This short Edgar Allan Poe story reads remarkably well during a pandemic. The disease in this case (or pestilence, or plague) is called the Red Death—purely invented and grotesque, bringing certain death. It's plausible in many ways, less so in others. It raises the blood to the surface of the skin and flushes it forth, as if capillary walls are dissolved. Its course from onset to death is absurdly swift, about 30 minutes. But he's got much more right than wrong here, notably on contagion and, especially, the behavior of the privileged. In the face of plague our hero, such as he is, one Prince Prospero, retires to his remote hideaway with a thousand of his best friends. The bet is herd immunity. It's not really social distancing in the castle but more like the super rich today with their private islands, sending out for test kits to ensure their own safety in the meanwhile. In this case the prince bolts and then welds the doors shut behind him. Minneapolis is burning. No one is getting in or out for the duration. The rest is quite familiar: "The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine." Quarantine party time! And the revels go on 24/7, with food and bored entertainment. Poe wrote horror more with a European twang than American, which to me is his enduring strength, setting many of his stories on the continent and featuring the native aristocracy. Prince Prospero is a nobleman and he acts like one. Think Jared Kushner. Comes the day, some five or six months into the lockdown, when the prince decides to give a masquerade ball. At this point, even though the story is quite short, Poe branches off into one of his description fugues about rooms and suites and color schemes. It's a bit confusing, with corridors and windows and ultimately seven rooms done up in seven colors. It's kind of like a rainbow except the colors are wrong and in the wrong sequence. Red is the death chamber, of course, and its opposite here is blue, which does happen to have uncanny resonance with our present historical moment, right down to a contagious epidemic and the color red representing the death cult. Poe was thinking of blood, of course (as opposed to blood and soil), but by both happy accident and instinctive understanding of epidemic he turned out a remarkable story in spite of the small miscues. I know it's purely circumstantial and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it feels like it was written for COVID-19 in the 21st century. For that reason, I'm sorry to have to report that the virus wins. Even in a remote mountain keep, you can't get away from it. Spoiler alert.
Yes, red = death cult.
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