And Now Again the Music Swells and the Dreams Live and Writhe to and Fro More Merrily Than Ever
Allegory in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"
In the realm of literature, there are many rhetorical devices that shape the way a reader interprets a story. One of them is allegory. Information technology is a device in which characters, settings, and events in a story or image represent ideas or concepts. The ideas revealed are often of a political or moral nature ("Allegory"). Symbolism and metaphor, devices that both compare objects with ideas, are often employed in allegory. A few examples of allegorical works include Plato'due south famous "Metaphor of the Cave" and George Orwell's Animal Farm, and Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Expiry.
What is the purpose of using apologue instead of directly saying what is inferred by symbols and metaphors? Why not exit the reader to his or her ain interpretations? Perhaps by using apologue to construct a narrative, the potential to achieve a broader audition increases. The Masque of the Red Death,Poe creates a fictional world not unlike our own in which people vainly attempt to escape decease. It has the features of a Poe horror story but is didactic in role.
Allegories can too help readers understand concepts that might be too difficult to comprehend otherwise, or, in the the case ofThe Masque of the Carmine Death, force readers to examine something that is unpleasant, such as death. Poe's married woman Virginia, equally well as his mother, brother, and foster female parent, contracted and died from tuberculosis ("Poe'due south Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?"), which may take inspired him to write well-nigh the follies of pretending death is avoidable.
But does allegory ensure that every reader ever reaches the same decision(s)? In The Masque of the Ruby Death, are we to assume that the moral of the story is that we cannot escape death no matter how difficult we try, or is there something else? Poe never stated that this story was meant to exist an allegory, but today it is commonly read every bit such. It seems that some symbols seem to have less room for interpretation than others, and others inspire a vast array of meanings due to the reader'southward understanding of contextual clues. For instance, the colors black and red, especially when paired together, tin can be interpreted as symbolizing death and claret. However, black could besides symbolize dark, whereas red could symbolize passion, lust, and romance. An analysis of Poe's story might shed some light on how allegory works and what kind of interpretations are possible in allegory-heavy stories.
Allegory inThe Masque of the Blood-red Death
The Masque of the Red Death contains imagery that upholds the story's allegorical interpretation, too as imagery that is open to other interpretations. The allegorical symbolism is credible from the get-go of the story. First, in an attempt to escape the Red Expiry, a fictional plague-similar disease, Prince Prospero gathers his friends and retreats to "one of his castellated abbeys" (Poe 438). The abbey has "strong and lofty walls" and "gates of iron" (Poe 438). Upon entering the abbey, the Prince and his guests lock themselves inside: "They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within" (Poe 438). The Prince and his guests believe that they tin can hibernate from the Red Decease past locking themselves abroad from the suffering of the residual of the world.
One-half a year subsequently, Prospero throws a masquerade ball to be held in the seven rooms of the abbey. Each room has a ready of windows that look out into the hallway. In the hallway, there are tripods property braziers of fire that transport lite through the windows and into the room (Poe 438-439). There are no windows that wait outside the abbey's walls, and therefore, at that place is no lite from the sun or moon coming inside. These features of the abbey reinforce the notion that the lack of exposure to the outside globe ways that Prospero and his courtiers volition be rubber from the Red Death.
Additionally, each room is a different color. Its decorations are of the same color, as are the windows that peer into the chamber. For instance, the eastern well-nigh room is blueish, and information technology has windows of blue-stained glass. Five of the other rooms are decorated in this mode with their respective colors: purple, dark-green, orange, white, and violet (Poe 439). However, the seventh and most westward room of the abbey is furnished with black velvet and cherry-red windows. This room has an eerie effect on the masqueraders:
the effect of the burn-calorie-free that streamed upon the dark hangings through the claret-tinted panes […] produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that at that place were few of the visitor bold enough to set human foot inside its precincts at all. (Poe 439)
The Velvet Hall reminds the guests that fear is still present amid them, even though the masquerade is supposed be a lively matter. The night and bloody imagery of the seventh room also seems to foreshadow that something bad will happen to Prospero and his friends in this chamber.
