The Red Death Figurative Language

Most people’s perception of fear comes from negative standpoint, where fear is the evil villain that you try to get away from, but can fear also be helpful? In all good stories, there is always a dilemma, and with the struggle of that problem comes fear, but what truly shows that character’s mental strength or personality is how they handle that problem. In the stories, ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,” ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,”and ¨The Masque of the Red Death,” all of the main characters experience fear, but handle it in very different ways. Whether they use that fear to help them overcome the problem, or their fear results in paranoia. Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism, irony, and figurative language to portray how fear distorts the emotional state
of the main character and leads them to their destiny.

In the “Tale-Tell Heart,” Poe uses symbolism to show how fear distorts the narrator’s mind and eventually leads him to paranoia. In the story, the narrator is completely horrified by the old man’s eye and decides to kill the man because it is the only way to get rid of it. The narrator explains, “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees--very gradually--I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever”(pg73). The author is symbolizing the old man’s eye to judgement, and it’s the narrator's fear of scrutiny that causes him to want to kill the old man. As the narrator goes on to his plan of killing man, he begins to hear the beating of the old man’s heart. This symbolizes the narrator’s guilty conscience of killing the man, but it's his obsession of the eye that fights his conscience and leads to to finish the deed. Even after the man is dead, the narrator still hears the beating of the old man’s heart and this causes him to givingly confess to the police. The author is trying to teach that people can not run away from their conscience, it will always catch up to them no matter how much they fight it.

In ”The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe uses irony to show that people cannot escape death.
In the story, Prince Prospero tries to isolate himself in his castle, with the iron doors welded shut and even entertainers and his court to accompany him. He does this to prevent the Red Death from infecting him, but, towards the end of the story, a masked figure, symbolizing the Red Death, reveals itself. As a result, Prince Prospero rages over how anyone could have gotten in, but it turns out that Death was there along and he eventually kills everyone. Poe states, “And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night…..And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death help illimitable dominion over all”(pg.61). It is ironic how Prince Prospero did everything to keep the Red Death out of his castle, but Death was there all along. He was so fearful of Death that he actually thought that he could prevent it. But of course, when “the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last gay”(61). The masked figure took the lives of all the people in Prince Prospero’s castle because people cannot escape death. Poe is trying to explain that Death will always be apart of a person’s destiny and it’s better just live life to the fullest, rather than letting the fear of Death take over one’s
happiness.

In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe uses figurative language to show how hope and logic can help people overcome bad situations. Throughout most of the story, the narrator is being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. Although he being put in these horrible situations, he still keeps a calm head. In the beginning, his dungeon is described to be pitch black, but he still is very aware of his surroundings as shown in this metaphor: ”The blackness of eternal night encompassed me...The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay there quietly, and made an effort to exercise my reason”(pg.64). In this quotation, it shows that even though the narrator had this fear of being tortured, he still used his reasoning and this caused him to actually escape the dungeon and survive. The reason he is able to overcome his this fear and use logic is because he has hope. It is his constant belief in himself that causes him not to become insane and instead to become resourceful, observant, and good under pressure. This shows that a little hope can go a long way in life and to always believe in yourself.

Throughout the stories of ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,” ¨The Masque of the Red Death,” and ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe uses symbolism, irony, and figurative language to show how all the main characters experience fear and they way in which they handle it, decides their destiny. In ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator afraid the old manś eye and his obsession with it leads him to kill the old man. After, the guilt of the manś death causes him to turn very paranoid, which why he givingly confesses to police even after they believed that nothing suspicious was going on. In ¨The Masque of the Red Death,” the Prince Prospero tries to keep out the Red Death and his fear of Death take over his life and he dies anyways because people can't run away from Death. In ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,”the narrator is being very brutally tortured, but he uses hope and logic to help him overcome that fear and survive. Fear does not always have to be negative, it depends on whether you uses it become more aware, like the narrator in ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,” or you let it control your life, which leads to paranoia. Poe teaches that hope and logic can let us overcome the fear of bad situations and lead us to a better destiny.