The Romantics came to believe that the imagination was
able to apprehend truths that the rational mind could not reach. These truths were
usually accompanied by powerful emotion. To the Romantic sensibility the imagination,
spontaneity, individual feelings, and wild nature were of greater value than reason,
logic, planning, and cultivation. Thus, readers have come to perceive the Dark Romantic
approach, which is Poe's, in the development of the Gothic genre, with its wild, haunted
landscapes supernatural events, and mysterious castles. With Poe especially, the Gothic
took a turn toward the psychological exploration of the human
mind.
Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" with its castle-like
abbey of ironed gates and lofty walls and mysterious rooms is certainly a Gothic
setting. As an allegory, the entire story can be viewed as symbolic, representing a
truth about a condition of life: man's fear of death, sickness, madness, and the end of
the world and his inability to control his fate.
Indeed,
the psychological aspect of Poe's tale is suggested in the very title. The masque was a
ball in which people disguised themselves so that they could more freely enjoy
themselves. In the story, the thousand "hale and light-hearted friends" masquerade
themselves in an effort to fool the Red Death as they barricade themselves in Prince
Prospero's castle. The atmosphere in the castle is "an assembly of phantasms." Of
course, the most preternatural of all is the Red Death himself who appears "like a thief
in the night" in the "blood-bedewed halls of their revel"--a desperate attempt by the
guests to stave off their fates. Time stops as the "life of the ebony clock" goes out,
as do the flames of the tripods. The dark region reigns over the prince's kingdom, the
dark side of nature whose puissance the anti-Romantics such as Poe recognizes in his
macabre tale.
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