PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Today, January 19th, is Edgar Allan Poe’s 210th birthday. To celebrate, I wanted to take this opportunity to go over my favorite tale of his. When you ask most people what their top Poe story is, you usually get the same answers: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, The Black Cat, Annabelle Lee and maybe a The Cask of Amontillado… MAYBE. But none of those tales have hit me like The Masque of the Red Death, which was written in 1842. No story has seemed nearly as scary as the tragic narrative of Prince Prospero and his rich friends as they unknowingly walled themselves in with death. If you haven’t read The Masque of the Red Death, I will tell you now that I will be discussing the ending, so there be spoilers ahead. If you haven’t read the story, GO READ IT, and then come back. I’ll wait.
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all…”
If you haven’t read this short story, it is set in the heart of a plague named the Red Death, so called because it causes profuse bleeding from the pores and death within half an hour of exposure. Prince Prospero and 1,000 noble men and women have barricaded themselves in his abbey, away from sickness and mortality, and spend their time having grand masquerades to try and forget what is going on outside their walls. His abbey consists of seven rooms, all decorated in color: blue, purple, green, orange, white and violet. The final room is black with glass windows of blood red, and is so unsettling, partygoers stay out of it. There is a huge black clock that chimes on the hour, halting the continuous party until it stops ringing. All of this is happening as the people outside of the abbey walls are dying swift and painful deaths.
One night, a stranger in a costume mimicking a burial cloth and a mask of a corpse shows up at the masquerade. Prospero chases the intruder with a knife through the colored rooms until they reach the final, black room. As the stranger begins to lift his mask, Prospero yells and dies. As the nobles rush to unmask the intruder, they find that there is no body within the costume. It is at that point they realize they can no longer hide from the Red Death, and they all begin to die, one by one, and the last of the party members dies at the final chime of the clock.
That is TERRIFYING. This story just goes to show that, no matter who you are or how much money you have, death and disease sees no rank or stature and will come for you just the same. While Poe’s other stories portray a mood of sadness and loss or even madness, The Masque of the Red Death just radiates fear and the pompousness of thinking that money and status will keep you safe. Not only is Poe straightforward in touching on arrogance and fear, but he is a master of metaphor in his very intricate description of Prince Prospero’s halls. He goes into so much detail of what those rooms look like that you can see them in your mind. The halls of color seem to represent the phases of life, and as Prospero runs through the halls chasing the stranger, he is inevitably running straight to his demise.
It is for good reason that Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the masters of horror to this day, so celebrate his 210th birthday by reading some of the best horror stories that the world has to offer. There is even a film based on the tale from 1964 starring Vincent Price!
Is this your favorite Poe story? Let us know in the comments!
