CHARACTERS

The narrator speaks in the third-person and doesn't occupy any particular character's point of view. In fact, he doesn't even have much to do with the characters at all. Most of the time he's more interested in describing the setup of Prospero's party (creating the "atmosphere"). He prefers taking a "bird's eye" view of the crowd of revelers to lodging himself in any of their heads, though he does take a few quick peeks into Prospero's now and then.

Only two characters are named in the story: Prospero and the Red Death.

Prince Prospero:Selfish, wealthy ruler who withdraws to a castle-like abbey to avoid an epidemic of a deadly disease.  

The Red Death: Prince Prospero throws a costume party at which a figure "tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habilements of the grave" strolls through the castle. "His vesture was dabbed in blood and his broad brow, with all the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror." (149). The Red Death has arrived. Many interpret the story as an allegory of life, the end result being death to all.

Prospero's Guests: None of Prospero's guests are named. We do know, however, that they are of noble blood and that peasants and commoners are locked out, leading many to surmise that the story is an allegory for the death of feudalism, an economic system in which peasants worked the land and nobles made the money.

SPEECH

Think of Poe's writing in this story as having two parts: lines, or structure, and color. Kind of like a painter. Structurally, everything's clearly defined and logical. It's composed: it's "put together" from lots of individual units, which unite to build a larger whole. We say that because of how neatly the story divides on both the paragraph and the sentence level. Most of Poe's paragraphs are very short or very long, and each of the long ones describes a single thing: the first describes the Red Death, the second Prospero's castle retreat, the fourth (the third is short) describes the suite, the fifth describes the clock, and so on.
The paragraphs in turn are usually put together from lots of fairly short sentences that are structurally simple. They're like little atoms, each with just one or two details, which build up the larger whole. Sometimes the sentences just form something like a "list" of details. As in this paragraph:
There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm --much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. 
Here, Poe's sentences are not only short, they're practically identical in their simple structure, beginning "there were" or "there were much."
Poe then infuses that clear structure with life by filling in the color. Much of the color and life in the writing comes from his word choice. Sometimes it depends upon the vividness or dramatic quality of the individual words: "arabesque figures," "delirious fancies." In other places, it's Poe's use of figurative language, like the alliteration between "glare and glitter" above. Poe's writing is filled with that kind of stuff; he has a real ear for language. And Poe's spot-on word choice just adds to the feeling of how composed and well put-together his writing is. Everything feels selected with the greatest care.
Every so often, though, Poe will produce one whopper of a sentence. Like this one, from the fifth paragraph:

Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. 
That sentence is a good example of just how thickly Poe puts in the details. He loves using lots descriptive words, even if the overall sentence or phrase is short. To describe the pendulum swing, for example, one adjective's not enough, Poe needs three: "a dull, heavy, monotonous clang."

x

THE PLOT

A terrifying disease called the Red Death ravages the dominion of Prince Prospero. So lethal is it that it kills within a half-hour after the onset of its symptoms: sharp pain, dizziness, and bleeding from the pores. 

.......However, the prince is safe and happy in an abbey to which he has withdrawn with a thousand knights and ladies selected from his court. The abbey, which resembles a great castle, is surrounded by a sturdy wall. Its iron gate has been welded shut, making it impossible for anyone to enter or leave.
.......Inside, the prince has stocked food and drink aplenty and maintains companies of musicians, dancers, and clowns for entertainment. 
 After about six months, while the disease was taking its toll outside, the prince held a masked ball in a maze-like suite of seven rooms specially decorated according to a theme color. One room was blue; the second, purple; the third, green; the fourth, orange; the fifth, white; and the sixth, violet. A stained-glass window in the wall between each of these rooms and the outside corridor matched the color of the room. The seventh room was hung with tapestries of black velvet. However, here the stained-glass between the room and the corridor was scarlet instead of black.

