ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Alternatively, the Red Death may refer to cholera; Poe witnessed an epidemic of cholera in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1831. Others have suggested the pandemic is actually bubonic plague, emphasized by the climax of the story featuring the Red Death in the black room.

Detailed explanation-2: -Four months before the publication of the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” in Graham’s Magazine, Edgar Allan Poe’s wife contracted tuberculosis. While singing at the piano, nineteen-year-old Virginia began coughing up blood (Quinn 347-48; Silverman 178-81).

Detailed explanation-3: -The story opens with a recounting of a plague, the “Red Death"; it has long been devastating the country, and the narrator describes the process of the disease, emphasizing the redness of the blood and the scarlet stains. The disease is so deadly rapid that one is dead within thirty minutes after he is infected.

Detailed explanation-4: -Until the man in the Red Death costume kills Prospero, and gets mobbed and unmasked. Then it turns out he’s not a guy in a costume, after all – he’s the real Red Death.