Essay/Term paper: The masque of the red death: the red death vs. aids

Essay, term paper, research paper:  World Literature

The Masque of The Red Death: The Red Death Vs. AIDs


If I were to compare "The Masque of the Red Death" to a movie, I would compare
it to the HBO special on aids, "And The Band Played On". Both the story
and the movie dealt with a disease which in their appropriate times were (and is
) considered to be an "evil" disease.

During the eighteen-hundreds the red plague was a major concern to society. To
many people of the time it was considered "evil" . In Edgar Allen Poe's
"Masque of the Red Death" Poe uses a representation of the "evil red death" to
strike horror in the hearts of his readers. Prince Prospero and his company
very much underestimated the power of the Red Death, by thinking that because
they were of a higher class, the Red Death could not harm them. This has been
many people's way of thinking throughout the ages. In the movie "And the Band
Played On" the disease of AIDS was just being dealt with, and like the people of
the eighteenth century people's mentality was that "it just can't happen to
them", and it turns out that it comes back to "haunt them".

In conclusion I feel that in both cases that I have mentioned above, the type of
fear was psychological because fatal diseases like the Red Death and AIDS have
always been a horror to many people throughout the ages. Also, both stories
show that a fatal disease can happen to anyone, even we may fall a victim to an
"evil disease".