There were no candles to light any of the rooms. Rather, illumination was provided by a brazier of fire set on a tripod in the corridor outside each of the stained-glass windows. Thus, shimmering blue light, mimicking the movement of the leaping flames, illuminated the first room, shimmering purple light illuminated the second room, and so on. Into the seventh room, the black one with the scarlet window, the fire projected blood-red light that was ghastly to behold. The masqueraders were reluctant to enter this room. Adding to the foreboding atmosphere of the room was an ebony pendulum clock that tolled the hour with a deep chime that echoed through the winding hallways and unnerved all the guests. 
.......Nevertheless, the party is a smashing success overall, with the guests–outfitted in every manner of odd, alluring, and grotesque costumes–enjoying themselves immensely. But no one enters the seventh room. Instead, everyone congregates in the other rooms. 
.......After the ebony clock strikes twelve, the revelers in the blue room, where the prince is mingling with his friends, notice a new masquerader among them. They express surprise, utter whispers, and finally recoil in terror and disgust. And no wonder. This masquerader, tall in and thin, is outfitted as a corpse in a grave. His mask is as stiff and fearsome as a dead man’s face. Daubs of red on his costume make it clear that he has come in the guise of the Red Death. Prince Prospero reacts with a shudder signifying fear or disgust. Then he becomes angry. He asks, “Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?”
.......Prospero orders the unmasking of the intruder and declares that he will be hanged in the morning from the fortress’s battlements.
But no one undertakes the task. The intruder then moves from room to room. Prospero withdraws a dagger and chases him. In the black room, the intruder turns and faces Prospero. There is a cry. The dagger falls to the sable carpet. Then Prospero falls. Finding courage, Prospero’s friends then attack the intruder. To their horror, they discover that there is nothing inside the costume or behind the mask. 
.......Poe ends the story by revealing the identity of the intruder:

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Setting Of The Story

The story is set in Prince Prospero's luxurious "castellated abbey" (which is just a fancy way of saying it's an abbey built up with the fortifications of a castle), hidden somewhere in his kingdom. To call it "cut off" is an understatement. Not only is it "deeply secluded" (hidden in a hard-to-reach spot), but Prospero and his followers have also welded the doors shut, so no one can get in or out. Everyone inside is having one big party; everyone outside is dying to get in. Well, actually just dying.

The story's main action takes place in an elaborate suite of seven colored rooms within the abbey, where Prospero holds the masquerade ball. The suite, which Prospero designed, consists of seven rooms that run in a line from east to west. Roughly a line, at least – as the narrator tells us, their alignment is actually rather irregular, so that from any given room you can only see into one other room. The lighting's interesting too. Every room has one window on either side of it (facing roughly north and south), and the candles to light each room are placed outside the windows in the two hallways that run along either side of the suite. That way the light shines into the rooms through the windows, creates quite a neat effect, especially considering the ball takes place late at night.

The most memorable detail of the suite, of course, is that each room has a different "color theme." The wall hangings, the decorations, and even the windows of a given room are all one color. The first room in the suite – the farthest room to the east – is blue, the second is purple, the third is green, the fourth is orange, the fifth is white, and the sixth is violet.

The seventh room – the room farthest to the west – is special. It's hung in all black, but its windows are a deep blood red. There's also a huge, threatening clock in it, which eerily chimes every hour and makes everyone's hair stand on end. So between that and the color scheme, you might as well think of the black room as the Horrifying Room of Death, which it turns out to be anyway.

A common thought is to see these rooms as a way from birth to deaf.

 But my firstest imagination coming into my mind was the symbol of seven sins belonging to Prospero.

Welcome to my blog!

Started choosing a story for my blog, what was my fortune to chance upon Edgar Allan Poe's Nine Favorite Short Stories. As I delt with some of his stories previously, I decided to work with one unfamiliar to me, which is "The Masque of the Red Death"

On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia.

Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor.

Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

This daguerreotype of Poe was made by William Pratt approximately 3 weeks before Poe died, in 1849. Poe, arguing that he was not suitably dressed, was coaxed upstairs and photographed. Poe was 40 years old.