decides that instead of dealing with the issue at hand as a leader of the area, he will lock himself away to avoid death. As well as locking himself away with his friends, he creates a festive atmosphere of drunken revelry that provides a false sense of security. Prospero and his friends foolishly believe that by partying and having a good time, they can avoid the death that lurks right outside the door; they believe that they can escape death with nothing more than a locked door and a good time.
Poe mainly uses the literary device of allegory, the use of an actual object to symbolize something else, in most of “The Masque of the Red Death”. The seven colored rooms that Prospero and his friends party in are symbolic of life, with each room symbolizing a different stage in life, starting with blue and ending with black. The rooms are also aligned east to west, blue on the east and black on the west, following the path of the sun as it is born and dies each day (“The Masque of the Red Death” 320). This means that as Prospero chases the intruding form of the “Red Death” from the blue room to the black room, he is chasing his own death (“The Masque of the Red Death” 322). The clock is another symbol for death. It is the focal point of the red-lit, black-colored room that causes such fear in the partiers, because both clock and room symbolize the end of life. The color red also symbolizes death in this story because it is the color most associated with the plague. That is why the black room is lit with red light.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Premature Burial”, the narrator has an overwhelming fear of being buried alive. He informs the reader of other situations where people have been buried alive and then reveals his own fear of the idea. He explains that he has a medical condition called catalepsy that causes the afflicted to for an indefinite period of time to be motionless, with a very faint pulse, irregular breathing, and with faint color and warmth. Because he suffers from this, the narrator feels that he may be prematurely buried and avoids leaving his house for fear that he will suffer an attack while with strangers and be buried someone other than his specially constructed tomb. While on a trip, the narrator falls asleep and awakens in a berth but thinks that he has been buried alive. Upon recovering his wits and realizing the error, he vows to live his life without constantly worrying (“The Premature Burial” 309-318).
The main theme in “The Premature Burial” is fear. The narrator’s extreme fear of death has led him to be overly morbid, constantly dwelling on terrible thoughts of death and terror because “no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and mental distress, as is burial before death” (“The Premature Burial” 313). Poe has again intertwined fear and death as a theme in one of his stories. The narrator’s intense fear of death is causing him to miss out the things that make up life; in a way, he has prematurely buried himself away in his house, in his avoidance to leave the house and be among strangers. After resolving to lead his life as fully as he can, the narrator discusses how wallowing in fear is unhealthy because by focusing only on the fearful, the imagined, and the wrong that is all that will ever happen in life: thinking of illness makes one feel ill, imagining things will always go wrong will lead to nothing going correctly (“The Premature Burial” 318).
In “The Premature Burial” Poe uses foreshadowing during the story to suggest to the reader what is going to happen towards the end of the story. The narrator describes that upon awakening from a normal sleep that he “could never gain, at once, thorough possession of [his] senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity” (“The Premature Burial” 314). This gradual return to awareness is similar to the way the narrator awakens from his cataleptic attacks.
Edgar Allan Poe, one Romantic writer of many during the time, did not often include a moral to his stories like many of his contemporaries, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne. His stories provided something for the imagination without pushing an ideal on the reader. Poe used symbolism and precise, mood-setting language to achieve the fantastic quality inherent in all of his stories and poems. Poe’s works have created such a lasting impression on American literature.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Premature Burial." American Literature before the Civil War. Create edition, McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Red Masque of Death." American Literature before the Civil War. Create edition, McGraw-Hill, 2011.
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