An Analysis of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death

The ‘Masque of the Red Death’ has multiple meanings, but where can we find a story that encompasses all the others and is complete enough to honor the author’s uncanny unity in this beautiful prose work. It is in this success, that one may touch the genius of Poe himself.

It is irrelevant to question the idea of allegory – based on Poe’s critical ideas about its use – for it is in the story itself that we must delve. Other tales or works by Poe and other writers are useful, but not necessary. To be sure “the Red Death” contains allegory, and of an explicit nature. And in this blaze of allegory we have symbolism woven throughout, but I believe it a mistake to assign a tangible pattern in the author’s conscience life experience (Poe’s lifetime) at the time of writing. Some for instance, have stated the belief that the disease of the Red Death is really symbolic of tuberculosis or cholera (because he experienced a “cholera outbreak”). Such speculation is outside the merit of the story proper, and has at best a vague relationship. Worse still, is assigning a motive as to why all the characters in the story meet their demise. (One person was silly enough to direct the whole meaning as an attack on the rich – who in their protective castellated abbey are not immune to the Red Death.) There is nothing in the story to support this, and at best it distracts the reader’s attention away from other aspects conveyed throughout. Let us stay within the bounds of the writing itself, for here we shall find an incredible assortment of descriptively vivid details, even in the form of a short story.

The story begins: ‘The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous – blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood’. The initial foundation of the story follows, and we understand the motives for isolation, for the incurable death needs to be avoided or forgotten – at least in a sagacious fashion. Thus “ingress” (entrance) and “egress” (exit) are utilized to distance the Prince and his followers from the Red Death’s threat. This results in the disease raging “most furiously abroad”.

Yet there is another beginning that expresses a strict relation to the end – where the Prince Prospero falls “prostrate in death” in a chamber lighted by a tripod (bearing a brazier of fire) from the following corridor that produces a blood bedewed effect. It is in the description of the chambers that a deeper interpretation of the story begins, and it is important to note that the chamber where the Prince expires is different from the other six: “But in this chamber only the colors in the windows failed to correspond with the decorations”. Poe makes an effort to distinguish this distant or 7th chamber by various symbols: the black velvet tapestries, and the presence of the Ebony Clock. His distinction is explicit: “But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted pains was ghastly to the extreme and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all”. I think it abhorrent that many – indeed almost none – have mentioned the chambers in their attempt at an analysis of this work. Consider an ebony clock in a chamber with walls of velvet, except in the varying instances of scarlet flickering there is only blackness, and here the repose is one of blindness or something utterly feared or unknown yet bizarre enough to allow few – almost none the boldness to set foot within. A sound emanates from such a chamber, a sound that can be heard throughout – it is the striking of the ebony clock – and it seems to confuse or pause the characters – as if its source were unknown or unrecognized, or perhaps even feared – for it becomes evident that the sound is repeated. Poe writes that the masqueraders respond with the same trepidation and tremulousness (meaning trembling or quivering) as before.

Much can be made of the chambers, and the story itself leaves little to the pure imagination when the words are carefully considered: It is made clear that the decorations (in the chambers) are a result of the Prince’s peculiar taste, and that each chamber can only be viewed from a connecting suite to the previous chamber, so that the whole cannot be viewed at once. The waltzers, and musicians are disrupted by the unique chiming of the clock, and all can hear Prospero – Poe elaborates on his robust nature – yet later the company are aware at the mere waving of his hand. It seems contrary when one considers the compartments, where each at every 30 yards turn impedes the view of the next one. It is becoming apparent that everything is but a creation of the Prince’s mind, for in a ball full of revellers, how can they be so in tune with his every whim. Prospero reminds us of Shakespeare’s “Prospero” in ‘The Tempest’, a magician who controlled the others in the play. The setting is on an island – from which “ingress” and “egress” are similarly present.

Now consider the words of the author himself, and the rest is clear – we start with his elaborative description of the chambers: “He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers…and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders.” Here in a direct manner Poe adds, “To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these – the dreams – writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. Eventually, the chimes die away, and a light half-subdued laughter returns as the dreams live once again.” But as he describes, the night is waning, and the light is ruddier, and it affects the maskers so that they move away from the more remote recesses and “to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet…there comes from the clock a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic” (here, I believe the author is referring to a beating or ticking). The other apartments were densely crowded, “and in them beat feverishly the heart of life”. The muffled peal in the seventh chamber and the feverishly beating heart of life are sentences crafted very carefully.

It has become evident, that the story is but a dream – but by whom? It must be the Prince, because he is in every aspect of the telling, and more startlingly – his “own embellishments” and taste, and waving of the hand become symbols of his control over all the others. The others are ‘self-functioning’ in one way; they will almost never venture into the velvet chamber (also in another – “it was folly to grieve or to think”). Is the Prince the dreamer? Perhaps this is the intention, but it need not be so, for a dream could give that role to its possessor. Either way “Prospero” is the characterized link to the dream’s creative essence. Other aspects, including the author describing the masquerade license of the night as nearly unlimited, lean towards the dream idea. But even withal this, Poe reminds us that “even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made”. This last comment could be aimed at the dreamer and the dreamed.

Now, what of the dreamer? Does anything happen to him? Yes, I believe Poe gives an angle into the state of the dreamer. His description of the chambers: the other apartments were densely crowded, “and in them beat feverishly the heart of life”, and towards the climax we have – “there comes from the clock a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic”. The seventh chamber is a threat to the dream, for the clock-like heart that beats “feverishly” resides there, and in the avoidance of its grotesqueness we have a resistance to awaken. The dreamer resists and his clock-like heart summons to awaken. There is the physical state of the dreamer, and its relation to the mental state – both dreamed and awakened.

The “Red Death” or mummer is later revealed to consist of “no tangible form”, and is a symbol of fatality – of the dream and perhaps its possessor – whose heart beats feverishly. The Prince’s followers are described in various ways, but Poe calls them “phantasms” (a thing with no reality, a figment of the mind). And finally we have a dissipation of the setting, where after the Prince rushes through all the chambers to confront the Red Death himself, seems to disappear. After Prospero falls “prostrate in death” a throng of revellers at once throw themselves into the black compartment, and end up dropping one by one, “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 the Red Death and darkness and decay held illimitable dominion over all”.

The ending hints at the immediate demise of all things after the life of the clock is out, as the dreamer may still be marginally aware in the story (unlike the Prince) until then. But the demise could go one step further – holding illimitable dominion over all – to the dreamer.

Of course one may argue a similar meaning as implied to anyone (or the Prince) in the course of life, as death awaits all – even the compartments or chambers – can support this idea. But they are but afterthoughts or encompassed hints, whether biblically interpreted or otherwise (Herod). For all this and much, much more adds support to the dream interpretation, as Poe has in fact, made explicitly clear in the telling – because all that is in the story – can only be consistent with this one approach.