t his bride is dying as he paints her portrait. "The Mask of the Red Death" is about Prince Prosperto who tries to save his diseased country from this figure called "The Red Death". A strong emphasis is placed on "profuse bleeding" and on "the horror of blood", obviously related to Virginia's terrifying hemorrhage merely four months before the story's creation. In "Red Death" Poe wrote, "the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" which shows of an attitude that is very rare in Poe's work, because death is not normally a terminal thing for him. Both stories shows of a denial and a struggle to fight death, just as Poe refused to realize how serious Virginia's condition was. (Meyers,1992, p.133; May, 1991, p.102-103).In 1844 Poe and his family moved to New York City. There he wrote the "Balloon Hoax" for the Sun, and became subeditor of the New York Mirror under N.P. Willis. By now Poe was well known in literary circles, and the publication of `The Raven and Other Poems' in 1845, enhanced his reputation. That same year he became editor of the Broadway Journal, in which he republished most of his short stories. The couple was comfortable for a time, but his wife soon became sicker. Poe, deeply worried about Virginia's failing health, wrote a number of strange stories about hypnotism and death. One of them, "Mesmeric Revelation," concerned a man who dies while in a hypnotic trance and reveals the nature of Heaven and the cruelty of life on earth: All things are either good or bad by comparison.... Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would be never to have been blessed.... The pain of primitive life of Earth, is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven.Poe, who had seen his wife suffer through poverty and now a painful illness, must have taken some comfort in the ideas expressed in this story. (May, 1991,4p.5-47).In 1847, Virginia's long str...
