As havoc sweeps throughout the countryside and the Red Death infects and kills the majority of Prince Prospero's subjects, he invites a thousand of his closest aristocratic friends to seclude themselves behind the walls of his massive castellated abbey. Prince Prospero is portrayed as an eccentric, highly-confident ruler, who does not care about the lower-class civilians dying in the countryside and is much more concerned with entertaining his wealthy, upper-class guests. Prince Prospero goes out of his way to make sure his guests thoroughly enjoy themselves while they are secluded inside the abbey. He employs buffoons, ballet-dancers, musicians, and improvisatori to entertain everyone and has an extensive amount of wine at hand for his guests to consume. Prince Prospero also holds a bizarre masquerade during the fifth or sixth month of their seclusion. The prince's guests initially enjoy themselves as they engage in debauchery in the various rooms of his imperial suite until the personification of the Red Death arrives and kills everyone, including Prince Prospero.
To answer this question, take a look at the second paragraph of the story. The narrator states that Prince Prospero invites a "thousand hale and light-hearted friends" drawn from the ranks of the nobility in his kingdom to join him in the castellated abbey.
This is a huge number of people to invite, and it shows that Prince Prospero is a very popular ruler. Moreover, it also gives us an idea of how large the castellated abbey is. That it can comfortably hold a thousand people demonstrates that it must be a sizable building.
The fact that these friends are "light-hearted" also shows us that Prince Prospero loves to entertain and, therefore, wants to surround himself with people that compliment this desire. While death and destruction rage outside, Prince Prospero concerns himself with entertainment and friendship, a sign that he, perhaps, does not take life too seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment