The Mask of the Red Death is an excellent allegorical tale that tells the story of a mysterious and abominable disease that decimates the population of an imaginary land. The symptoms of this terrible epidemic include sharp pain, dizziness, profuse bleeding and red spots on the body and face of the victims. This plague kills in thirty minutes and consequently the red spot on a man causes people to reject him. The “happy and” intrepid “ruler of the land, Prince Prospero, with a thousand of his able-bodied noble friends hide in a “crenellated abbey”. This place is provided with plenty of food as he celebrates feasts leaving his subjects to suffer the affliction . .

After five or six months, Prospero chooses to have a grand masquerade ball in the seven rooms of an imperial suite that stretches from east to west. Instead of a long hall, the prince has chambers arranged in tight curves and tall stained glass windows on either side that dominate the surrounding corridor. Each quarter is a different color with the first blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth white, and the sixth purple. As for the seventh room, it is entirely in black velvet but the windows are a deep blood red. Guests are kept away from the seventh room as lights shining through the window from the hallways create a ghastly effect. In this room there is also a giant ebony clock, whose pendulum swings ominously and the chime of the hours was so haunting that it made everyone pause in fear until the chimes died away as everyone nervously resumed their actions.

On the day of the party, the masqueraders’ costumes are wild and grotesque and the party is like a “crowd of dreams” despite the predominant interruption to the entertainment by the ebony clock. The party is in full swing when at midnight the clock strikes an eerie twelve and everyone stops as usual and suddenly a figure dressed as a corpse appears complete with a terrifyingly convincing mask with the characteristic red patch. He is dressed as the Red Death! This unexpected and terrifying intrusion unnerves Prince Prospero, who orders his guards to capture and unmask the “ghostly image.”

None of the guests or even Prospero have the audacity to grab the visitor and the Red Death slowly slips past the prince in the blue room and passes from room to room pointing towards the black room. However, enraged and ashamed of his own cowardice, Prospero runs through the rooms until he reaches the edge of the last room as he confronts the masked man and falls to his death. The startled guests pounce on the motionless figure to discover to their dismay that there is nothing under the mask and costume. The Red Death “like a thief in the night” strikes them as one by one they succumb to death and as the last partygoer dies, the ebony clock stops ticking, “and Darkness, Decay, and the Red Death They had unlimited dominion over everything.” .