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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page
paper argues that the short stories, The Masque Of Red Death and The
Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe, use the theme of death as the
foundation for life's experiences. Bibliography lists 8 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_KTmascas.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
In Masque, the inevitability of death serves as the prevailing theme and in Cask, it is life as death or life after death. "J. Gerald Kennedy argues: Unlike
most of his contemporaries, [Poe] refused to soften or idealize mortality and kept its essential horror in view But what is the "essential horror" Poe focuses on here -
the horror of mortality, of death as final, or the horror of a perceived life-in-death, of death as undying? It is not death but "the smile of the dead"
that Poe sees as horrifying" (cited in Brown 448). Plot The Masque Of The Red Death tells the story of Prince Prospero who rules at a time
when plague is depriving the kingdom as well as his subjects of life. The plague is known as the red death and is gruesome as well as quick in
its effects. The Prince calls into his fortress one thousand of his friends in an attempt to stave off death from the plague. They enter deep into the
bowels of the castle to an abbey, seal themselves away behind a "strong and lofty wall" with gates of iron (799). They sealed themselves in the extensive and magnificent
structure" leaving "means neither of ingress or egress" (799). David R. Dudley states: "The Masque of the Red Death is a vanitas tale, a memento mori. More
specifically, it is about the failure of art to stave off death. The fact that the narrator overlooks the necessity of his own death mirrors and mocks the cherished
illusions of immortality that art gives to both artist and audience. These illusions are vividly dramatized within the tale" (172). The art of which he speaks is seen
...