The Masque of the Red Death

Hello! Welcome to the Young Reader's Review! I’m very sorry for not being active, I was on vacation and now I am very busy with schoolwork.  But here I am now with a brand new review! This review is a bit different than the others, because it’s on a story that is no more than 5 pages. It is written by one of the greatest American authors and is called: The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.

I am not only writing this today because I found this story particularly interesting, but also because I have realized that handfuls of teenagers would not know who I am talking about when I say the name “Edgar Allan Poe”. It’s a bit…sad. It’s sad to think that our generation isn’t exposed to this literature. Classics are what inspired the books we have today. Anyways, if you are a teenager, read the classics!
So this story, The Masque of the Red Death, is particularly interesting because it doesn't only reflect Edgar Poe’s life, but also society. When you will hear the story, you might not understand but I will explain.

So the story takes place in a country that is not named but we know that a fatal pandemic disease has come and devastated the country. This pestilence is called “the Red Death”. It sounds a lot like the disease “the Black Death” that was probably one of the most fatal pandemics in human history that took place in the fourteenth century. Coming back to the Red Death, it is completely fictitious and the symptoms are said to be “sharp pains, sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.” A bit disgusting right?

Despite this horrible disease, the prince, Prince Prospero, is described as a happy man. This prince is happy because since he is rich, and not out in the streets exposed to this disease, he has nothing to worry about. He is completely oblivious about the situation his country is in. He even literally says that the external world can take care of itself. This situation is a metaphor about Edgar Allan Poe’s life. The Allans were a rich family, so they didn’t have to worry about diseases and whatnot. They were protected by their social class. It’s like Prince Prospero who has walls of iron around his ‘castellated abbey’. Also the obliviousness of the prince recalls the fact that Poe’s wife died of tuberculosis. You must be wondering what in the world that has to do with anything. Poe, was completely oblivious to the fact that his wife had tuberculosis and apparently he wrote this story at the time she was dying of it. 

One day, this prince decides to do a masquerade, in other words a party. He invited a thousand friends from the knights and dames of his court to come. The party was very elegant and he had provided all the different ways of being entertained. There were ballet-dancers, musicians, buffoons…But the place where the party was held was described as bizarrely shaped and that the rooms were irregularly disposed. What I love about Poe, is the way that he describes things. When he describes something, it’s almost as if you’re there. As if you can almost feel the things, touch them, hear them…It’s really wonderful. The ways he describes the rooms and how they’re packed with people, it’s very nice.

Continuing with the story, the party is a happy one, full with people and festivities. But, all of a sudden, a tall figure comes in. I don’t even know if you can call him a man. He wore clothes “of the grave”, he looked as stiff as a corpse and the mask he wore on his face was covered in blood. At first, the prince, shocked, thought that it was a joke and told the guards to take him away.

But then something happens that I would’ve never guessed…To know what happens you should simply read this short story! Not only is it short but it is extraordinarily well written and the vocabulary is not that hard. Like I said before, it is very interesting because it compares different social classes in allegory. So that was this week’s review! I’ll do my best to write another one soon. Leave a comment below and don’t forget to follow my Google account to get e-mails whenever I post something! (▰˘◡˘▰)