Short Response 3 English

“…and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then there were the disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before” (Poe 39).

THIS RELATES TO HUMANS TODAY IGNORING SIGNS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION/POLITICAL UNREST/GROWING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, ETC.

The above quote is from the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. It describes the obviously concerned and unsettled partygoers each time they hear the chiming of the ebony clock in the black room every hour—a signal that the time of their death is approaching closer and closer, particularly at the hands of the “Red Death.”

With each hour, the guests of Prince Prospero’s castle party grew more nervous and distraught, failing to hide their emotions each time. In the back of their minds they know their death is imminent and inevitable, but they continue, attempting to avoid it. Most guests even refuse to enter the “black room,” which symbolizes the room of the Red Death, as there were “few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all” (Poe 39). When the clock strikes, “for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock” (Poe 40). The musicians would simultaneously “be constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound,” and the dancers would “perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay community” (Poe 39). Their faces had grown pale, and when the ringing was finally over, they all laughed nervously and slowly began dancing again.

Prince Prospero and his masqueraders are aware of their sinful behavior, laughing and carelessly having a good time while all the other citizens are dying brutally and painfully just outside the walls. They realize that at any moment they will receive the agonizing death they deserve for abandoning the rest of the country and allowing them to continue suffering. The clock reminds them at every hour as they inch nearer. At midnight when the clock chimed, a very disturbed looking individual was noticed among the other guests. Prospero himself was “seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder…” likely acknowledging the fact that the Red Death almost has a grasp on him (Poe 41). Once Prospero and all his guests fall victims to the Red Death, “the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay,” emphasizing the only purpose of the clock was to count down toward their death, updating them right on the dot every hour (Poe 42).

All this is to say that the Red Death is everywhere right outside the castle walls, bound to find its way inside, spreading and killing everyone like wildfire, and the partiers know it, which is why they immediately silence and stare when the clock chimes. Prince Prospero and the ones he chose to party inside his castle were ultimately trying to deny the fact that the Red Death would eventually make its way to them, acting disgusted and offended for one of the partiers to look as if they were affected by the illness, and trying their hardest to ignore the clock chimes leading up to his appearance—otherwise thought of as the “Red Death.”

Source:

1. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe.