Death in Edgar Allan Poe (Essay Sample)

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Death in Edgar Allan Poe
An analysis of Poe’s two short stories
Edgar Allan Poe’s works are usually described as dark, eerie and profound psychological explorations of the depths of human nature. This paper will analyze two of his works namely The Premature Burial and The Masque of Red Death and discuss the recurring themes among them.
The Premature Burial and The Masque of Red Death
The Premature Burial is a collection of accounts about individuals who have suffered from premature death and with a malicious stroke of fate have been buried alive. His first account concerns that of the "wife of one of the most respectable citizens-a lawyer of eminence and member of Congress…" (Poe, p. 309) After an illness has befallen this lady, that which no physician has the ability to cure, she suffered from premature death. She was then deposited to the family vault only to realize, after three years, that she was actually alive when she was left at the vault. She struggled to get out but to no avail and so "she remained, and thus, she rotted erect" (Poe, p. 310). Another account concerns a lovely young heroine from an illustrious family. Then there was the story of premature death of an officer of the artillery who accidentally fell from his unmanageable horse. The account about the premature death of a certain Mr. Edward Stapleton followed.
These narratives are particularly interesting which, "through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated" (Poe, p. 313). Then, Poe narrated his own actual experience of the matter. Poe wrote of vivid images about the illness that he suffered, often standing on the edge where Death calls out from below. And so, to prevent any premature burial, he asked that no one should bury him until "decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther preservation impossible" (Poe, p. 317). But "what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man?" (Poe, 317) In one instance, after a gunning expedition with a friend, they were forced to stay in a small cabin in Richmond because of the storm. There, he suffered again from his illness but it was momentous epiphany for Poe. After the incident, he discarded any subjects that spoke of Death and became a "new man”; his terrors, "like the Demons… they must sleep, or they will devour us – they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish" (Poe, p. 318).
The Masque of the Red Death similarly tackled the subject of Death and the unrelenting struggle to escape its woe in the face of the feebleness of human nature, always prone to delusions. The story starts with the "Red Death”, the crimson scourge that devastated the country. And there lived a man named Prince Prospero who "was happy and dauntless and sagacious" (Poe, 1842, p. 319). When half the population of his dominions has fallen victims to the plague, Prince Prospero decided to retire to the "deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys." The abbey was constructed according to his liking and ordered his men to secure so that the "Red Death" will never penetrate its walls, "the external world could take care of itself" (Poe, 1842, p. 320). After five or six months of seclusion, he called for a masked ball while the pestilence raged abroad.
Then, the narrator described how the rooms looked like in Prince Prospero’s castle. It was different from the usual castles where suites form a long and straight vista and separated only by sliding doors. Prince Prospero has the taste for the bizarre. Each chamber in his castle has its own color motif – from blue and purple to deep red and black. No one, however, had dared enter the western black chamber. There was also a gigantic clock of ebony that stood against the western wall. But in spite of these, the place was otherwise gay and magnificent for the "tastes of the duke were peculiar" (Poe, 1842, p. 320). And there came a stranger "neither wit nor propriety existed… the mummer had gone so far to assume the type of the Red Death" (Poe, p. 322). When this creature caught the eyes of Prince Prospero, he was aghast and ordered his men to seize him. When they came face to face, the masked stranger, with rapid impetuosity, pulled a dagger and struck Prince Prospero to his death. Appalled by such horror, the revelers pounced upon the stranger only to find out it has no tangible form. Then, one by one the revelers dropped dead and "Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" (Poe 1842, p. 323).
Coming to terms with Death
The recurrent theme in these stories is Death and in The Premature Burial, it is concerned about "certain themes of which the interests is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction”, that is the idea of a premature death. Poe is foreshadowing the accounts that he was about to tell, which rather peculiarly, may well be entirely truthful or not. Here, we notice how Poe painted the cunning and beauty of Life more than Death itself. The very idea of premature death shows how Poe’s characters simply do not want to perish, they try to outsmart even the even the most certain, the inevitable end that is Death. But "who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" And in doing so, it may also be the case that while this work is rather a celebration of life than its cessation, it shows how humanity, our lives, is a ceaseless and forlorn struggle against the inevitable.
This was true for The Masque of Red Death where despite the concerted efforts of Prince Prospero to evade the crimson scourge that is th...