Question

Which three parts of this excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" highlight the suggestion that the powerful and wealthy in the story are insensitive toward the outbreak of the disease and those who are suffering?

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. (The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.) And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour. (But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.) This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. (This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.) They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. (The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure.) There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death." (It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.)

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Answer 1

The parts of excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" which highlight the suggestion that the powerful and wealthy in the story are insensitive toward the outbreak of the disease and those who are suffering are:

“But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.”

“The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think.”

“The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure.”

The story “The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe is literally and allegorically about death. Prince Prospero wanted to hide from death but is left not rescued from it. He arranged a party where he invited people from his kingdom. He ordered to decorate the halls with single colors each. The last hall was colored black which symbolizes death and the windows were painted red. There was an ebony clock which strikes everyone’s attention at the passing of every hour. Though people were busy in the celebrating the party with music and orchestra but at every hour when the clock rings which caught everyone’s attention. The tone in which Poe describes the rooms, the clock, the ringing of the clock, the activities of the people and the entry of death in the party gives an insight about the play that death is inevitable. Death is the central theme of the play. The Poe wants to focus on the issue that no one can be rescued from death by applying any means.