The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

Danse macabre.

My original plan was to post a Halloween double-feature review with The Masque of the Red Death, but that obviously didn’t happen. Now it’s nearly December, which makes this a bit late for spooky season, but whatever. Edgar Allan Poe is welcome any time of year, so here we go.

One of the few certainties in this life is death. Rich or poor, death does not discriminate. It is the one thing none of us can outrun. Still, we love to pretend otherwise. Poe taps into that illusion with Prospero’s partygoers, who barricade themselves inside a lavish, fortified abbey while a deadly plague devastates the world outside. They convince themselves they’re untouchable, safe behind stone walls and silken fabrics.

And then the mysterious stranger arrives.

This is where the story’s creep factor really kicks in. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way the mysterious figure simply appears in the middle of their revelry. Silent, uninvited, and dressed like a walking corpse. No one knows how he got in. No one speaks to him. They just see him and suddenly the whole atmosphere shifts from uninhibited decadence to incomprehensible fear. Poe's inimitable brand of horror comes from the building upon this gradually increasing fear that these people can no longer hide from their mortality.  This slow realization that death has literally slipped through the cracks and is now calmly walking among them. 

There's plenty of symbolism and allegory to unpack here but what keeps me coming back to this story is the gothic atmosphere: that creeping sense of inevitability, the haunting visuals, and the delicious dread that only Poe seems able to conjure.

You can read this story HERE.