The Masque Of The Red Death“

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Symbolism of Death in “The Masque of the Red Death”

Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death is an elaborate allegory that combines objects in the story with visual descriptions to give focus to the reader's imagination. In the story, a prince named Properso tries to dodge the Red Death through isolation and seclusion. He hides behind impenetrable walls of his abbey and lets the world take care of its own. But no walls can stop death because it is unavoidable and inevitable. Visual descriptions in the story are used to symbolize death.
Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809 and died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Poe's parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins both died before he was three years old, and he was taken into the home of John Allan in Richmond, Virginia. After a dull and boring childhood he entered the University of Virginia in 1826 but only stayed for a year. Although he was a good student, he ran up large gambling debts that he could not pay. Allan did not return to the university for a second year and broke off his engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. With nowhere else to go, Poe enlisted in the army. Even though he dropped out of college he had already written and printed his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827 at his own expense. After returning to college at West Point he dropped out due to disobedience of orders. After his removal from the college his fellow students supported him financially with his next publication, Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition in 1831.
After a short but prosperous writing career Poe revisited Richmond in 1849 and was accepted “anew” by the fiancee he had lost in 1826. After returning home he was found unconscious on a Baltimore street. In a brief obituary the Baltimore Clipper reported that Poe had died of "congestion of the brain."
The first symbolic mean of death in “The Masque of the Red Deat...