In "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe presents an age-old theme, a theme as old as the medieval morality play Everyman. In this ancient play, the main character is named Everyman and early in the play while walking down the road, he meets another character called Death. Everyman cries out to him: "O Death, thy comest when I had thee least in mind." Similarly, Poe's story deals with the inevitability of death and the futility of trying to escape death. This essential theme is presented directly and with extreme economy through the plot, or narrative element. This is the method that Poe chose to achieve his unity of effect (see section on Poe's "Critical Theories").
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. Thus, in the short opening paragraph, Poe uses such words as devastated, pestilence, fatal, hideous, horror of blood, sharp pains, profuse bleeding, scarlet stains, victim, disease and death — and all these words, gathered together, create an immediate effect of the horror of death caused by the "Red Death."
In contrast, we hear that Prince Prospero, a name that connotes happiness and prosperity, has summoned a thousand of his "lighthearted friends" from the nobility to join him in a "castellated abbey" which has strong and lofty walls and "gates of iron." The prince has very carefully provided entertainment of all types, and they are all happy and secure within, while outside the "Red Death" is rampaging.
