Objective: students will read

1

• Objective students will read The Masque of the
  Red Death in order to compare to other romantics
  and examine for allegory.
• Warm-up Define allegory (462) and copy the chart
  to fill out after you read.

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Allegory
Person, Object or Event Possible Meaning Possible Lesson of Story
The prince
The abbey
The series of seven rooms
The clock
The stranger
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The Masque of the Red Death

• Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe1809-1849
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His Family and Tragic Life

• Born in Boston
• The son of traveling actors
• Lived a tragic and unhappy life

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Tragic and Unhappy Life

• Mother died of tuberculosis when Poe was one
• Father deserted him at the age of two
• Adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan
• Had constant disagreements with his step-father

John Allan
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. . . continued

• Studied briefly at the University of Virginia
• Drinking and gambling difficulties kept him from
  continuing at UVA

University of Virginia, 1856
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. . .continued

• Received an appointment to West Point, but
  provoked his own dismissal
• Caused a final separation between himself and
  step-father

West Point Crest
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. . .continued

• In 1836 married his 14 year old cousin, Virginia
• Last 12 years of life worked as journalist,
  editor, and creative writer

Virginia Clemm
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. . . continued

• Lived in poverty stricken conditions most of his
  life
• In 1846 wife died after a long illness

Poes home during the 1840s
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Addiction

• All evidence suggests that Poe was an alcoholic.
• Poe also habitually used drugs such as morphine,
  opium, and laudanum to treat depression and other
  health conditions.
• Poe had a weakened nervous system due to a brain
  lesion and a heart condition.
• Laudanum, a highly addictive, opium based
  medicine, was commonly used to treat headaches
  and stomach pains in 1800s.

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. . . continued

• Died in Baltimore after having been found in a
  drunken stupor
• Died a poor man

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Poes Work

• Known for
• Tales of mystery and terror stories
• Introducing the modern detective story

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Just a Few Titles

• Short Stories
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Cask of Amontillado
• The Black Cat,
• The Pit and The Pendulum

• Poems
• The Raven
• Annabel Lee
• To Helen
• Lenore

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The Masque of the Red
Death
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The Setting An abbey
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The Setting
is an abbey, or
monastery, converted by the rich Prince Prospero
into a private palace and banquet hall.
The time is the Middle Ages
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The Setting An abbey
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The Setting An abbey
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The Plague
is usually associated
with the worst contagion to hit Europe before the
20th century the Black Death which, in
the mid-14th century, killed roughly one-third of
the continents population.
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Its spread 1347-1351
The Plague
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The Plague
came from a bacterium
now named Yersinia pestis
that normally lived in the bloodstreams of fleas,
which, in turn, lived on black rats.
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The Plague
When the rats died, the fleas had to find new
homes humans and a new food supply human
blood. When fleas bit people, they passed along
the bacteria the same pestis that had killed
the rats.
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The Plague
in human hosts (such
as this modern victim)
infected the
lymph nodes, causing black swellings, called
buboes.
From this symptom came the diseases common
names Black Death and Bubonic Plague.
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The Plague
Once infected, without modern antibiotics,
medieval victims stood a 90 chance of dying
within a week.
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The Plague
Poes version of this illness the Red
Death does not strictly correspond to bubonic
plague. He combines it with tuberculosis, which
killed several family members, and plays up
the bloodiness of the disease. For
dramatic effect, he also shortens the infections
time span, from years (tuberculosis) or days
(bubonic plague) to minutes (Red Death).
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The Plague
Poes version
The scarlet stains upon the body and
especially upon the face of the victim, were the
pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from
the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole
seizure, progress and termination of the disease,
were the incidents of half an hour. From The
Masque of the Red Death
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The Plague
in the Middle Ages
had no effective cure. Doctors tried to treat it
by lancing the buboes.
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The Plague
, either way, killed
millions,
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The Plague
Prince Prospero, was not hanging around for the
Red Death to take him. He had other plans.
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The Plan
Before the Red Death arrived, Prospero
planned to be elsewhere specifically, in his
converted abbey, with all that extra room.
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The Plan
a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from
among the knights and dames of his court.
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The Plan
including the requisite musicians, jesters,
jugglers, and other entertainers ...
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The Plan
... then the doors could be welded shut, and the
abbey could become a fortress
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The Plan
After five or six months, the Prince decided
that the plan needed to be expanded that what
he really needed, as a diversion, was a fancy
costume ball.
He needed a masque.
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The Masquerade
There were much glare and glitter and piquancy
and phantasm
So the guests prepared their costumes ...
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The Masquerade
There was much of the beautiful, much of the
wanton,
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The Masquerade
... and the ball began. And it was a success
up to a point, anyway
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The Masquerade
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The Masquerade
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Vocabulary

• Define the vocabulary
• Complete Vocabulary in Action (463)

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Literary Term Allusion

• Reference to a famous historical or literary
  figure or event
• Best sources are literature, history, Greek
  mythology, and the Bible
• Serves to explain or clarify or enhance whatever
  subject

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Literary Term Gothic Elements

• Supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown
  terror pervades the action
• High emotion, sentimentalism, but also pronounced
  anger, surprise, and especially terror
• Use of words indicating fear, mystery
  apparition, devil, ghost, haunted, terror,
  fright, fainting

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Literary Term Symbol

• Something that is itself and yet also represents
  something else
• Universal symbols embodying universally
  recognizable meanings
• Invested symbols give symbolic meaning by the way
  an author uses them in a literary work
• Symbols are very common in literature

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Allegory A Story Behind a Story

• An allegory is a narrative that is really a
  double story. One story takes place on the
  surface. Under the surface the storys characters
  and events represent abstract ideas or states of
  being, things like love or freedom, evil or
  goodness, hell or heaven.
• To work, an allegory must operate on two levels.
  On the level of pure storytelling, an allegory
  must hold our attention. Its characters must seem
  believable and interesting enough for us to care
  about them. On the allegorical level the ideas in
  the story must be accessible to us. As you read,
  you should find that the allegorical level of the
  story gradually begins to strike you.

• See if you find that Poes story of arrogance and
  death hooks you on both levels.

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The Masque of the Red Death Background

• Poes fictional Red Death is probably based on
  the Black Death, which swept fourteenth-century
  Europe and Asia, killing as many as two thirds of
  the population in some regions in less than
  twenty years. Poe calls the plague the Red
  Death because victims oozed blood from painful
  sores. In this story a fourteenth-century prince
  gives a costume party, or masque, to try to
  forget about the epidemic raging all around him.

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The Black Death

• This particular type of plague was the bubonic
  plague, which is caused by a bacteria that lived
  in rats and other rodents. Human beings were
  infected through bites from the fleas that lived
  on these rats. The symptoms associated with
  plague are bubos, which are painful swellings of
  the lymph nodes. These typically appear in the
  armpits, legs, neck, or groin. If left untreated,
  plague victims die within two to four days.
  Victims of this disease suffered swelling in the
  armpit and groin, as well as bleeding in the
  lungs. Victims also suffered a very high fever,
  delirium, and prostration.

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Summary

• Poes tale of an eccentric nobleman and the Red
  Death ravaging his land can be read both as a
  chilling ghost story and as an allegory
  representing human folly and the inevitability of
  death. (In other words, you cannot hide from
  death regardless how much money you have.)

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Comprehension Check

1. Why does Prince Prospero close himself and his
   courtiers off in the abbey?
2. Why does the masked figures presence cause such
   a sensation?
3. What happens to the prince and the revellers?

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Time for further thought

• Complete questions 1-7

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Summary

• Prince Prospero invites a thousand lords and
  ladies to escape death by living luxuriously in
  his castle until the pestilence passes.
• To entertain his guests Prospero hosts a
  masquerade party that takes place in seven halls,
  each a different color.

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Summary

• At the stroke of midnight, a tall figure in a
  blood-splattered burial costume appears.
• Prospero demands that his friends seize the
  intruder, but everyone is frozen with fear as the
  stranger slowly walks through the rooms.
• Finally, Prospero rushes after him into the black
  seventh room.

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Summary

• When the intruder turns, the host falls dead.
• The revelers then grab the stranger but find the
  costume empty.
• All soon die of the Red Death.

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Comments

• The allegorical meaning of the story is found in
  such details as
• Prosperos name (Prospero means prosperous)
• Unfortunately, the Red Death attacks the rich and
  poor alike
• The strangers appearance (Dressed like the Grim
  Reaper or Death)
• The arrangement of the seven halls
• The rooms of the palace, lined up in a series,
  allegorically represent the stages of life.
• Their colors, particularly the black (death) and
  red (blood) of the westernmost room with its
  ebony clock marking the inevitable passage of
  time.

No matter how beautiful the castle, how
luxuriant the clothing, or how rich the food, no
mortal, not even a prince, can escape death.
-Sparknotes.com
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Symbols

• Symbols are people, places, events, or things
  that stand for ideas larger than themselves.

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(No Transcript)
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Symbolism

• What symbols do you see in this story?

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The Seven Rooms

• Blue- East, windows the same color
• Purple- windows the same color
• Green- windows the same color
• Orange- windows the same color
• White- windows the same color
• Violet- windows the same color
• Black- West, blood-red windows

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Other Symbols Meanings

1. The Ebony Clock
2. The Masquerade Ball
3. wearing masks, anonymous could represent
   everyone
4. Plague(The Red Death)
5. The Uninvited Guest

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The Seven Rooms What do they symbolize?

• Where does the sun rise/set?
• East West
• Which color symbolizes death?
• Black
• A day can represent a persons life
• Sunrise is birth
• Sunset(or night) is death

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The Ebony ClockWhat does it mean?

• Time running out?
• Mortality time running out eventually ending in
  death

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The Uninvited Guest?

• A representation of death (specifically The Red
  Death) that comes to kill Prince Prospero and the
  rest of the nobles.

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Theme?

• No one, no matter how rich or powerful, can
  escape the slow march of timeand ultimately
  death.

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