Bubonic Plague In The Film The Masque Of The Red Death
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In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe’s famous work appears to take place in a medieval time period where a fatal disease puts fear into the bodies of every person living in and around the village. Although it is fictitious, Poe created a gruesome plague that was seen to be worse than the Black Death, or bubonic plague, which was called the Red Death. The disease was so fatal that an infected individual would cease to live after only 30 minutes of having it. The 1964 film directed by Roger Corman opens up with an old lady walking in the woods alone when she stumbles upon a ‘holy man’ dressed in all red, but has no face to show. He warns her of a prophecy that is coming, that will kill the village – all with the Red Death. However,…show more content… He throws a masquerade for his guests but demands that no one wears red because of the plague that is smothering the outside world, but at the end of the movie the ‘holy man’ that appeared in the woods…show more content… When the plague began smothering the town, there were men pleading in front of the Abbey to be let in and to be saved from the hideous plagues swarming around the kingdom, where Prospero would feel the nobility to spare their life on his own. Gathered in the Abbey were the rich folks, leaving the peasants out to fend for themselves. “The Prince and his guests believe that they can hide from the Red Death by locking themselves away from the suffering of the rest of the world,” (The Artifice). “They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within” (Poe 438). As some people would look at this Abbey as holy, righteous, or powerful, the architecture comes from a Gothic era studied in the medieval time