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The Masque of Red Death

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The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

1. Plot. The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and one thousand other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by convulsions and sweat blood. The plague is said to kill within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large. They intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.

One night, Prospero holds a masquerade ball to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey. Each of the first six rooms is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light, "a deep blood color". Because of this chilling pairing of colors, very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room. The same room is the location of a large ebony clock that ominously clangs at each hour, upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing. Once the chiming stops, everyone immediately resumes the masquerade.

At the chiming of midnight, the revelers and Prospero notice a figure in a dark, blood-splattered robe resembling a funeral shroud. The figure's face resembles a mask that looks much like the rigid face of a corpse, and exhibits the traits of the Red Death. Gravely insulted, Prospero demands to know the identity of the mysterious guest so that they can hang him. The guests are too afraid to approach the figure, instead letting him pass through the seven chambers. The Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger until he is cornered in the seventh room. When the figure turns to face him, the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead. The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe, only to find to their horror that there is no solid form underneath. Only then do they realize that the figure is the Red Death itself, and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease. The final line of the story sums up, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all." 2. Structure.
Exposition: description of life of that time, people, their lifetime
Complication: conflict between Prospero and other people, conflict of death and life.
Crises: the moment of epic confrontation, when the Red Death turns around to face Prospero.
Climax: Prospero runs for him and falls down and dies immediately
Resolution: the Masque is vanished and death of others 3. Characters. Round: Prospero Dynamic: the Red Death. (The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave; The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse; His vesture was dabbled in blood--and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror) Stock: the guests

4. Position of the narrator. The narrator speaks in the third-person and doesn't occupy any particular character's point of view. In fact, he doesn't even have much to do with the characters at all. Most of the time he's more interested in describing the setup of Prospero's party (creating the "atmosphere") 5. Setting. it devastated the countryside of Medieval Europe beginning in the 14th century, and occasionally caused people to shut themselves up for protection from the contaminated. But the symptoms of the diseases bear little relation to each other, besides the fact that they're both fatal. For all we know, the Red Death is entirely fictional, conjured up by Poe, as we said, just for spine-tingling effect. The story is set in Prince Prospero's luxurious "castellated abbey", hidden somewhere in his kingdom. To call it "cut off" is an understatement. Not only is it "deeply secluded" (hidden in a hard-to-reach spot), but Prospero and his followers have also welded the doors shut, so no one can get in or out. Everyone inside is having one big party; everyone outside is dying to get in. Well, actually just dying.

Literary devices:
Epithet: so fatal, or so hideous (pestilence-язва), was happy and dauntless and
Sagacious (was happy and dauntless and sagacious—отважен и изобретателен); This was an extensive and magnificent structure; A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. It was a voluptuous (сладострастный) scene, that masquerade; These were seven--an imperial suite (амфилада); the blood-tinted panes (окна); magnificent revel; His plans were bold and fiery(смелы и дерзки); blood-coloured panes
Simile: Blood was its Avatar and its seal; He had come like a thief in the night.
Metathor: the redness and the horror of blood; pest ban (печать отвержения); and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster(замыслы полны варварским великолепием); There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions; And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay (жизнь часов иссякла с жизнью последнего из собутыльников) Symbolism: The black and blood red room seems so obviously to represent death. The big, black, creep clock is located in the black room means a symbol of death. The effect is enhanced even more by that way the clock has of stopping all the dancing and music – in short, all the life – of the party, and making everyone laugh nervously. The abbey is a place of confinement(заключение). It's cut off and secluded. Beyond that, its doors are welded shut from the inside. Which means everyone's trapped: no one can get in or out. The sense of confinement (a staple of Gothic lit) is crucial to giving the story its "threatening" atmosphere. The Red Death is just a slightly revamped image of plain old Death. The story shows how it can't be escaped, and how Prospero's attempt to escape it is doomed(рок) ( red's a brighter and more dramatic color than black) Allegory: the suite is an allegory of human life. Each room, in other words, corresponds to a different "stage" of human life, which its color suggests. The first clue that the suite is allegorical is that the rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with "beginnings," and birth, because the sun rises in the east; west (the direction of the sunset) is associated with endings, and death. The blue room, which is furthest to the east, represents birth. The color suggests the "unknown" from which a human being comes into the world. The next room is purple, a combination of blue (birth) and red (associated with life, intensity) suggests the beginnings of growth. Green, the next color, suggests the "spring" of life (youth), orange the summer and autumn of life. White, the next color, suggests age – think white hair, and bones. Violet (a combination of purple and blue, or purple and grey) is a shadowy color, and represents darkness and death. And black, obviously, is death. But our guess is that Poe wanted to save the color red in this story especially for its association with blood, fear, and death. That means it's always goes with black, just like the Red Death and the darkness go together at the end of the story, and red and black go together in the seventh room. If there were a red room, it would confuse the color system and obscure the meaning of "red." The fact that the revelers don't go into the black room indicates their fear of death. But besides that, remember that the Red Death walks from the blue room to the black room – it walks the course of life, leading from birth to death. Prospero follows that course when he chases it: he runs from the blue room to the black room, where he dies. His followers also rush into the black room to unmask the Red Death, and also die. So the course the characters walk in the story is both literally and metaphorically the course from life to death. A lot of the same stuff that suggests the masquerade is a dream – hat sense of unreality, hypermeaningfulness, exaggerated colors and imagery – may also suggest that the masquerade is a product of the imagination…an artist's imagination. For more on the art theme, check out Prospero's character analysis. Genre: Horror or Gothic Fiction, Fantasy, Literary Fiction Tone: Dark, Grave, and Ominous; at moments Delirious Objects: chamber (котел); glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm(блеск, пышность)

Poe's Red Death, it devastated the countryside of Medieval Europe beginning in the 14th century, and occasionally caused people to shut themselves up for protection from the contaminated. But the symptoms of the diseases bear little relation to each other, besides the fact that they're both fatal. For all we know, the Red Death is entirely fictional, conjured up by Poe, as we said, just for spine-tingling effect. grotesque

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