Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
848 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
P-ISSN 2355-2794
E-ISSN 2461-0275
Contemplating COVID-19 through
Disease and Death in Three Short Stories
by Edgar Allan Poe
Novita Dewi*
Graduate Program in English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Sleman,
Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta 55281, INDONESIA
Abstract
Wort-case scenarios depicted in literary works may function to mourn and
warn people about the real situation, such as the spread of COVID-19 that
has altered worldwide life drastically. This study offers a reflection on the
current pandemic time through a close reading of selected American
classic literary works. The imagination of fear, isolation, and mask-
wearing in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories is resonant with the new
expressions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three short stories by Poe, i.e.,
‘The Masque of the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, and ‘The
Sphinx’ are chosen for examination using the thematic analysis method.
Repeated reading of the short stories shows that parallels can be drawn
between these stories and today’s phenomenon about anxiety, social
restriction, and health protocols. What can be implied from the analysis
are as follows: (1) Fear of the disease results in the characters’ added
distress, (2) The characters’ aberrant behaviour as to overprotect
themselves is exacerbated by the dreadful situation, and (3) Poe’s
obsession with dread and death to shock the readers can be historically
traced through his own inner predicaments, ill-health, and the 1832
Cholera contagion. In conclusion, the findings resonate with the COVID-
19 epidemic’s upshots.
Keywords: Aesthetic of fear, death, disease, distress, shocking effect,
short stories, Edgar Allan Poe.
* Corresponding author, email: novitadewi@usd.ac.id
Citation in APA style: Dewi, N. (2021). Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three
short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863.
Received December 30, 2020; Revised March 6, 2021; Accepted March 12, 2021; Published Online
May 3, 2021
https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v8i2.19240
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 849
1. INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted havoc throughout the world with many
victims and mortality rates steadily increasing since January 2020. All aspects of life
in the medical, ethical, and political-economic sectors have all been shattered by the
virus that spread more quickly than anyone predicted. Identified for the first time in
the city of Wuhan, China by December 2019, the case of the disease has afflicted all
nations across the globe with alarming death tolls every day. Deemed more severe than
the 1918 Spanish Flu that lasted in one year, the COVID-19 pandemic may last even
longer given that no specific and effective eradication of the disease is yet to be found
(Chen et al., 2020; Roback & Guarner, 2020), to say nothing of its economic and socio-
political impacts. Through December 2020, doubts about vaccination to combat the
virus remain unsettled and negatively affect the treatment of the virus (Bertin et al.,
2020; Harrison & Wu, 2020; Zhang & Liu, 2020).
Having said that, reading fiction can be one way to reflect on the worse-case
circumstances portrayed in the literature that are resonant with the present-day
situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. As we know, when we
read life-imagined-in-literature, we learn about values or moralities in addition to their
linguistic and artistic wealth (style of language, symbolism, etc.) therein. Literature is
the sedimentation of people’s life contemplation as in success, failure, love, hate,
peace, war, forgiveness, revenge, and many more, all of which are uncovered
imaginatively and creatively. Literature is rich. Just as joy and triumph are subjects of
literary works, so to have diseases and discomforts have become the core of such great
works as Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’, Daniel Defoe’s ‘Journal of the Plague Year’,
and ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name a few.
This present study limits itself to discussing the works of Edgar Alan Poe, an
American writer of the Romantic Period who is known for his tales of terror, insanity,
deterioration, and death. Many speculate that Poe’s own life is as neurotic as his
characters due to his illness, alcoholism, and unhappy relationships, hence worthy of
medical and psychopathological investigation (Arranz, 2014; Vora & Ramanan, 2002).
According to Christopher Semtner, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in
Richmond, USA, many of Poe’s gruesome stories are based on real people, real events,
and set-in real places including the stories chosen for discussion, i.e., ‘The Masque of
the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, and ‘The Sphinx’. The plague in ‘The
Masque of the Red Death’ resembles the 1832 Cholera Epidemic that hit the city of
Baltimore where Poe was living and yet he survived. In the same way, the presence of
corpses and death in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is reportedly inspired by an anecdote
about a soldier buried alive inside the wall of the granite bastion of Fort Independence
in Castle Island, Boston, Massachusetts whereby Poe was once a private (Semtner, n.d,
2015, 2017). The last story ‘The Sphinx’ is a lesser-known work published in a
magazine. Such as in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, this third story is set against
rampant cholera that swept through New York City that Poe once witnessed. Given
the parallels, readers of Poe’s short stories can mull over the current period of crisis
and high uncertainty concerning the conniving COVID-19 spread. While several
studies have examined Poe and a variety of ailments like tuberculosis (Wilsey, 2012),
maritime illness (Gowen, 2019), and neurological diseases (Battle, 2011; Teive et al.,
2014), Poe’s connection with COVID-19 is hardly discussed. This current research
provides answers to this missing link. The research question raised is:
850 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
• How do ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, and ‘The
Sphinx’ respectively examine the parallels between each story and the
circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic?
By choosing three short stories by Poe that particularly deal with mysterious
illness and death, it aims to shed light on the author’s observation of human nature in
the face of catastrophe and loss of life.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
This section provides the study’s conceptual framework in reading Poe’s short
stories by presenting his literary technique and consistency in dealing with the subject
matter as thus far discussed in some scholarly writings. A brief discussion on possible
modern-day corresponding contexts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is also
presented herein.
2.1 Poe’s Literary Technique
If the early twentieth century’s scholars mostly discussed the influence of
European writers on Poe’s tales, the wealth of scholarships more than a century later
has continued to acknowledge who influenced Poe and the influence of Poe on other
writers to date. Besides, Poe’s enduring reputation as a popular culture icon is also
proven in the entertainment industry from movies to video games that credit his horror
and detective stories (Buday, 2015; Ehrlich, 2014; Frank, 2014). Why Poe? What
follows is a further elaboration on the main virtue in Poe’s writing, i.e., shocking his
readers.
2.1.1 The aesthetics of fear
Unlike other American Romantic and regional writers whose works refer to a
particular region of their own Old South, Edgar Allan Poe is considered an
international writer for he hardly takes any place as the setting of his works.
Interestingly, he deals with his imagination region as in unknown places, miraculous
lands, mythical landscapes, etc. (Battle, 2011; Gelfert, 2014; Schöberlein, 2017).
Different from writers of his generation like Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, or
Longfellow who are imbued by William Wordsworth’s poems, for instance, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge is Poe’s chief inspirational poet. Coleridge’s 1798 poem ‘The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner’ inspires Poe to write his short story ‘Ms. Found in a Bottle’
and his novel ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ (Møllegaard &
Belcher, 2013). Next, while other Romanticists use symbolism as one literary device
that links them together as Romantic writers when conveying moral teachings, Poe’s
use of symbolism is to create aesthetic effects in his works. He wants to bring about
such emotions as frightening, scary, creepy, etc. into his works. In so doing, Poe refutes
didacticism believing as he does in the importance of creating beauty and intensity of
emotion in literature. Greatly inspiring later writers, Poe and his aesthetic ideas have
left profound effects on foreign (non-American) authors from France such as Charles
Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme (Faber, 1989; Filippakopoulou, 2015; Stroparo,
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 851
2017; Szabo & Crișan, 2018) to Latin America like Borges (Esplin, 2016), to mention
a few.
Aesthetic of fear is also evident in the way Poe’s work is set. The conventional
setting in Gothic literature includes old houses with pointed arches and vaults, flying
buttresses, narrow spires, stained glass windows, intricate traceries, and varied
ornamental details. This upward movement of the Gothic architecture shown in the
old, richly decorated buildings here is meant to suggest heavenward (Crow, 2009).
Although Poe sometimes uses such similar eerie settings, the purpose is to suggest the
underworld and the dark side of the human soul frequently portrayed in his fictional
characters (Clarke, 2016; Møllegaard & Belcher, 2013). The gloomier the setting, the
more distressing the characters are.
2.1.2 The art of shocking the reader
Poe believes in designing and composing a short story in a way that every single
word and every detail may contribute toward one powerful impression. He borrows
Aristotle’s idea of unity as shown in the classic writer’s ‘Oedipus Rex’. The unity of
time, action, and place is seen in Poe’s works. He begins with information. Detailed
facts appear first with a piece of explanation about the setting, character, and situation.
The effect in Poe’s story usually has a connection with what is presented before.
