In Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Masque of Red Death",
Prince Prospero's goal is to retire with his courtiers away from his fashionable court
into a Palazzo situated far away from the center of the
city.
His purpose is to segregate himself and his courtiers
from the Red Death, which had come to their land to ravage the population. Prince
Prospero, as his name indicates, has everything in his power to make their move both
comfortable as well as entertaining. He takes this pilgrimage as an adventure, rather
than a necessary step to safety. As a result of Prince Prospero's attitude, his
courtiers appeared just as confident and free of
problems:
The story
reads,
The
courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They
resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair
or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the
courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself.
In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to
think.
As you can tell, they
basically felt that bolting themselves away and keeping it cool would be enough to
prevent contagion. They took for granted that their social status would protect them
from their human nature. Hence, they were not only over-confident, but arrogant at the
emergency at hand and, in the end, they paid for it all.
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