Tuesday, April 30, 2013

In "The Mask of the Red Death," how does setting reflect something specific about the main character? Please provide text to back-up the question.


In Edgar
Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," the Gothic setting in an old abbey borders on
magical realism in which the line between what is real and what is not is worn away,
replaced with a setting that is both at the same time.  There is an eerieness to the
rooms, an other-worldliness to the "multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances."  The
panes of the windows appear blood-tinted, "ghastly in the extreme."  The phantasms
abound in this abbey;  There is a gigantic clock of ebony which emits a sound that is
both musical and disconcerting.  


The giddiest grew pale,
and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused
reverie or meditation.



The
glare and shadows and glitter, the arabesque figures with "unsuited limbs," and the
madman fashions and beautiful and wanton all turn and twist through the seven chambers. 
Poe writes, "In truth the masquerade license of the nights was nearly unlimited."  But,
as the "mad revelers" feel the presence of the gaunt fighre who seems to have come from
the grave.  Yet,


readability="6">

The mask which concealed the visage was made so
nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closes scrutiny must
have had difficulty in detecting the
cheat.



The Red Death's
appearance is as a masqued personage, as well.  The company feels that "in the costume
and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed."  He is an interloper. 
Angered the Prince Prospero addresses him, "Who dares?"  Yet, no one will touch him
because of a "deadly terror." The masqued intruded makes his way through the seven
rooms until he is in the black room: 


readability="11">

...the Prince Prospero....rushed hurriedly
through the six chambers....He bore aloft a drawn dagger...There was a sharp cry--and
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.  He had come like a thief in the
night.



Only the Prince has
dared to enter the black room; only he has tried to kill death in the form of the masked
skeleton. 

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