Cowardliness? - Edgar Allan Poe

Cowardliness?

(Edgar Allan Poe - The Masque of the Red Death)

Each person is individual. We actually act differently in the same situations. But the situation does not have to be so problematic and so stressing for each of us. Somebody will stay and face the arising problem and somebody will run away as quickly as possible. However still there is something we all have in common, we all hide a coward in ourselves. No matter how powerful, wealthy and strong we are, everybody is scared by something. This fatal fear makes us to do everything possible to avoid it and if there is no other way just to escape from it. But are we therefore cowards?

There are lots of kinds of threats. Some of us are afraid of different sorts of animals, some are afraid of height, some are afraid of closed vessel, etc. However, the most usual fear is a fear of death. Also this piece of literature is about such a fear and what it can do to human.

Poe chooses plague as his tool of death. He takes his time to perfectly describe how enormous threat such a plague can be: "No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous." Another terrifying fact is that the plague is incredibly quick and therefore there is practically no chance to be cured: "At the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half and hour." To support the idea of dread, Poe is also describing the process of the horrible and painful dying: "There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness and the profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution." Moreover we can feel a certain respect to it. The author even calls it by a name "The Red Death" and uses capital letters. He is animating it this way and the reader realises it is not so easy to escape from it.

So it is not surprising people are so thrilled by it. Maybe it is also because it is so painful. Maybe because it is extremely quick or maybe because it kills without any control. No matter if you are man, woman or child, if you are young or old, if you are rich or poor, etc. Poe uses a great example of what is human able to do to protect his own life. The Prince Prospero, "happy, and dauntless and sagacious" man has such a fear that he decides to isolate himself in a big fortress with "a strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron." But still he realises

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