Poe begins, for instance, by discussing idiosyncrasy to draw people’s attention. The
Ushers and their estate are detached from the neighbourhood, and only one family
member has survived for generations. Poe thus describes something grotesque. He
deals with unreal happening, that is, something that is always out of scale. Most writers
begin with reality by making use of fantasy to describe it. They comment on the real
thing introduced by the fantastic world in the like of Hawthorne’s dark forest to
describe humans’ evil. Poe is different as he goes through fantastic worlds and never
returns. Poe was mostly influenced by Shelley and Byron who believe in indefinite
landscape or the so-called supernatural beauty (Beyers, 2009).
Poe is therefore unique in that he is only interested in the effect, i.e., to shock the
readers. To achieve this effect, he firstly escapes from the ordinary by presenting a
lonely, dark, and strange place. Such a setting is usually claustrophobic and isolated
from society. Secondly, he astonishes the reader with a death-related situation such as
temporary burial place underneath the house, incurable disease, bad omen as in his
famous poem ‘The Raven’, etc. Poe intentionally chooses a raven not any other birds
to symbolize death and despair as it sits and stares at the slowly going mad speaker of
the poem. The carrion, a black-plumaged bird, is often seen at the battleground pecking
at corpses (Freedman, 1996). Thirdly, the narrative is that of a sensitive person who
usually comes from the upper class like Roderick Usher. As such, the story is
exaggerated, unreal, and fantastic, hence giving a shocking effect.
2.1.3 Psychosomatic character
Often considered as the leading figure and inventor of detective stories (Esplin,
2016; Kopley, 2008; Rachman, 2010; Yang, 2010), Poe, together with Nathaniel
Hawthorne and Herman Melville are prominent authors of American Dark
Romanticism whose works influence the development of Gothic literature in America
and England (Kaplan, 2018; Kopley, 2010). Poe’s tales, specifically, show evidence
852 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
of creepy symbols, dreadful themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin
characteristic of grotesque literature (Møllegaard & Belcher, 2013; Sommerfeld,
2018).
The characters in Poe’s tales/poems are usually of two types. The first type is a
hypersensitive person. This person is mostly bothered by sound or any objects that
hardly disturb other people. The second type is characters, which fill Poe’s tales are
beautiful women of femme fatale variety. Poe creates a situation that greatly raises the
readers’ sympathy by way of the death of the women.
Poe’s peculiar themes and the development of psychoanalysis at that time have
continually provoked debates as to whether Poe’s works represent his mental
conditions (Semtner, 2017; Shulman, 1997; Stephanou, 2013). Nonetheless, the self-
destruction-prone characters in Poe’s stories remain an interesting phenomenon that
invites not only speculations but also scientific, interdisciplinary research pursuits
(Battle, 2011; Gelfert, 2014; Schöberlein, 2017).
2.2 Possible Parallel to COVID-19 Phenomenon
The outbreak of the deadly virus, COVID-19, has taken people from all walks of
life around the world by a storm leading to dramatic changes to people’s daily lives.
COVID-19 has seized control and influenced the behaviour of the policymakers,
medical and health front liners, researchers from different disciplines, and, more
importantly, the victims and their family members, to say nothing of its economic,
psychological, and socio-political setbacks.
This section is to discuss three common terms associated with the COVID-19
pandemic that have caused social and psychological impacts on people: fear, isolation,
and mask-wearing. To begin with fear, several recent studies show that the unseen
virus has led to anxieties, fears, and vulnerabilities along with its psychosocial
consequences, in addition to the far-reaching global economic significances, to cite
only three studies sampled in Indonesia (Abdullah, 2020), Brazil (Ornell et al., 2020),
and the United States (Perz et al., 2020). These studies concur that this pandemic has
impacted and transformed every aspect of people’s lives from professionals, college
students, to low-income people who are badly beaten by the spread of the disease.
Next, mindful of these interchangeable terms, namely social distancing, self-
quarantine, and self-isolation (Suppawittaya et al., 2020u), this present study’s use of
social distancing is of two types. The first is isolation as a civil obligation following
the call for avoidance of public gatherings. The second is that of mental health
disorders as a result of traumatic experience in coping with COVID-19. One of the
most effective ways to slow down the spread of the deadly virus is by implementing
health protocols such as social distancing. Cancellations of all kinds of public
assembly to avoid the human-to-human spread of the virus have taken place around
the world with differing success and repercussions. On the one hand, social distancing
inevitably results in socio-economic upshots that vary from individual or institutional
financial instability (Martin et al., 2020; Nicola et al., 2020) to the uncertainty of the
global economy (Ozili & Arun, 2020). On the other hand, reducing interactions
between individuals has helped improved healthier lifestyles and increase public
knowledge about health (Di Renzo et al., 2020; Suppawittaya et al., 2020), hence the
positive side of social distancing. Meanwhile, the wealth of studies claim that isolation,
despite its effectiveness to mitigate virus spread, can lead to psychological after-effects
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 853
such as grief, loneliness, corona phobia, and other anti-social behaviours (Luchetti et
al., 2020; Wallace et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). It is against the isolation of the
second type that Poe’s short stories will be read.
