So, today, we return to the short story by Edgar Allan Poe "The Mask of the Red Death".

There is fright, gloom etc, but Is this story really gothic ? To answer to this question I have study 2 points.

I The adjectives and adverbs of the gothic litterature

In this short story, we found a lot of adjectives and adverbs, which refers to the gothic vocabulary : 

The life in the Prospero's Castle and the great party organized : "magnificent", "lofty", "voluptuous", "gay", 

The gloom aspect : "fatal and hideous", "blood color", "tall and gaunt" (about the red person), "spectral image", "scarlet horror", "unutterable horror", "grave-cerement", "corpse-like", "blood-bedewed".

About the fright : "ghastly", "hoarsely" (when Prospero speaks about the red figure), "pale courtier", "hurriedly", "deadly terror", "despairing".

So there is a big contrast between the first part, where all is wonderful, and the second part, where the horror comes and the atmosphere becomes gloom and creepy. 

II The red colour

Poe uses the metonymy to exprims the red colours like "scarlet", "blood-colour", "redness", "gaudy".

The red is omnipresent during the short story. Indeed, it represents the Red Death of course, but it's also a fight against the life and the death. 

III The sounds

To accentuate the creepy atmosphere, Poe uses the sounds. Indeed, in the Prospero's Castle, there is a big pendulum (reference to the Pit Pendulum ?) which "swung", with "a dull, heavy, monotonous clang". This strange pendulum makes "a brazen lungs". This sound is "clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical", in constrast whit the waltzers played by the musicians, who sometimes makes a payse "to hearken to the sound". When the pendulum rangs, there is an echoes, very strange and scared. 

Also, there is sound, when the courtiers see the red figure, "twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock". Moreover, there is "echoes of the last chime", and "a buzz or murmur", some persons whisper. 

So, the sounds contribute to make a creepy atmosphere, particuliar in the gothic story.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can say that The Red Mask of the Red Death is a really gothic short story, because we are a lot of typical elements.

To go farther 

We can think that the seven chambers symbolizes something. I made some searches and I founded that it may be an allegory of the etaps of the life. So blue is the birth, purple is the childhood (not sure, because purple is the colour of the mourning), green is the adolescence, a period when all is growing and when the person grow, orange is the adult age, white is maybe the weddings, violet is the old age and red is the death.