Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, and Poe is foreshadowing a hellish and horrific experience for the narrator. He also sets up an expectation in the reader and truly tests the thin but palpable sympathetic emotional response that is built in the opening lines of the story. He foreshadows the narrator's actions by stating subtly that the narrator has begun to feel strangely as the story unfolds. The narrator states, "(I) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them.." The reader, now draw into the story, begins to feel like the narrator is not quite right, and the level of trust established with the reader is tested here. It is also quite frightening to witness the logical and moral decline of the narrator as he attempts to justify his actions, as they grow more and more atrocious. The climax of both stories contains similar literary devices and elements as well, as the conclusions leave the reader quite horrified and emotionally tormented. As time passes in "The Masque of the Red Death," the feeling that the Prince has made himself and his guests helpless by welding the gates to his compound shut begin to take on importance as the red masked stranger arrives. The red death is unstoppable because of the very efforts of the Prince to stop it, and the fear and helplessness that the reader feels are designed to leave an impression on the reader. The mystery and then true horror of the identity of the masked...
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