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
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The Masquerade
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Literary Term Allusion

• Reference to a famous historical event, work of
  art or literature, or a literary figure to help
  explain or clarify a 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 also represents
  something else
• 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.
• On the allegorical level the ideas in the symbols
  of the story must be accessible to us.

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

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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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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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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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