Death is something that everyone agonizes about every day. Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes how death is inevitable in his short story, The Masque of the Red Death. The main character, Prince Prospero, a misguided and deceitful ruler pretends to help his country while his people are dying from the disease, the "Red Death", while he is only trying to protect himself and leave his people at the mercy of himself. Ultimately, Poe uses symbolism and personification to embody an illness to emphasize that regardless of a person's social class, death is inevitable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Looking from the outside, Prince Prospero is someone who loves to have fun. It seems like all he cares about is being happy and drinking a lot of alcohol. He doesn't do much apart from this and this is what makes him a weak ruler because when he encounters difficult situations, Prospero seems to ignore them. He doesn't even want to waste time thinking of solutions to those situations because it would be too boring. This is evident when he shares his philosophy on problems and says, “The outside world could take care of itself. Meanwhile it was madness to grieve, or to think... There were the buffoons, there were the improvisers, there were the dancers, there were the musicians, there was Beauty, there was the wine. Prospero purposely turns to alcohol when times are tough, just so he can have fun. But his attempts to escape death fail and in the end everyone must die. Prospero's foolish attempts to escape death not only portray him as a weak person but also as a ruler. Unfortunately, he learns his lesson at the end of the story. Death is imminent. In "The Masque of the Red Death", casualties begin to increase rapidly and this is represented by the large ebony clock. Every time the pendulum swung back and forth and the clock struck, the party-goers felt frightened and uncomfortable, even though they knew they were safe in the palace, "the most stunned were observed to turn pale, and the older and calmer ones passed hands on eyebrows as if in confused revelry or meditation. Its haunting hourly chime reminded people daily that their time was coming to an end and that death was just around the corner. Of course, after the chimes they stopped, everyone continued what they were doing, symbolizing how not everyone's time to die is the same. Death is an abstract idea, personifying it as an illness in the form of a masked figure easier for readers to understand that death has no boundaries or rules, it conquers anyone and anything In his final moments, Prince Prospero comes face to face with “The Soft Death,” and ends up with illness, “facing the. his pursuer and the dragger that falls glittering on the sable carpet..." Which then led to Prospero's death. The ending indicates how idiotic Prospero and his friends were to think they could escape death. Death is inevitable; their plan to escape death was doomed to fail from the start. Poe leaving Prospero to die last also exemplifies the fact that no matter what your social status is in the world, death does not segregate but treats everyone equally.