Finally, the last resemblance is mask-wearing. This practical tip is most popular
during the pandemic time given its usefulness (Esposito & Principi, 2020; Martin,
2020; Qian & Jiang, 2020). Wearing a mask is a mandatory lifestyle along with hand-
washing and social distancing (Goh et al., 2020; Purnamasari & Raharyani, 2020). The
mask does not avert the plague, but today it is a must because nobody wants to transmit
the disease to others. The three short stories under discussion will thereby be
interpreted within this context.
3. METHODS
This research was designed using qualitative-interpretative methods commonly
used in the study of literary texts. The research data were taken through a library study
(George, 2008) in the form of primary data, namely three short stories by Poe procured
from The Project Gutenberg EBook; and secondary data that include journal articles,
newspapers, magazines, and books of related topics. No research participants/
respondents were involved here because the researcher is the one to locate, identify,
and interpret the data (George, 2008). The steps are as follows. Each story was
thoroughly and repeatedly read. Next, thematic analysis was applied to examine the
occurrence of fear, isolation, and mask-wearing in the three short stories. The analysis
emphasizes setting and characterization as these two elements fit in most clearly with
Poe’s technique previously outlined, i.e., horror as an aesthetic and self-inflicted
character. The last step is contextualization with three main issues surrounding the
COVID-19 pandemic. To report the results of the study, a summary of each story is
important, to begin with.
In ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, a bloody disease wrecks one certain kingdom
in Europe, killing people every day by attacking the victims to bleed from the pores.
The Prince named Prospero isolates himself for fear of contagion. He invites his close
friends to a mask-wearing party in his decorative castle that has seven rooms with
seven different colours. The last room, black with red windows looks quite frightening
that nobody dares to enter the room. A ghost-like figure dressed up like a plague victim
appears at midnight from the very room. Prospero approaches the figure and he is
killed instantly. Some invitees try to attack the costumed figure and find nobody inside
the red death clothing. These attackers all died on the spot.
‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is a story of vengeance. Montresor the narrator vows
to take revenge on Fortunato an Italian who loves wine tasting. During an Italian
carnival season, Montresor lures half-drunk Fortunato to test a dry sherry from Spain
called ‘Amontillado’ for him. Despite his cough problem, Fortunato insists on
checking over the wine kept in the catacomb beneath Montresor’s family home.
Dressed in a striped jester clothing fitted with a cone-shaped hat with bells and a black
mask, Fortunato begins coughing as he breathes the nitre-filled air in the underground
vault, but he continues walking down the winding staircase to get the wine cask.
Montresor offers some drink again and again to the already drunk Italian. Montresor’s
hatred for Fortunato heightens when the drunken man says that Montresor is just a con
man who does not belong to the noble family. Having quarrelled along the way, they
854 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
finally reach the smallest cellar when the cask is kept. Exclaiming ‘Amontillado’,
Fortunato hardly realizes that Montresor has step by step built a wall of bricks to
enclose Fortunato inside and leave him there to die.
‘The Sphinx’ tells of the narrator’s self-inflicted phobia of seeing a hideous
monster. As a cholera disease spread in New York City in 1832, he resolves to stay
with his cousin who lives near the Hudson River. The cousin tries to cheer him up, but
the narrator spends days sitting by the window overlooking the river while constantly
worrying about the disease. His distress reaches its peak when on that day he reads a
book about insects and suddenly sees a gigantic creature from the river approaching
him through the window. His cousin calms him down, chasing away a spider crawling
along the window-sash.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
What follows is an analysis of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of
Amontillado’, and ‘The Sphinx’. It examines how each story runs parallel, if variably,
with the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
4.1 Disease
The presence of disease in the selected three stories is both factual and
imaginary. In ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, a scarlet-coloured disease kills people
rapidly in the kingdom of Prince Prospero that makes him isolate himself to avoid
contamination. Fortunato the wine expert in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is not in his
best health as he is continuously coughing. The narrator in ‘The Sphinx’ decides to
live temporarily in his cousin’s house for fear of the Cholera outbreak. The characters
here are also mentally un-ease. Each has to cope with his nervousness that worsens the
situation.
