Character Portrayal in The Tell-Tale Heart and Masque of the Red Death - Essay Example

? Character Portrayal in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death” number Character Portrayal in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe is widely considered to be one of the first writers in the history of English literature to have employed the form of the fictional thriller. His use of horror and terror in his works are one of the finest in literature and it is on full view in the short stories that he writes. This paper shall seek to juxtapose the two short stories, “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, stories that demonstrate the ability of Poe to analyse the human mind and provide an accurate account of it. He is particularly brilliant in his portrayal of the criminal who is t to perform the perfect crime that remains, however, an elusive target for the criminal who is able to do everything right but to prevent his conscience from getting the better of him. Poe’s portrayal of the merciless king and the criminal vary in many aspects and this paper shall attempt to compare and contrast the methods of portrayal that Poe employs in these two short stories. Characters in “The Masque of the Red Death” have a very eerie quality to them that is achieved through the use of architectural detail that discusses the gothic structures of the kingdom that is talked of. The king’s attempts to lock himself and his courtiers in from the scourge of the Red Death are subverted right from the beginning of the story through the use of gothic detail that makes it amply clear that one of the main characters in Poe’s tale is the suite that he painstakingly describes. In fact, much of the story’s space is taken up by an elaborate description of the architecture of the buildings that the story is set in. Like in most modern literature, Poe’s tale enables one to look at the role that architecture plays in one’s life. The life that is given to a particular architectural structure is not divorced from the main thread of the story as is amply demonstrated by “The Masque of the Red Death”. The appearance of the king in all his glory and pomp is undercut at every stage by the gothic clock chiming away at every hour indicating the arrival of the death of the king, filling the reader with a sense of foreboding of doom. The clock too, like the other inanimate characters in the story, assumes a life of its own under the guiding hand of Poe, who infuses the prophetic clock with a human-like ability to foretell the death that was about to enclose all the members of the king’s train along with him, by the end of the play. Architectural structures are however, assigned a luminal space in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, so as to provide maximum space to the portrayal of the mind of the murderer and the murdered. The house of the murdered and its various features only provide a backdrop to the various events that are narrated in the story and the main focus remains on the human characters in the story. Even though the house, by the end of the story becomes the hiding place of the corpse of the murdered person, it is not invested with any energy other than what is probably symbolic. Unlike in “The Masque of the Red Death”, the pieces of furniture and the parts of the house do not have a life of their own that seem to be agents of ate, subverting every action of the murderer. In fact, they seem to echo the states of the mind that the murderer finds himself in, thus being symbols or extensions of his mental states at various points of time. The master storyteller that he is, Poe does not for a moment let the reader think that the objects that he describes are animate objects that catch on to the energy of the murderous criminal; rather, they are imaginary creations of the mind of the narrator who is also the murderer, whose visions the reader shares in, until a particular point in time. Unlike the reliable narrator of “The Masque of the Red Death”, the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a psychotic killer, one who nevertheless has a conscience. It is this conscience that the king and courtiers of “The Masque of the Red Death” lack and this results in their doom. Crime of any sort does not go unpunished in these two tales of Poe. The murderer is finally undone by his own pangs of conscience that manifests itself as a buzzing sound, which the murderer mistakes for the beating of his victim’s heart. The ‘tell-tale heart’ is however, not that of the victim but that of the murderer who gives himself away through his own histrionics in front of the officers of law. The courtiers and the king, on the other hand, fail to see their mistake in cutting themselves off from their subjects and leaving them to die at the hands of the ‘Red Death’, forgetting the fact that disease was common to all human beings without any distinctions of class or creed. This blind belief in their superiority based on their positions in life is unfounded and foolish, according to Poe. Through this device, Poe also seeks to poke fun at the seriousness accorded to positions based on class in capitalist America. The importance accorded to material objects and the life that they are infused with almost seem to be a reflection of the capitalist mindset of the people of the United States of America, who had come to value material goods and comforts more than human life and had thus cut themselves off from most of their fellow-beings who needed their help. This reluctance to engage in charitable activities and this disconnectedness from real life that produces a society from which emerge the characters that are similar to the murderer of “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The depths that such a society may plunge into are disturbing and the intention that Poe has in writing his stories is to disturb the reader into a recognition of the ills of the society that he or she lives in and is a part of and contributes to. The onus to reform this society lies in the hands of the individuals, seems to be the message that Poe seeks to give out to his readers by giving them glimpses of the society that would result from the capitalist forces that were shaping it. The two tales are thus, similar in that the characters that are portrayed in these two short stories present a dystopic picture of a future society that the present is moving towards and which Poe warns his readers about. The apathy that the king and his courtiers exhibit towards the poor masses of their country is similar to the complete disregard that the murderer feels for human life. The murderer feels the whole affair similar to a game that requires him to play all the parts well and finally perform a crime that he feels is perfect in that detection of the crime is not possible. The fear that the murderer feels of detection indicates an awareness of guilt on his part that finally causes his conscience to cry out in despair about his crime, unlike in the case of the king and his courtiers, who are taken by the ‘Red Death’ by force, since they live in ignorance regarding their crime, which consisted in their neglect of their duties. While Poe talks about the influence of materialism on the common man in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, he talks of those who hold offices of power in “The Masque of the Red Death”. Both sections are corrupted by the materialistic tendencies that have crept into society and both of them serve to turn society into one that fails to understand the natural emotions of man and turns loose the anarchic tendencies of man, thus destabilizing the forces of civilization. Without discrediting revolution and the need for change in society, Poe reminds his readers of the need for progress in the history of mankind rather than the regress that he finds which leads to the psychotic tendencies that find outlet in withdrawal or criminal tendencies, both of which Poe describes in his stories. Mixing terror and horror, Poe shocks the reader into identifying those social forces that he feels create a dent in the civilizational fabric that had been painstakingly created over centuries. Poe should not be considered to be a sentimentalist or a moralist because of the dystopic societies that he presents through his characters in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death”. What he proposes is not a radical change from the course that history follows but a reassessment f the direction that history takes, especially in the United States of America. He talks of the increasing influence of materialism and his characters in these two short stories demonstrate the effects of being a part of such societies. Poe’s intention in shocking his readers is thus, to provide them with a reason to reassess the course of events that they saw in the world around them. Works Cited Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Selected Tales. New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 2000. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death”. Selected Tales. New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 2000. Print. Read More