Figurative Language In Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

Thousands upon thousand are dropping like flies. Suddenly, whole towns are wiped out. The Bubonic Plague doesn’t pick or choose it victims, it terminates anyone it touches. Edgar Allen Poe portrays that death is inevitable no matter your social class or status in life, through the characterization of Prince Prospero, the countless examples of symbolism, and through the mass of figurative language in the “Masque of the Red Death.”
To begin, Poe portrays characterization through Prince Prospero as arrogant, dauntless, and ignorant. The reading describes Prospero as arrogant by saying, “When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from the knights and dames of his court…”(75-76). …show more content…
Poe uses a metaphor when he says, “...but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod…”This metaphor is comparing the masked visitor to King Herod by saying that the masked visitor had killed more people than Herod. His plan successfully carried out the demise of many people, just like Herod. In continuation, Poe uses a simile to add to the theme. ses the simile, “He had come like a thief in the night,¨ to describe the masked visitor. Just like the masked visitor, death can sneak up on anyone, ¨like a thief in the night.¨ Subsequently, Poe uses lots of imagery to portray the theme. The text describes the seventh apartment by saying, “The panes here were scarlet- a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind...and produces so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered…” As one can see, Poe uses ample amounts of imagery to describe the black room. All of the details really bring out the morbidity and the ailing feeling that it gave its visitors.
In cessation, Edgar Allen Poe portrays that death is inevitable no matter your social class or status in life through the characterization of Prince Prospero, ample examples of symbolism, and through figurative language in the “Masque of the Red Death.” This short story serves as a lesson that death can sometimes disguise itself as a peculiar visitor that interrupts life when we least expect it. Death is inevitable, no one can escape their ultimate

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Figurative Language In Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

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