SPACES OF CAPTIVITY AND ESCAPE IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S “THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH” AND “THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM”
SPACES OF CAPTIVITY AND ESCAPE IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S “THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH” AND “THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM”

Summary/Abstract: This article reveals that Edgar Allan Poe’s protagonists lose the illusions of protection and salvation and become trapped within the confines of their own imagination, where they are surrounded by despair, madness, and death. In “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”, two famous short stories published in 1842, the main characters become imaginatively impotent and plunge themselves into a nightmare. Through the use of close reading and the theories shared by Gaston Bachelard, Vincent Buranelli, Edward Davidson, Richard Wilbur, among others, this paper demonstrates that Poe's characters can only escape their immense torture by embracing the idea of death and self-destructiveness.

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