Story Study: Activity 3 Assignment 1

Title of Story The Masque of the Red Death

Setting (tone. atmosphere, and place)
Prince Prospero’s palace: Big iron gates and tall walls protect the exterior. The interior has distinct colour-coordinated rooms symbolizing the cycle of life all the way to the black room where the clock is ticking down our time until we die. The ballroom has lots of fancy decorations and there is art hanging from the walls. The palace gives off a very rich image but with scary and mysterious tones like the black room and loud, scary clock.

Point of View Third Person Omniscient- follows plot and characters, accesses characters minds but doesn’t participate in the story. The narrator is like watching the scene unfold

Characters (details)
1. Prince Prospero- king of the fictional society of the story. He is materialistic and rich. He lives in ignorance from the red death and uses his wealth to secure his palace from the virus. He is creative, weird, eccentric but oddly intelligent. In this story, he hosts a masquerade in his fancy palace with a lot of dancing and music.
2. The red death. The read death is represented by a man in a long black cloak with a corpse-like mask o no one knows who he is. This character is an allegory for death because, in the end, he takes all of the people in the palace, including Prince Prospero.

Plot (main events)
In this fictional society, there is a deadly virus going around known as the Red death. Prince Prospero, the king of this place guards himself against the virus with elaborate and expensive protective equipment in order to keep the sick out and the healthy like himself in. He then hosts an elaborate masquerade ball with dancing, music and lots of food. For this event, he decorates rooms with specific colours from blue, purple, green, orange white, violet and finally the black room with a loud ominous clock. At midnight, an unknown guest appears and Prospero is immediately unhappy about his presence so he orders people to attack and hang the man. As Prospero comes closer, the Red Death kills him along with the rest of the guests.

Conflict
The Red Death has infiltrated Prince Prospero’s palace and will kill everyone.

Theme
There is no running from death; it will catch up to us soon enough and take us when it pleases. Even riches and gold cannot keep us protected from death.