Comparing Masque Of The Red Death And A Nightmare On Elm Street

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Death. It is one of the greatest mysteries that humans have ever encountered. There is no way of knowing what it feels like to die or what happens afterwards; no one has lived to tell the tale. As frightening or mysterious as death may seem, it welcomes all with open arms at one point in time or another. No one is immune to death. It is unavoidable. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe demonstrates this concept about death with great precision. This short story is about a selfish prince that detaches himself and one thousand of his closest friends from the outside world. Him and his friends hide in an abbey. He does this to hopefully isolate himself and his friends from a gruesome disease called the Red Death. One night the prince …show more content…
After stalking them while they are dreaming, he kills the children. Both “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe and A Nightmare On Elm Street not only have several aspects in common, but they also share the central idea that death is an inevitable fact of life for all human beings. They show this through their use of symbolism, setting, and ¬¬¬¬¬plot. The element of symbolism shown in both the short story and the movie truly reflects the idea that death cannot be escaped. In “The Masque of the Red death” and A Nightmare On Elm Street, there is a destructive, deadly character that symbolizes death itself. The characters are not tangible in any way; they are phantoms that reside in dreams and reality. They cannot be stopped or held back, showing the inevitability that they will kill eventually. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story, an intangible, corpse-like character shows up to one of the prince’s masquerade balls. This character is dressed as the Red Death, which is the very disease the prince and his friends are …show more content…
Both the story and the movie have a specific setting that resembles a safe haven. No place safely protects a person from inevitable happenings. In both of these scenarios, all the safe haven does is provide a distraction from death. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero isolates himself along with his friends inside an abbey. They believe that this is one hundred percent disease and death proof. This is of course only until the fateful night the mummer slips into the abbey. The prince has taken numerous precautions to seal his fortress from any outside commotion: “ A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts… Without was the ‘Red Death’ ” (Poe 1). The safe haven of this story, which is as fortified as can be, still is no match for escaping death. In A Nightmare On Elm Street the movie mostly takes place in the setting of the children’s homes. The homes of the children are their places of security. When the children find out the significance of their dreams, they take extra precaution and even refuse to sleep. Also, knowing the fact that Freddy Krueger has the ability to ruthlessly murder them in their sleep, the children and their parents take extra precautionary measures: “ ‘What's with the bars?’ ‘Security.’ ‘Security? SECURITY FROM WHAT?’ ‘Not

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