Themes and Symbols in Poes The Masque (Mask) of the Red Death Essay

Themes and Symbols in The mask of the Red Death The literature of Edgar Allan Poe dejection all be viewed as extremely simple or incredibly complicated, and his short story The masquerade of The Red Death is no exception. This story can either be viewed as a simple story of horror, with no deeper imbedded meanings, or it can be broken down into many symbols with several possible meanings. possibly this story tells of the struggle between man and death, perhaps it speaks of an authors struggles and dreams, or perhaps it was merely written as a tale of horror. Arguments can be made to support all of these overall themes, and there are blush more points of view offered about the story that can be explored if psyche wishes to find a view with which he or she can discontinue understand or identify. One possible theme of the story is that it is postcode more than the imaginings of a dreaming mind. According to Richard Wilbur, this is partially shown through the geometry contain ed in the story. He states that, Poe quite explicitly identifies regular angular forms with allday reason, and the circle, oval, or fluid arabesque with otherworldly imagination (269). If Poe used unusually shaped dwell to show dreams, and the supernatural, then with his description of the seven chambers being, so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect (qtd. In Wilbur 269), it would appear as though either a dream is in progress, or something supernatural is taking place. In this interpretation of the story, Poe is taken quite literally in some ways, such as his terming the lords and ladies at the costume ball as being dr... ... to a reader personally, and give that person an opportunity to form an individual vox populi over it. Works Cited Etienne, Louis. The American Storytellers-Edgar Allan Poe. Affidavits of Genius. Ed. Jean Alexander. Port Was hington, N.Y. Kennikat Press, 1971. 134-139. Halliburton, David. Edgar Allan Poe A Phenomenological View. Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1973. Poe, Edgar Allan. The mask Of The Red Death. Bridges Literature across Cultures. Eds. Gilbert H. muser and John A. Williams. New York McGraw-Hill, 1994. 495-498. Wilbur, Richard. The House of Poe. The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press, 1966. 269-277. Womack, Martha. Edgar Allan Poes The Masque of the Red Death. The Poe Decoder. Online. Internet. 20 May 1998.