The symbolism of time is also prevalent throughout the story. Offset, a "gigantic clock of ebony" (Poe 439) stands in the Velvet Hall. Every hour,
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 accent that […] at that place was a cursory disconcert of the whole gay visitor […] the giddiest grew pale, and the more anile and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. (Poe 439)
The clock interrupts the masquerade every time it chimes. The clock does non merely marker what time it is; as a foreshadowing device, it suggests that time is running out for Prospero and his guests, though they seem oblivious to this.
The apologue continues with other "fourth dimension" imagery, including the layout of the abbey's rooms. They are bundled east to westward, reminiscent of the movement of the lord's day across the sky, and the number of rooms, 7, is equal to the number of days in the week. Additionally, the Cherry Death makes its appearance at midnight. Midnight marks the transition from one 24-hour interval to the next, besides every bit from night to morn. Its significance as the time when the Ruby-red Expiry appears is still again another instance of foreshadowing. Midnight is likewise known as the "witching hour," when demons, ghouls, and witches are said to be most active. The prevalence of representations of fourth dimension suggest that though the masqueraders attempt to escape disease and decease, it is not possible to do so. Fourth dimension is not a friendly force in this case.
Moreover, the Red Death arrives at the masquerade dressed every bit its own victim: "His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad forehead, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the cherry-red horror" (Poe 441). It is a literal representation of death walking amongst the living. The Ruby Decease is able to move around the abbey unimpeded, every bit its disguise unsettles the masqueraders. An enraged Prospero seeks to slay the masquerader who dares to wearing apparel similar a corpse and pursues the Red Death from the easternmost room to the Velvet Hall. As soon as he raises his dagger against the corpse-effigy, Prospero falls dead (Poe 442). When the guests tear away the disguise, they find no class beneath the dress. Shortly after, the masqueraders die of the Red Death. The lack of a tangible body beneath the disguise suggests that decease does non need a concrete form, and it cannot be stopped past whatsoever means.
Allegory has a strong agree on this Poe tale. Almost everything in the story tells us that at that place is no escaping death, no thing what we practice. The reader is nearly beaten over the head with allegory and symbolism: the championship itself is a play on words. It is no coincidence that "masque" and the similar sounding "mask" are both relevant to the story. Both words imply that disguises and subconscious abbeys cannot shield a person from the inevitable which, in this case, is death.
Other Interpretations
At the same fourth dimension, information technology is possible to interpret some of the images and symbols in the story in a manner that moves way from the "no escape from death" analysis. Notwithstanding, it does not seem possible to completely ignore this reading. Still, we tin can read The Masque of the Red Death every bit a critique of socioeconomic inequality, and we can likewise examine the dream-like attribute of the masquerade as another and more circuitous class of escape.
In terms of socioeconomic inequality, Prospero's name suggests that he is, in fact," prosperous." He is wealthy, a prince, and a ruler. However, he abandons his kingdom as soon as information technology is ravaged by the Red Death and half of his people are expressionless. He and "a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court" (Poe 438) flee the plague and leave the lower classes to fend for themselves. The lower classes are not mentioned past proper name in the story but are implied to belong to the "external world [that] could take care of itself" (Poe 438).
The abbey is amply stocked with supplies and with entertainment: "The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasance. There were buffoons, at that place were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Dazzler, there was wine" (Poe 438). The excess of the abbey shows the extent to which the wealthy spend their money and resources on themselves, instead of attending to their subjects.
Since the wealthy take locked themselves away, the victims of the Ruby-red Expiry are primarily of the lower classes. When the Ruby-red Death appears at the masquerade dressed as its victim, information technology perhaps terrifies the masqueraders non just because the disguise is gruesome but too considering information technology reminds them of the people they have forsaken. The deaths of Prospero and his friends then becomes the vengeance of the lower classes: even though in life we may be unequal in wealth, we are all equal in the eyes of death.
