The disease is so deadly rapid that one is dead within thirty minutes after he is infected. 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.

This is the method that Poe chose to achieve his unity of effect (see section on Poe's 'Critical Theories'). This essential theme is presented directly and with extreme economy through the plot, or narrative element. 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. 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. Follow him on Twitter at on Facebook.In 'The Masque of the Red Death,' Poe presents an age-old theme, a theme as old as the medieval morality play Everyman. Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Readings by Reed and Willem Dafoeĭownload the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His BirthdayĪubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories (1894)īased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic Horror Story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”ĭownload 55 Free Online Literature Courses: From Dante and Milton to Kerouac and TolkienĮdgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee Burroughs Reads Edgar Allan Poe Tales in the Vintage 1995 Video Game, “The Dark Eye”

You can hear more of Burroughs reading Poe, in performances recorded for the computer game The Dark Eye, in Ted Mills’ previous post here.īurroughs’ reading ( which you can also hear on YouTube) will be added to our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free. But among them all, who better than Burroughs to articulate “The Masque of the Red Death’s” final line: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” And so it makes perfect sense for Burroughs and his voice of a jaded but still amused ancient to join the formidable lineup of Poe’s interpreters, which includes Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Stan Lee. Though completely different in form, aesthetic, setting, and psychology, both writers’ works strike just the right ominous tone and leave just enough unexplained to seep into our subconscious in vivid and sometimes even unwanted ways. Poe could tell a seriously resonant tale, and so could Burroughs.

The masque of the red death read online