While Poe’s stories undoubtedly indulge in those classic “creepy” elements everyone looks for in horror tales — misty, gloomy nights; resurrected dead; ghosts; old, decaying mansions; and blood — I cannot help but suspect that beneath those gimmicks (likely used, at least in part, to lure in the public and make a living), Poe was trying to get at something a little deeper. Beyond all the undead, the ghosts, and the monsters, the true “horror” in these stories appears to lie in terrifying truths of human nature and society. 

One more obvious social commentary struck me forcefully: I could not read “The Masque of the Red Death” without shuddering at its seemingly prophetic parallels to 2020. The “happy and dauntless” Prince Prospero (I mean, just the name…) and his “thousand friends” might easily represent the wealthy and the “prosperous” who, upon getting the early intel on a worldwide pandemic, jetted off to their second house in Malibu with their influencer friend group for a year-long “COVID party.” The “Masque” motif evoked some N-95 images for me, too. The clock — striking ominously on the hour — consistently elicited apprehension and even dread among the party-goers, despite their best efforts to feign that everything was fine; they looked to one another with uneasy smiles as if to say, We’re okay, right? Nothing, not even the Red Death, can touch us in this ivory tower… right?

Just as in Poe’s story, COVID-19 went after even the most affluent — pandemics are not classist. The Red Death showed up at Prince Prospero’s party and ruined the fun. While everyone likes to fear the ghastly threat in a bloody mask, who is really the “monster” in this story? The facts of life in themselves — disease and misfortune — or the complexes of those who deceive themselves into thinking that status, wealth, and a good party will protect them?