Epicureanism and Schopenhauer’s Consolation in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death”

Abstract

The concept of death is important in Schopenhauer’s philosophy. For him, it is the only certainty. He regards life as a never-ending process of dying. The triumph of death is inevitable and this causes existence to be an absurd tragedy. Influenced in this by Buddhist thinkers, he regards death as the origin of philosophy because it makes us think and search for a solution to counter the futility of existence. This inevitability is discussed in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Red Death. The paper examines the concept of death in the story and the futile human struggle to avoid it. Our needs and lusts and the desire to satisfy those needs which he called the Will to Live make life a pain. One of the solutions that Schopenhauer proposed in his philosophy towards consolation and to counter our insatiability is asceticism. Poe’s short story which is a long series of profound symbols replicates Schopenhauer’s philosophy and man’s futile attempts to escape death. The only diversion from Schopenhauer’s concept is that the protagonist fails to live up to the proposed solution and the protagonist is in the end caught in the inevitability of death