I just was thinking about Prospero in "The Masque of the Red Death" and his beliefs about wealth. He felt that if he could turn his back to poverty and the common man that he could somehow escape the inevitable. Death as an equaliser is a fasinating idea. It doesn't matter how much money you have or who you are it's inescapable. Everyone avoided the red and black room that represented from my research night and more specifically death. Prospero follows the red death into the final room and tries to conquer it head on despite it's power. Although Prospero had invited the specific guests and set up the room himself he really wasn't in control.
Death is completely uncontrollable, you don't know when or where it will happen and Prospero is a fool to think that he is too noble to suffer the same fate as peasants. Poe definately goes over death and it's psychological effects in many of his stories but I never really noticed before how he dissects the human mind to find our deepest faults. I'm reading a book called "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami and the main character says at one point, "Death exists not as the opposite but as a part of life...It was already here, within my being, it had always been there..." I definately had never thought about death as something that can survive so close to me and I think that psychologically we want to doubt death's capabilities.
What do you guys think?
1 comment:
Hey, it's Erin.
I agree with Paige. I think that people like to be in control, or at least think they are in control (like Prospero). But death is so uncontrollable and sometimes unexpected; in the end it proves we are all human because in the end we all cease to exist. People want to think they can ward off death, but as Prospero found out, it's impossible. I think there was this story (but one that I really don't remember it that well) of someone who somehow found out that in the city they were planning to go to they would die. So they went somewhere completely different. However, death was physically waiting for them there anyway. They couldn't escape though they tried.
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