The socioeconomic analysis of The Masque of the Ruby-red Decease is merely ane style to interpret various images and symbols. If the masquerade sequence is read in terms of its dream-like qualities, other conclusions tin be reached. For example, the costumes of the masqueraders are described every bit beautiful, bizarre, disgusting, and terrifying: "There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm […] There were delirious fancies such equally the madman fashions" (Poe 440). The disguises of the masqueraders and the décor of the party are meant to mask the reality of expiry and suffering.
The masqueraders are attempting to escape decease, and they attempt to practise and then past escaping into a dream world, where the fancies of the mind run wild, and the Carmine Decease is not among them: "To and fro in the seven chambers at that place 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 repeat of their steps" (Poe 440). The masqueraders delve into a dream-like trance where reality has little bearing.
Additionally, there is a cursory passage in the story that breaks into present tense:
And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is even so, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen equally they stand. Just the echoes of the chime die abroad—they have endured only an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats afterward them every bit they depart. And now over again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. (Poe 440)
The break into present tense comes as the dream-land of the masqueraders is being described. The guests themselves are equated with the dreams. It is the dreams who are stopped by the chimes of the clock, and it is the dreams that pass from room to room. The apply of nowadays tense instead of by tense attests to the escapism of the masquerade.
Likewise, the layout of the abbey upholds the dream-like atmosphere of the masquerade. In improver to the rooms having different colors, the manner in which of the rooms are arranged is bizarre: "The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but trivial more one at a time. At that place was a sharp turn at every xx or xxx yards, and at each turn a novel effect" (Poe 438). No room has a clear view into another, and the guests detect themselves wending through a maze of chambers. Coupled with the lack of windows looking to the external word and the bogus lighting, the abbey and the masquerade represent the enclosed dream-world of Prospero and his friends.
All the same, as with many dreams, glimmers of reality shortly creep in. For example, the Velvet Hall continues to unnerve the masqueraders: "Only to the sleeping room which lies about westwardly of the seven at that place are none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier calorie-free through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable mantle appalls" (Poe 440). This quote is besides a part of the section written in present tense, which signifies that the masqueraders recall they are nevertheless in a dream-state. Though the other chambers are filled with people, laughter, and dancing, the Velvet Hall brings elements of death and violence into an otherwise happy, though baroque, dream-world. Information technology isn't long before the dream crumbles around them, and reality is made known to Prospero and his friends.
Conclusions
So what deviation does it brand if a story is considered an allegory? The Masque of the Ruddy Death is labeled an apologue because the symbolism and imagery seems to signal the reader to one conclusion: expiry is coming, whether you desire it to or not. While allegory gives us an interpretation of the world, we can agree or disagree with it, and of course we are free to draw our ain conclusions from the story. Some stories are written with the intention of being emblematic, and other are not, simply one time a story is released for pop consumption, the reader will make his or her own estimation of the story. Additionally, there is no way to exist sure if Poe meantThe Masque of the Scarlet Death to exist read as apologue or as having an overarching moral.
At the same time, some stories are possibly designated allegories because the audience gains a more complete agreement of the world past having read them. Allegories seem to explore ideas that nosotros might hold as common truths. Maybe the colors red and black usually symbolism blood and death because those things exist in our world and affect the way we live. Even if we ignore the allegorical interpretation of a story, we can reach our ain conclusions that might affect our lives or at least the way we think. Literature often serves the purpose to teach us about the style we live, and allegory and symbolism are but only a tool on which the author and reader can rely in order to comprehend the world a little ameliorate.
Works Cited
"Allegory." Merriam-Webster. Web. 8 Jul. 2014. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/lexicon/allegory>.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Masque of the Red Death." Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poem. New York: Fall River Printing, 2012.438-442. Print.
"Poe's Life: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?" Poe Museum.Web. 15 Jul. 2014. <http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php>.
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