The Masque of the Red Death Decay and the Red Death held dominion over all". Directly influenced by the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto", in "The Masque of the Red Death" Poe adopts many conventions of traditional Gothic fiction, including the castle setting. The multiple single-toned rooms may be representative of the human mind, showing different personality types. The imagery of blood and time throughout also indicates corporeality. The plague may, in fact, represent typical attributes of human life and mortality, which would imply the entire story is an allegory about man's futile attempts to stave off death (a commonly accepted interpretation).
The Murders in the Rue Morgue The two share rooms in a dilapidated old mansion and allow no visitors, having cut off all contact with past acquaintances and venturing outside only at night. "We existed within ourselves alone," the narrator states. One evening, Dupin demonstrates his analytical prowess by deducing the narrator's thoughts about a particular stage actor, based on clues gathered from the narrator's previous words and actions. During the remainder of that evening and the following morning, Dupin and the narrator read with great interest the newspaper accounts of a baffling double murder. Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter have been found dead at their