Analysis
of the Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
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. This is why 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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