![]() ![]() The omnipresence of a time that is accelerating towards death is also mirrored by a quickening-pace in vivid descriptions of the environment of excess. The appearance of this figure illustrates how time symbolizes the frailty, futility and illusion of Human control in the face of inevitable death. The party is constantly marked by the eerie effect of silence and stillness that the ominous sound of the clock creates every time it strikes a new hour, until this tension eventually builds to the fatal rupture the midnight hour brings, when the Red Death is finally among them. ![]() It is the device that mediates and organizes everything in the story. Yet on the other hand, they are also constantly haunted by the presence of the clock and thus cannot really escape time. On the one hand, the guests are taken in the illusion of excess to a point where they lose a sense of this time and awareness of what is happening in the outside world. Indeed, the concept of time and specifically the symbol of the clock was one of the points we focused on. An appropriate read considering the current situation of lockdown, where much like the characters of this gothic short story, we too are slowly losing a sense of time, as a pandemic rages on outside. In this week’s book-club we discussed Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’. The summary of the discussion is written by Sophie Smars This week’s session was led by Dr Tim Beasley-Murray ![]()
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