Michael Abadie
ENG 102
Miller
Masque of a Macabre Habitué
“He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel… And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (Poe 125).
It was my mother that first introduced me. He was her favorite author during her rebellious teenage years. Thus, she was overjoyed to read my brother and I to sleep almost every night when we were little. I had my grade school’s librarian point me to the horror and mystery section where I picked a few books from recommendation and ran home to show my mom. It began with The Pit and the Pendulum, followed by The Masque if the Red Death, and many more of Poe’s legendary works. I had fallen in love, such as my mother had, with the dreary opulence that emanated from his creations. Edgar Allen Poe’s ability to cultivate a cascade of terrifying, suspenseful, and–abnormally–romantic pieces has fascinated an extremely massive population with minimal difficulty, and therefore he should proceed to be an author introduced to everyone, at least once in their lives.
A blindingly white, Christmas morning, my grandmother and mother watched with anticipation as I opened my next gift. I had previously mentioned my recent desire for additions to my book collection to them, but they blew me away with an exclusive collection of Poe’s classical stories, bound in a bright red, silk ribbon. This book contains all the stories I had read as a child and more. Following my intense expression of gratitude to my wonderful family, I traced my fingers over the soft, black leather cover. My eyes grazed leisurely over its chapters and hands flipped carefully through the pages with excitement. His stories compared to that of childhood nightmares, but I could not be any more delighted.
If one story were to stand out, “The Masque of the Red Death” would be shooting fireworks from its pages. It was one of the first stories read to me and has not fled my mind since. It tells a story of a Prince in a country riddled with a sickness, the Red Death. Instead of caring for his subjects, he welds himself and his regal companions inside his kingdom to feast, dance, and pay no mind to the atrocities occurring beyond his walls. He initiates a masquerade, where the guests wear flamboyant and ridiculous costumes. All is cheery, until an unfamiliar guest is seen dressed as a corpse. The Prince finds this behavior blasphemous and orders the figure to leave immediately. However, before he could apprehend the corpse, the Prince collapses and dies, followed by the extinguishing of the entire palace’s candles and the rest of his guests trapped inside his walls with the sickness that plagued the country. Eventually, the bloodied kingdom holds only darkness, decay, and the Red Death.
Edgar’s stories reveal twisted sides of his personality, yet display monumental intelligence and creativity. The vocabulary utilized is beyond academic and plots never cease to amaze readers. Throughout an exceptional narrative, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe exercises unrelenting and unusual words and phrases that keeps readers on their toes. He writes, “…Usher arose… and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality–of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world” (Poe 65). This example only scratches the surface of Edgar’s elegance. Exposing his works to youth would undoubtedly assist in improving their own writing abilities regarding word choice and plot development. For this reason and his eerie aura overall, Edgar remains unchallenged as America’s gothic literature behemoth.
For future Poe- enthusiasts, I strongly encourage the introduction of his stories to friends and family alike. The collection of stories I was gifted for Christmas may very well be one of the greatest gifts I have received in terms of sentimentality and interest. I thoroughly believe countless others will feel the same way. May the thought of improving terminology and story-telling trump any possible nightmares bestowed by these stories.
Creative Minds 