What effect does the fear of death have on Poe’s characters in “The Premature Burial” and “The Masque of the Red Death?”
Edgar Allan Poe’s Premature Burial and “The Masque of the Red Death” are horror stories about deaths. The author uses death as the main theme in all the stories by exposing the protagonists to dangerous scenes of death. For instance, in Premature Burial, there is the fear of being buried alive as the narrator describes the sufferings of the characters. This is because the character suffers from catalepsy. This is a condition whereby the victim randomly fall because of an unconscious condition. Therefore, the victim is afraid that one day the villagers will bury him alive because they believe he is dead (Poe 16). For example, in the initial instance, the condition was evident when the dead’s tomb was reopened. During the second occasion, the victim gained consciousness in time to avoid being buried. During this period, it is evident that they were thought to be indefinable facts of people that were buried alive since most villagers kept disappearing from the community (Poe 19). This is because they were incorrectly judged to be dead by physicians. This prompted the establishment of social roups whose agendas were to stop the burial of living people. Interestingly, the villagers invented caskets with sirens that would be used to raise alarms after gaining consciousness. Therefore, in order to show the mysterious conditions that people undergo while still living, the villagers would confirm the health conditions of the affected inviduals before pronouncing them dead (Poe 23).
In The “Masque of the Red Death,” the story revolves around Prince Prospero’s efforts to evade a risky epidemic called the Red Death. Prince Prospero decides to stay in his abbey instead of walking around the village. The story employs traditions of supernatural fiction, since it talks about the predictability of death. The prince decorates his room with distinct colours during one of his celebrations with his friends. However, it appears that no matter how stylish the castle and clothing, or how rich a person is, he cannot escape death (Zimmerman 61). This is because a person cannot use his wealth or possessions to avoid death or fend off the normal disastrous evolution of life. This shows that it is human nature to try to avoid death by going for medical check-ups daily; however, when death comes knocking, no man can stop it. Poe’s main aim is to instil fears in the readers by exposing the horrific nature of death and revealing the various means that it occurs (Zimmerman 66). Therefore, death is inevitable, and no person can avoid it. This implies that humanity’s inexperience of death is a main contributor to the terror experienced. In the case of the celebrating sycophants, their inexperience results from their separation with the common people. However, the secretive guest lightens the level to which Prospero and his visitors police the restrictions of social settlement. In the two stories, death is a common element that mainly affects the characters because of fear. The fear of death makes people lose their knowledge and understanding the nature of the threat. People forget that others have died from the same causes without escaping, and it is now their turn to die. Attempting to avoid death will only bring terrifying scenarios and consequences that will affect the mind such as untimely deaths of family members or villagers. This leads to death that occurs after enduring all those mysterious encounters (Zimmerman 74).
Essay Question 2:
Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson and Thoreau were actually among a fairly tight group. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville all knew each other well; they were friends and neighbors. They knew well the works of Poe (who died in 1849); he in turn wrote about Emerson. Although they all had their own individual style and vision, they influenced each other. Discuss the similarities and contrasts in these writers based on your understanding of the Romantic and Transcendentalist movements, the era, the authors, and the works themselves.
The writers had similarities and differences in their writing skills and styles that were evident in their pieces. These pieces are classified as American Romanticism, as they belong around the period of Wordsworth’s poems. The authors, namely Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, and Thoreau, produced their works on similar themes of religion and culture. For instance, Romantism stressed self-knowledge and creativity, and the Romantic movement aligned itself alignment against the obligation of power by exclusive classes (Gunderson 74). The unique circumstances of the western border included the communal challenges of anti-slavery and women’s rights crusade, which generated situations that derailed expectations and approaches of the society. The authors also validated strong feeling as a reliable source of artistic experience, placing new weight on such emotions as anxiety, shock, horror and awe. These were evident when provoking the reader to a sense of sublimity of nature and its scenic qualities. Both of these were relatively new visual categories presented by Romantic writers as resources for aesthetic appreciation and spiritual uplift (Jordan 230). Another quite diverse influence to the romantic movement was the sensibility associated with Gothic passion. The authors attempted to use the ideals of balance and rationalism, which made their readers seek out the agitated, spiritual, fanatical escapades of frightened protagonists and heroines under the control of scary, secretive forces. Even though most Romantic works revolve around fear or rage, he motive strength behind these passions is most commonly an association between lovers. This is because, in the classical world, love had always been equal to sex. The Romans, however, treated it in a sceptical manner. The feudal musicians had distinguished courteous infidelity according to the mostly false code that little replicated the lives of real men and women while supporting physicians’ premise that idealistic passion was a fatal infection (Jordan 230). This implies that troubadour idea of courtly love share some elements with Romantive view of love, but some still differed between the two perspectives.
However, the authors also expressed distinctions in their works such romantive movement’s perspective against troubadour ideas because of the different cultures. They also used different roles for their characters. For instance, somes writers such as Emerson expressed the subject of self-empowerment as one of his most significant articles, in which he stimulated his audience to discard the burdens to social traditionalism and believe in themselves. Emerson was instrumental in recognizing that confidence would help people accomplish their plans. This encouraged the concept of individualism in the era instead of collectivism (Gunderson 117). It is also evident that the authors represented different cultures that faced diverse problems. For instance, Thoreau’s works were appreciations of the productivity of existence in nature. Additionally, his works reviewed the hurried hassled waste of life triggered by the hunt for redundant material, properties, and indulgences. There were different perspectives from Hawthorne and Melville, who mainly focussed on general issues of the people like traditional values about the dead in the community. Another example by Thoreau was about acquiring wealth through individual efforts (Jordan 235). For example, Thoreau exhibited how the universe opened to people at Walden as they became more distanced from civilization and its burdens. The plan for the experiment was not only as an effort of personal civilization, but also a cautionary appeal to audiences. The intention was to guide those audiences who wanted to appreciate that a new liberty was accessible to them if they would identify the impairments of conformist patterns (Gunderson 123).
Works Cited
Gunderson, Jessica. Romanticism. Mankato, Minn: Creative Education, 2009. Print.
Jordan, Cynthia S. Second Stories: The Politics of Language, Form, and Gender in Early
American Fictions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Print.
Poe, Edgar A. Premature Burial. Lynden, Wash: Classic House, 1980. Print.
Zimmerman, Brett. Edgar Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2005. Print.
