Conflict In The Masque Of The Red Death, By Edgar Allan Poe

All authors have their own way of writing, but what they all have in common is conflict; without conflict a story is boring, also conflict can be used to reveal elements about characters. Edgar Allan Poe, renowned poet and author, used conflict to reveal traits about characters in stories such as “Hop-Frog” or “The Masque of the Red Death”, as well as John Green in The Fault in Our Stars, one of his most known pieces of writing. In Poe’s story “Hop-Frog” the main conflict was the King mistreated Hop Frog and his friend Trippetta, so Hop Frog tricked the King and his seven ministers into dressing up as ourang-outangs and getting set on fire. In his other story “The Masque of the Red Death” the main conflict was the Red Death, which was a characterized …show more content…
First, this type of conflict can influence whether the character has self-control around others. The first example is from Poe’s story “Hop-Frog”; Hop Frog stops tolerating the King and his ministers’ abusive ways, and ends up killing them. Also, at one point in the story when the King threw wine onto Trippetta Hop Frog started to grit his teeth and got very angry. Thus showing that Hop Frog doesn’t have good control of his anger. Next, the “Person v.s Person” conflict can also decide how social the character is. In John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, there were multiple examples of social skills and lack of them. For example, in the very beginning Hazel’s mom made her go to a support group in which she made some friends but never got close with any of them besides Gus, who she was hesitant in getting close with but eventually did. This can show one of two things; one, that Hazel is hesitant in making new friends, and two, that Hazel is a friendly person, but not a social butterfly since she didn’t have loads of close friends. Lastly, “Person vs Person” conflicts can be used to show how a person interacts with other people which can determine whether they procrastinate or put things aside that should be prioritized. For example, in Poe’s short story “The Masque of The Red Death” the people who were attending Prince Prospero’s party weren’t letting themselves worry about the ravaging disease, and they just kept partying, well that is unless the clock rang then they all got freaked out, but then they continued partying. These are some way in the provided texts where the “Person vs Person” conflict is used to create an interesting