The Settings of the Masque of the Red Death - Essay Example

The settings of stories create the ambiances in which those stories take place.
In the piece by Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque of the Red Death, the setting is a masquerade held by Prince Prospero. This masquerade takes place in the midst of a horrible and deadly disease that sweeps through the land, “ It was toward the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence”(Poe, 251). This is a significant contrast of events occurring simultaneously, a deadly disease and a magnificent ball.

Despite his efforts to avoid the “red death”, Prince Prospero succumbs to inevitable fate within the very bungalow that he used as a hiding place from a would-be death. Ultimately, the setting of this piece is a grand disillusionment on the part of the Prince.

In the piece written by Susan Glaspell, Trifles, the reader finds a more elemental setting. This piece introduces itself within the kitchen of a now-abandoned farmhouse. This is of course the farmhouse kitchen of the Wright’s and a very unkempt kitchen at that. This is a clue to the chaos of the situation that plays out within the piece, “The kitchen in the now-abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, a gloomy kitchen, and left without having been put in order - the walls covered with a faded wallpaper”(Glaspell, 1290). The setting that the reader finds in Trifles is more realistic and conducive to the plot than that of the setting of The Masque of the Red Death. Trifles is an illustration of a woman pushed entirely too far and too long by her husband. Finally, she murders her husband, and naturally, the kitchen is a mess.

The entirety of the piece takes place within the home of the Wrights, a simple farmhouse showing signs of a tremulous marriage at best. The cliché of a happy home in our time is a home that is in order. The home of the Wrights was anything but happy and naturally, showing physical signs of the troubled owners. Conversely, as the author states the stage for the reality of the dark situation in which the piece takes place, the mundane relevance of the condition of the kitchen seems strangely unimportant but yet places even more emphasis on the mental state of Mrs. Wright. In addition, the reader finds Mrs. Wright, almost catatonic, rocking methodically in a rocking chair, the simplicity of this places additional emphasis on her state of mind or lack thereof, “she moved from that chair over there (pointing to a small chair in the down right corner) and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down”(Glaspell, 1292). Ultimately, this type of simplistic setting allows the reader to grasp the vacancy of Mrs. Wright’s mental stability.