To start with Prince Prospero, he throws a mask-wearing party after a few
months when the Red Death plague is at its pinnacle. When the plague starts to hit his
kingdom, the Prince is unaffected; He comes across as ‘happy and dauntless and
sagacious’ (Poe, 2005a). The darkness of his soul makes him unaware of his people,
mostly poor peasants, who get killed every single day for months. Prospero thinks only
of his rich friends, knights, and dames who keep him company in the superfluous
masquerade party. Poe writes (E refers to excerpts from Poe’s work as displayed in
this paper):
E1 It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged
most furiously abroad, that Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of
the most unusual magnificence. (Poe, 2005a)
All party attendees wear masks. The uninvited guest who arrives at midnight,
however, wears a mask of unusual appearance:
E2 “The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a
stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat”. (Poe,
2005a)
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 855
His mask is a Red Deathmask. We are told earlier that the Red Death disease
leaves unsightly marks on the victims that wearing a mask is important to conceal it.
Poe describes the disease as such:
E3 “The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban
which shut him out from the aid and the sympathy of his fellow-men”. (Poe, 2005a)
The plague that shatters Prince Prospero territory, like the COVID-19 pandemic,
is contagious and exterminates the population swiftly. The resemblance between
COVID-19 and the Red Death, however, ends in terms of the function of the mask-
wearing. The real one is part of the health protocols; the imaginary other is worn by
victims of the disease for evasion and cosmetic reasons.
Nobody feels sorry for Prince Prospero whose life ends tragically. He is but a
selfish authority who cares only for himself, not his folks. Nonetheless, we now have
the understanding that in times of crisis, there might be a Prospero within ourselves.
Here, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ explains to us that in difficult times, the
supposedly influential people think only of their interests. It is easy to contextualize
the situation depicted in fiction with the actual graft case involving the distribution of
COVID-19 social aid, panic buying of food supplies and masks, unnecessary crowd
settings amid the pandemic, and many other insensitive social behaviours we see these
days.
Next, no perceptible disease is present in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, except for
the symptoms of chronic cough suffered by Fortunato. The Italian wine connoisseur is
allergic to the smell of the grey salt deposit in the catacomb. But the plague of the heart
is most obvious in Montresor the narrator of the story since he holds a grudge against
Fortunato. As an unreliable narrator, Montresor says that he has endured “a thousand
injuries” for the justice of his revenge (Poe, 2005a). No explanation is available
concerning what kind of injuries that Fortunato has afflicted him. One critic argues
that the motive of murder in this short story is attributed to Montresor’s self-
consciousness of his class and social status (Baraban, 2004). A disease of this kind is
thus hard to cure.
A sizable body of research has discussed the authorial background of this story
and its characterization. Symptoms of drunkenness in Fortunato seem to reverberate
Poe’s drinking habit (Bazil, 1999; Korostyshevsky, 2016; Yunhadi, 2016). Fortunato’s
persistent cough is similar to Poe’s long illness – tuberculosis. Fortunato’s love for
drinking gets the better of him. Despite Montresor’s warning about the severe cold that
may be bad for Fortunato’s cough and the “insufferably damp” nitre-filled vaults, the
Italian ignores his illness, insisting ongoing after the wine, saying thus:
E4 “Let us go nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado!” (Poe, 2005a)
As for ‘The Sphinx’, fear of disease is the reason why the narrator decides to
leave New York City where he lives to his cousin’s home when the Cholera epidemic
hard hit his area. Poe opens the story by introducing this psychosomatic character
whose fear of the disease devours him. Poe describes the narrator’s anxiety toward the
disease as follows.
