College

Select the correct text(s) in the passage.

Which three parts of this excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" highlight the suggestion that the powerful and wealthy in the story are insensitive toward the outbreak of the disease and those who are suffering?

---

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned.

With such precautions, the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve, or to think. 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. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

Answer :

The parts of Poe's text that show the wealthy's insensitivity in 'The Masque of the Red Death' are the retreat to the abbey, isolating themselves by welding its bolts, and indulging in pleasure while ignoring the plague.

The three parts of the excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" that highlight the suggestion that the powerful and wealthy are insensitive toward the outbreak of the disease and those suffering are:

  1. The decision of Prince Prospero to summon hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court and retreat from the devastated world, showing a lack of concern for his afflicted subjects.
  2. The courtiers' action to weld the bolts of the abbey, effectively isolating themselves from the plague and ignoring the plight of those outside, symbolizes their detachment and indifference.
  3. The description of the lavish party, where they had all the appliances of pleasure like buffoons, ballet-dancers, and musicians, indicating their choice to indulge in revelry and ignore the suffering outside the abbey's walls.