Whether you think you have or not, everybody’s heard of the famous, dare I say infamous, Edgar Allan Poe one way or another. His macabre imagery and fascination with gothic settings made him a well known and well respected figure in American literature. Quoth the raven, he’s pretty cool. Speaking of Mr. Poe’s raven, I believe it might be doing an advice column or something of the sort. I never know what that bird is doing nowadays. But I digress.
Published in 1842, “The Masque of the Red Death” begins in a country devastated by plague that violently kills those infected. But amidst the death and disease, a prince hopefully separates himself and his chosen peers from the rest of the plague-ridden world within his castle walls.
During the height of the epidemic, he throws a glorious masquerade for his guests. He holds this party in the elaborate seven rooms of his palace, all decorated and distinguished by individual colors. One of the rooms, the seventh, holds a massive, ebony clock that rings out every hour, startling the partygoers and creating a sense of unease. Aside from that, all is well, until a mysterious guest in horrifyingly familiar attire enters the scene.
I read this piece for the first time for school during the COVID pandemic, and it was one of my first official introductions to Edgar Allan Poe’s work. It’s one of those pieces that despite being required reading, leaves a mark in your brain for years to come. I don’t even remember what teacher assigned the reading, but it still stuck with me. While still fictional, it paralleled much of what was happening in real life, which created a much more immersive reading atmosphere and experience that I doubt I would have gotten otherwise. I can assume the work was assigned for this exact reason: that there was a pandemic happening, just like in the story. The isolation of the prince and his guests are similar to how the world experienced lockdown and quarantine, and how some people would still host large gatherings despite it being terribly unsafe to do so.
The opening paragraph of the piece reels you in fast, utilizing strong language and descriptions, dragging you into the setting almost immediately. The fictional plague, the Red Death, is introduced right off the bat, and Poe successfully instills fear into the reader with lines such as “Blood was its Avator and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.”
When he gets to the rooms of the prince’s palace, Poe describes each one to the reader, putting special emphasis on the final and seventh room that holds the ominous ebony clock.
The story reaches its climax when the mysterious stranger enters the scene, altering the mood of the masquerade. Poe plays with the uneasiness already introduced from the ebony clock going off and startling the guests, shifting it to the stranger: “And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive at first of disapprobation and surprise — then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.”
As far as spectacular endings go, the ending to this piece left a distinct and evocative image in my mind that has stuck with me over these past few years. While not a complete plot twist, the shock Poe was able to elicit from both myself as a reader and from the characters within the story was executed with impeccable style.
And so concludes the gruesome journey of “The Masque of the Red Death.” I’ll leave you to your own devices, but beware. The Red Death is lurking. So is that raven, wherever it might be.
Alex's Reviews & Recs is a periodic column penned by cultural maven (not raven) Alex Viles, covering anything and everything in the literary world, past or present, that he finds worthy of a read. Always eclectic, and a little bit random, like any good mixtape.
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