Irony In The Masque Of The Red Death

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The Symbolism and Irony in Poe’s Works
In the stories The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe there are strong uses of symbolism and irony. In each of these stories the symbolism and irony are found in similar places, such as in the setting, the characters, and the other important objects in the stories. Poe used similar meanings in these stories for certain objects, such as clocks and there was a symbol of the mental capacity of each of the main characters in his stories.
In the story The Masque of the Red Death, there is a great deal of symbolism throughout the story. One of the largest symbolic parts of the story is the way the suite is separated into the seven rooms. Each room is …show more content…
The two main characters in this story are Montresor and Fortunado. In the story the main character, Montresor, is eager for revenge against his acquaintance Fortunado, because he has insulted him. Montresor’s greatest treasure is the fact that he is able to come up with the perfect murder, and will cause it to be that it could never be solved with all the work he put into it. Mon Tresor in French means my treasure, so Montresor’s greatest treasure is his own mind. The other main character, Fortunado, believes himself to be a great connoisseur of wines and is greatly intrigued by the idea of being allowed to drink such a fantastic wine like the Amontillado offered. During the Carnival festivities, Fortunado has chosen to wear a cap with bells, the typical headwear for a Fool. At the point that Montresor approaches Fortunado during Carnival, he has already become drunk and is no longer completely coherent in what is occurring around him. Once he was offered the Amontillado, it was all he could think of, all the way through the catacombs. Fortunado showed his foolish nature in this instance by not wondering why they would store the wine in the catacombs or wondering why someone who was only an acquaintance would wish to share sure an expensive wine with him. The setting of the story The Cask of Amontillado begins in an Italian city during Carnival. “It was about dusk, one …show more content…
The title of this story is a symbol as well, the story in a way is expressed from the heart itself because it beating during the interrogation is what leads to the tale of the old man’s death being told. The Heart can also be understood as a symbol of the narrator’s guilt. The narrator only heard the heart at two different times, as he was murdering the old man and as he was being interrogated. In moments of great stress, our hearts will begin to beat faster and the heartbeat he heard could have very well been his own heart reacting to what he had done. The heart could also be a symbol of time; in the story the heart of the old man would have been the clock telling the time of when the old man had died. Another object in the story that is very symbolic is the eye of the old man. The old man’s eye was cloudy and reminded the narrator of a vulture’s eye. “His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it. When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold.”(The Telltale Heart, Page 1-2) The narrator saw the eye as if it had some sort of abilities to observe occurrences beyond what was actually happening around them. The narrator
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