When I was in middle school, I had one of the best English teachers. Not only is it thanks to her that I know as much grammar as I do, but she also exposed my class to a lot of great literature, especially Poe and Shakespeare. It was then that I discovered my favorite Poe story, “The Masque of the Red Death.” Why it captivated me, and captivates me still, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the opening lines: “The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.” Of course, the Red Death refers to tuberculosis.
Poe saw TB take many people he loved, including his mother and his wife, who was also his cousin and 13 years old when she married Poe, Virginia. In “Masque,” Prince Prospero (prosperous) tries to save himself and his friends by quarantining them all inside his castle, leaving the poor to suffer and die. “The external world could take care of itself,” writes Poe. After about five or six months of this seclusion, Prince Prospero holds a magnificent masquerade ball for all his friends. The ball is held in a suite with seven rooms, each room’s stained glass window is colored in accordance with the decorations – except the seventh room, which is black and bears stained glass windows of blood red. There is also a clock in there, and every hour it chimes, causing all the party guests to become rigid with fear. Nobody goes in this room if they can help it.
The ball is going as planned when a strange person appears dressed as the monstrous Red Death, whose costume is dabbled in blood. Prince Prospero is ticked off and orders the removal of the man’s mask. But nobody makes a move to remove it. Prince Prospero tries to confront the intruder only to collapse when he looks Death in the face. The clock chimes. Time has run out. Prince Prospero’s guests soon also begin to fall like dominos. “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
The moral of the story is simple: you cannot hide or run from death. Time will continue forwards. We all die eventually. And come on, Prince Prospero was a jerk to not worry about his people and to let them suffer. I, for one, feel his punishment to be just. But in general I just love this story. The metaphors Poe uses are phenomenal. We all know, or should know, that we will die when it is our time. Sometimes that may come prematurely. Sometimes we aren’t ready or our friends and families aren’t ready for us to go. But it happens. Prince Prospero can only tempt this fate for so long. He can try flying from death but only for a brief time before the Red Death creeps up on him.
And how about those rooms? Personally I don’t think I would be able to avoid perusing around the black and scarlet room, just out of sheer curiosity. Can you imagine what it would be like to see that giant clock and to hear its heart-stopping chime?
Hopefully I’m not chased by the Red Death, or any other death, anytime soon. But I hope that when I do go I don’t try to stop it. That will only make things worse.

For years, a high school friend of mine badgered me to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I would always remind him to be patient, and that I would read it in my A.P. English 11 class. After finally reading The Great Gatsby, I grew to love Fitzgerald. I have even visited his grave twice (for anyone who wants to see it, it’s located in Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, and it is gorgeous. The cemetery is gorgeous and I always leave a penny on his grave when I visit. His wife Zelda is buried there, too http://www.peerlessrockville.org/peerless_places/peerless_places_fitzgeralds_gravesite.htm ).
The last line from The Great Gatsby is etched into Fitzgerald’s tombstone: “So we beat on, boats against current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Is that profound or what? Before you roll your eyes at me, let’s go through what makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most beloved novel, The Great Gatsby, so amazing.
Color imagery runs rampant throughout Gatsby, but the most obvious is the traffic light symbolism. On Daisy’s dock, there is a green light, urging Jay Gatsby to go forward and pursue his long-nursed love for Daisy, despite the fact that she is already married. For some odd reason, I love this whole idea of that voice in your head urging you onward and then a physical sign shows up, whether or not that truly is right.
The whole deal with Jay Gatsby in general is just pathetic. The reader just feels so dang bad for him. I mean, the guy is so madly in love with Daisy, who’s married to a jerk, so he obtains all this wealth, becoming “new money” just to win her affection (F.Y.I. Daisy and her husband Tom live in “East Egg” which is basically the old money part of Long Island, while Gatsby lives in “West Egg,” the new money part. This is a reference to the whole east-and-west thing where people went out West to look for gold in California and make their fortunes, while people in the East who already had money didn’t need to pursue that).
My favorite part in The Great Gatsby is when Gatsby is having a huge party at his house and the narrator, Nick, happens upon a man in Gatsby’s library. He is so impressed with the library, explaining the all the books have been “cut” and that none of them are fake. Books used to come with their pages sewn together and the purchaser had a special knife that he or she used to cut open the pages. Wealthy people would not even bother cutting the books, or would put cardboard ones in just so they looked like they had an impressive library. Gatsby is putting on quite a show if all his books are real and all are cut.
Of course, Gatsby cannot win Daisy’s love. Money can’t buy everything, no matter how much he tries, nor can money buy him the respect that the “old money” has. When Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby he wrote it during the 1920’s when the Jazz Age was all the rage and people were in great financial happiness. Unfortunately, this simply cannot last, and Gatsby discovers that even though he and Daisy once had something special, now they no longer can.
So why is this book so good? My A.P. English 11 teacher admitted this was his favorite book. So why? I guess the reason I love this book so much is because it is a reminder that nothing always goes according to plan. Sometimes no matter how hard you work, you just can’t win, as in Gatsby’s case. I also love the themes and symbols embedded within the novel. Also, I like stories that aren’t always 100 percent happy endings. And last, but never least, Fitzgerald himself is an amazing writer. I’ve seen a photocopy in a book of his manuscript for The Great Gatsby–you should see how much is crossed out and revised! He definitely put much time and effort into his masterpiece. So invest your time in this book because it will be one of the greatest times of your life.
-Adrienne Savoldi