Prince Prospero's The Masque Of The Red Death

"The Masque of the Red Death" can be seen as an allegory about death. In the story Prince Prospero tries to avoid the deadly plague by gathering some friends and going to “one of his castellated abbeys” (687). Abbeys are usually a place where monks and nuns in the religious life live. This could be interpreted to mean that when faced with death people seek out religious or spiritual sanctuary. The colors of the rooms are significant. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example in blue—and vividly blue were its windows” (688). The writer progresses down corridors describing rooms of various colors until reaching the western or black chamber. The walk down the corridor, from east to west, seems to signify birth, life and death, similar
to the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The end of the story tells “one by one dropped the revelers in the blood bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in despairing posture of his fall” (691). The narrator could not have been a person there, because all that was left was “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (691). Poe’s horror tales in “Tell-Tale” and “Cask” were narrated by the murderers if he follows the same pattern then Death itself would be telling this story.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" the author identifies the narrator in the beginning of the story when he writes, “[n]evertheless in this mansion of gloom I now propose myself a sojourn of some weeks. Roderick Usher has been one of my boon companions in boyhood…” (654). The narrator is one of Robert’s boyhood friend’s who visits him. We know nothing of the narrator except that he flees the house agast in the ending (666). The story mainly focuses on Roderick who is tormented by his own mind and to a lesser degree the symbiotic relationship between Roderick and his twin sister. I did not find any allegory in this story.