Death Figure Edgar Allan Poe’s Perception of Death as Revealed in The Mask of the

23 like Rowena but Ligeia with her black hair as raven. She revives from death and stands up in the bridal room: “I stirred not--but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts-a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all--the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena of Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth—but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks—there were the roses as in her noon of life—yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. … One bound and I had reached her feet Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head the gastly cerements which had confined it; and three streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and disheveled hair; it was blacker than the wings of the midnight And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. “Here then, at least,” I shrieked aloud, “can I never—can I never be mistaken—these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love—of the lady—of the LADY LIGEIA” Ligeia. The death figure in this story comes to life and haunts the narrator by her apparition. In the third short story, The Cask of Amontillado, there is no significant or obvious death figure as in The Mask of the Red Death and Ligeia. The death figure in this story is implicitly stated at the end of the story when it comes to the readers to know that the sequences of revenge by the Montressor are done fifty years before he tells the story: “My heart grew sick -- on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I rejected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them”. The Cask of Amontillado. This means that the chained body of Fortunato remains exactly the same in the same wall as it is since nobody comes to the vault afterwards. The body of 24 Fortunato must have been rotten and turns into skeleton of a human death body. Another death figure presented in the story is the scattered skeletons in the vault. It can be seen that the death figures presented in those three short stories are used to create an atmosphere of terror and horror. Poe knows very well how to make gothic tales using the power of death itself as one of the characteristics of gothic fiction. Here, it is quite clear that, in those three stories, Poe perceives death as something fearful with great terror to the characters of the stories. His perception of death is shown by the presence of death figures in the short stories. He employs the death figures to shape his perception of death.

2. The Cause of Death

In the story of The Mask of the Red Death, the death of the characters, in this case Prince Prospero and his guests, is caused by the apparition of the mysterious figure itself. When the figure appears in the party, Prince Prospero and his guests are shocked but nobody dares enough to catch the figure. Prince Prospero tries to catch and to unmask the figure. When finally cornered in the last chamber and Prince Prospero tries to grasp the figure, he finds nobody inside the cloaks but ironically he and the whole companion die in sudden because as mentioned before, the mysterious figure represents the Red Death plague The Masque of the Red Death. From this story Poe shows to the readers that death can happen because of a terrible and dangerous disease in this case, the Red Death plague although it seems that there is a supernatural power that causes the death of the characters. 25 The fact that Prince Prospero and his guests die in sudden after the apparition of the mysterious figure shows supernatural power and unsolved mystery in the story. The death caused by the Red Death is not the peaceful and calm one, but death as something horrifying and gloomy with unbearable pain. As he illustrates the effects of it to the victim’s body with frightening incident: “There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.” “The Mask of the Red Death” The death that happens in the story of Ligeia is caused by mysterious illness. Gradually after the narrator’s marriage with Ligeia, she becomes mysteriously ill. Although Rowena’s case is different, she gets ill because of the narrator’s intention to make her die so that the spirit of Ligeia can use her body or in other words murder; finally those two ladies die Ligeia. As quoted from American Literature The Makers and the Making by Cleanth Brooks et.al, “Consider Poe’s typical heroines. They are usually afflicted with mysterious disease. They visibly waste away before their lovers’ eyes.” 360. In this story, Ligeia gets ill because of mysterious disease. In Ligeia, he illustrates how sorrowful and terrible the death of a beautiful and lovely woman is. As many critics to Edgar Allan Poe say: Poe’s greatest specialty is the death of a beautiful woman. This fact is supported by Porges, when Poe was thinking about how to create a powerful poem: “And in a sad poem, what is the saddest thing of all to write about? He knew the answer-DEATH All that remained to be answered is this