44 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Masque of the Red Death
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1842A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Thought & Response Prompts
These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the short story.
Personal Response Prompt
How does Edgar Allan Poe’s story about a plague compare with your own recent experiences with a pandemic?
Teaching Suggestion: Keep in mind that COVID can be a traumatic conversation for some students who may have lost family or felt oppressed by lockdowns. But now that we’ve experienced an epidemic, old stories about plagues can suddenly be more relatable. You should find the angle most appropriate for your classroom’s experience.
- "The Forgotten Plague" – PBS “American Experience” documentary about tuberculosis.
Post-Reading Analysis
Think about the people hiding from the Red Death in Prospero’s castle. Do they deserve to be immune from the plague? Do they deserve to die in the end? Why or why not?
Teaching Suggestion: This is a question of morality, ethics, and class privilege. You can use this for a Socratic Seminar as well as for exploratory writing. Ties to the theme of The Unavoidability of Death
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