Poe' s Macabre Plot...

   "The Masque of the Red Death" is  an allegoric story about the human eternal desire to avoid death and the absolute futility of such miserable efforts.We can easily view the Prince's masquerade ball as an allegory for the inevitable procession of life into death. Prospero's seven rooms are the eloquent symbols of the seven periods of his life. It can be easily proved by the fact that the first room is located on the eastern side of the corridor, and the eastern side is usually associated with the sun rising or with the commencement of life. The most horrible seventh room is located on the  west side of the corridor, in the direction of the setting sun or the inescapable death. Black and red colours in the last chamber create an oppressive, gloomy atmosphere and remind us of blood, nightmares and sufferings.

   The careless Prince with his loud company  attempt to defeat their fears of the Red Death that has taken away millions of innocent people. In the abbey they hide from the terrifying  Red Death and constantly invent various funny activities to engage themselves. The ignorant "party-goers" have shut themselves in the golden cage refusing to face the truth and fight against the circumstances. But the Red Death follows them  off the reel reminding about her presence by means of the never-ending stokes of the clock. When the clock strikes midnight, indicating the end of the day and  consequently the end of a human existence, the figure of the Red Death appears on the threshold. Prospero's orders to seize, unmask, and hang the terrible enemy emphasize three aspects of death that cannot be changed. To seize death would be to prevent it from doing harm, to unmask it would be to show its secrets, and to hang it would be to kill it. It is clearly impossible to do any of these three, and accordingly, when the crowd manages  to overcome its fear and tries to catch the mystical figure, they find nothing to grasp.When faced with the figure of the Red Death, Prospero is rooted to the floor  in the first room at first but then  he gets into the seventh room, where he dies, caught at last by the fatal Red Death.

  The events in the analysed story are presented in a  detailed way, that contributes to our highly sensitive perception of the plot. From the point of view of presentation the text is the 3^rd person narrative.Poe uses this technique  to make the story more objective and free from any personal attitude for the readers to evaluate the actions and sayings of the personages and come to their own conclusions.The contextual type of the story under consideration is the author’s narrative description.