ENG 200: Critical Reading & Writing Literature
Poe’s Masque of the Red Death is an allegory for the inevitability of death. Poe illustrates a lavish event at Prince Prospero’s masked ball. The country has been plagued with, as they refer to, The Red Death. Poe describes the palace of Prosoeros as an elegant place where it has seven apartments of various styles. With the epidemic of this Red Death sweeping the population, it shows the morals of the Prince to have a masquerade during this time of crisis for the mass. Seemingly “untouchable” due to his high status. Poe dictates, “Prince Prosteros was happy and dauntless and sagacious” while we would assume he to be in fear of what lingers around the corner.
Introducing the many apartments Prospersos has, we notice the shift in styles for each. The early apartments are told to have bright colors although as we start to delve deeper into the hallway of apartments we see a noticeable change in tone. The apartments fade in their liveliness and darken into the shadow. Leaving the last apartment to have black velvet drapes, a red window, and a ticking clock loud enough for the whole party to hear. The apartments themselves symbolize life. Blue is the color of the first apartment, calling birth and life. The apartments transition with a green color scheme, commonly associated with spring and youthfulness. Noticing the seasons change per se as the next apartment is orange, representing summer and autumn. Taking a jump as the next apartment is white, calling to the white hair we gain through aging. The tone shifts to deep violets and navy, shadowy hues leading to the last and final apartment. We start our lives young and full of color, seeing things through rose-colored glasses, but as the years go on we fade. Not even the last apartment has a candlelight, lamp, nor light of any kind. In the later years of our lives we lose the light, the spark, that we once had when we were younger. Patiently waiting for death to knock at the door, Poe shows that we tend to grow weary of frivolous acts when we age. Poe exposes the audience to the thoughts they choose not to plague their minds with. Death is coming, no stopping it, not even a ball filled with plenty of dancers and music can postpone the inevitable. The clock in the last apartment is ticking down the seconds Prosperos, or even ourselves has left. No matter the sound of the music of the conversations we have to drown out the noise, the ticking of the clock is still present in the back of our minds. Poe illustrates this as the conversation pauses when the clock sounds but later resumes.
When the red death appears at the party, Prosperos tries to ward him off. Prospero symbolizes humans’ desire to escape death, in this case, the red death himself. Poe describes the prince as a bold and robust man, surrounded by his peers. We can see Poe’s views on the subject, that the desire to cheat death is a selfish act. Poe’s choice of name for the prince could be seen as an irony. Prosperos sounds quite similar to prosperity, which is the state the prince is in prior to the arrival of the red death as he enjoys the festivities. Detailing to us the Prince upon death, he plans an event to life at the moment rather than fearing what’s next. As the party is meant to embrace life as it is, the appearance of the red death shows that it does not shun its eyes to even the most gleeful or superior. He shows a character who relishes in prosperity, holding himself to a higher degree than most, yet the red death strikes him so in from of his guest.
We can see the prince’s irrational behavior transgress through his event. For one, throwing a party neglects the harm to the city. The people he surrounds himself with continue to boost his praise, unknowingly feeding into the fire. His flamboyant, and untouchable, behavior caused him to think of himself better than the Red Death shows is level of maturity. The Red Death enacted their main duty, no personal bias or indifference, but their moral duty.
From the Dobie text, Freud felt that the artist is an unstable personality that writes out of his own neurosis, with the results that his work provides therapeutic insights not only for themselves but for others. We can assume that Poe reflects Freud’s ideology about artists and writes about the inevitability of death. As plenty of his works frame around the same gothic tone, we can make the assumption that Poe writes about the inevitability of death as one of his pressing fears. Freud also developed the theory that we are all composed of three elements: id, ego, and superego. Poe conveys this theory in his work by connecting Prince Prospero as the id and red death as the ego. The Prince is driven by immediate satisfaction and primal desires, while red death is purely rational. In identifying the archetypes present in the story, the Prince represents the anima while the red death is the persona. Since the prince symbolized our desire to live life in joy denying death, their anima is the life force causing them to act. Contrasting this archetype is the persona, shown as the red death, as the masked individual plaguing everyone on the outside.
Applying more of Freud’s principles, comes the unconscious. Freud explains the unconscious as us only being able to see a sliver of what is actually happening/being represented to us. This can be seen in the character Prince Prospersos, as he is unaware of the danger that lingers of Red Death entering his lavish party. Unable to tell the difference between what is happing and what the prince thinks is happing, as he thinks the Red Death is essentially a party crasher yet the Red Death ends the party entirely. Insinuating that, “our actions are the result of forces we do not recognize and therefore cannot control” (Dobie pg 57).
Maya Young 