Edgar Allen Poe, in the story “The Masque of the Red Death”, shows how people can try to outsmart death and overcome it, but in the end they will die because death is inevitable. He reveals this in the book by showing all the people locked up in the abbey that belongs to Prince Prospero. They are trying to escape the "Red Death" and think they can escape death by hiding in the abbey. They manage to stay safe for six months but in the end they all die at the stroke of midnight during the masquerade ball that Prince Prospero organizes due to the Red Death itself appearing after midnight and ultimately leaving no survivors. Poe develops the theme of how no one can escape death through the use of point of view, setting, and symbolism. Poe develops the theme that no one can escape death through narration or the narrator in general. We don't know or learn who tells the story even at the end when all the people are said to be dead. There are many ways to look at this to see if we can get any clues as to who the narrator is. The narrator is a person who was there in the abbey, which is hard to see because at the end we read that all the people die but, as David Dudley states in his article, “He reveals himself openly only three times. . .” which proves that it must have been in the abbey. It can also be told by “…one of Prospero's dying guests…the last sentence could be read as the equivalent of Hamlet…” which might also have been possible (Dudley). In any case, when death comes to an end no one can escape it unless it is death itself. Poe continues to develop his point that no one escapes death through setting. Not only does it use the exterior and the way it was built to tell what precautions P...... middle of paper ......Plessis, Eric H. du. “Deliberate Chaos: Poe's Use of Color in 'The Masque of the Red Death'.” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 34.1-2 (June-December 2001): p40-42. Literary Resource Center. Network. April 8, 2012.Poe, Edgar Allan. Literature "The Masque of the Red Death" An introduction to reading and writing. AND. Edgar V Roberts and Robert Zweig. Boston, Longman: 2012. 516-519.Roth, Martin. “Inside 'The Masque of the Red Death'.” Substance 13.2 (1984): p50-53. Literary Resource Center. Network. March 19, 2012.Zapf, Hubert. “The Entropic Imagination in Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death'.” College Literature 16.3 (Fall 1989): p211-218. Literary Resource Center. Network. March 19, 2012.Zimmerman, Brett. “The Allegory and Architecture of the Clock in Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death'.” Essays in Arts and Sciences 29 (October 2000): P 1-16. Literary Resource Center. Network. April 8 2012.