44 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Masque of the Red Death
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1842A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Clock
The ominous clock, situated in the red-and-black room, is a memento mori, a reminder of imminent death through the passage of time. Poe makes this clear in his description of the clock. Not only is the clock gigantic and dark, made of ebony, but its pendulum is heavy and monotonous, symbolizing the labored and meaningful passage of time. When the clock sounds the hour, the resulting chime from its “brazen lungs” is both “exceedingly musical” but also “peculiar” (741). This sound stops everyone in their tracks with an odd and foreboding feeling. The clock is also described as if almost alive itself. With lungs and moving hands, it waits in the darkness of the final room for what it and we all know is coming: The death of everyone who hears its strange song.
The Castellated Abbey
Prospero and his friends shut themselves off from the world in “one of his castellated abbeys” (739). With its gates welded shut, no one can enter or leave. This setting is an externalization of Prospero’s internal desire to avoid death; if he can remove himself from all contact with others, then he can also avoid the plague. The fact that the setting is so grandiose also signals that Prospero believes his wealth will protect him. This ultimately becomes his downfall, as it is in holding a masquerade ball for his wealthy friends that death comes for him, and in his sealing of the castle that his entourage is barred from escape. When death is ultimately revealed in the story, it has no form. Prospero’s physical boundaries are nothing to death, which comes for you no matter where you are.
Faces and Masks
Several masks run throughout “The Masque of the Red Death.” First mentioned is the facial pallor of the Red Death itself, which shows on the face of the victims. This mask changes the identity of the sick from someone who is part of society to someone who must be excluded. The next set of masks are those worn by the revelers at Prospero’s masquerade, a party in which one is expected to wear a mask. These masks obscure or transform the identity of the revelers, and like the facial pallor of the Red Death’s victims, these masks are gruesome. Finally, we have the masquerade mask of the figure itself, which in appearing as if dead from the disease combines the two previous categories.
In showing the equivalence of the mask of death that the diseased wore and the masks of revelry worn by Prospero’s guests, this final mask symbolizes the unavoidable fate of Prospero’s rich entourage. Almost as if mocking the idea that they could escape death through revelry, the Red Death materializes in a costume like their own. Subtextually, Poe states that wealth and class are masks on our inevitable frailty. In making all the masks in the text gruesome, Poe suggests that while our faces don’t show it, our true human nature is also gruesome.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