E5 Not a day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some acquaintance. Then as the
fatality increased, we learned to expect daily the loss of some friend. At length, we trembled at the
856 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
approach of every messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death. That
palsying thought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could neither speak, think, nor dream
of anything else. (Poe, 2005b)
The disease affects him terribly. Here, Poe uses his customary accounts of
distressed character by way of self-confession. The disturbed narrator says this about
his state of mind:
E6 “As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my sanity or at least the evidence of my own eyes;
and many minutes passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor in a
dream”. (Poe, 2005b)
Detailed earlier on, Poe throws hypersensitive characters into his stories to
achieve the unity of effects. Like vividly seen in the characters of ‘The Black Cat’ and
‘The Tall-Tale Heart’ who hear and see something other people do not, the narrator in
‘The Sphinx’ suffers neurosis to mistake a spider for a spooky giant. The narrator is
also of the same type as the neurotic Roderick Usher elaborated at the beginning of
this study.
It is worth noting here that both “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Sphinx”
use first-person narrators. It is clear here that Poe proves his literary aesthetics to shock
the readers by revealing horror from the soul via the mouth of the doers. As Sun (2015)
claims, horror originates from people’s souls, in this case, the disintegration of
personality. Just as Montresor is consumed by his desire to revenge, so is the sphinx
narrator absorbed by his anxiety about the Cholera disease and monstrous creatures.
As for Prince Prospero, fear of the disease and self-importance destroy him.
To reflect on the current pandemic, characters in Poe’s short stories resemble, in
one way or another, people across the globe today whose morale has been diminished
by virus fear, grief, uncertainty about the future, bad news, unemployment, and many
other negative upshots resulted from the COVID-19 outbreak. Many studies show that
COVID-19 has tremendous psychological and social impacts and stress-related
manifestations that go beyond the fear of the virus itself (e.g., Dubey et al., 2020; Sher,
2020; Taylor et al., 2020). Sher (2020) contends that people who reside in COVID-19
pandemic areas and those who have pre-existing poor health are vulnerable, and some
are even prone to suicide. Meanwhile, Taylor et al. (2020) claim that some others are
xenophobic as to believe that certain races spread COVID-19 and thus hate them for
no reason. Other stress syndromes are self-centredness and self-induced terror.
Interestingly enough, Poe has perfect examples for such people with unstable mental
conditions: Prospero isolates himself in the grand castle and Montresor becomes cold-
blooded because of his consuming vengeance. Fortunato’s lingering lung disease and
alcoholism make him lose sight of the danger leading to his death. Cholera fear turns
the narrator into hallucinating about sphinx, giant, and monster. Poe, therefore, helps
us see the darkness of human nature that is frequently exposed in difficult times.
4.2 Death
Edgar Allan Poe’s obsession with death is inextricably linked with his literary
technique and parallel encounters of death combined with incessant miseries in his life.
As a motherless child aged three, he was sent to live with his adoptive parents, the
Allans. When Mrs. Allan died, his adoptive father disowned and refused to pay Poe’s
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 857
debts. Poe’s wife and cousin Virginia Clemm whom he married when she was thirteen
died; and Poe subsequently battled with his illness and poverty that desperately led to
his demise. Forty-year-old Poe died in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, under strange
circumstances speculated variously from alcohol, cholera, heart disease, tuberculosis
to suicide. While the biographical approach to reading Poe’s works have abounded
(e.g. Beyers, 2009; Møllegaard & Belcher, 2013; Shulman, 1997; Yang, 2010), a
closer look at his selected writings may reveal that death has a pattern as will be shown
here.
Death in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is mass destruction by a plague named
Red Death that takes everyone’s life both outside and inside the castle of Prince
Prospero. Death knows no gender nor class. In the beginning, the safest place is the
castle described as follows.
E7 There were buffoons, there were improvisatory, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians,
there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and the security were within. Without was the ‘Red
Death’ (Poe, 2005a).
Near the end of the story, death spares nobody when the Red Death figure
eventually arrives in the middle of the night. Here the accounts reveal the features of
Gothic literature with a haunted building, mysterious sickness, inexplicable
personality, dead body – all highlight the night of the soul that Poe is famous for when
composing tales of strange and shaking effects (Sun, 2015). Following Vora and
Ramanan (2020) in drawing a parallel between Ebola and the Red Death, this current
study affirms that the seizure of many lives in this short story resembles the COVID-
19 attacks. While Fortunato’s death is man-made (i.e., Montresor’s act of murder and
Fortunato’s credulity worsened by his drinking habit), natural propagation is the cause
of casualties in both Prince Prospero’s realm and the hometown of the narrator in ‘The
Sphinx’. Situated within the current pandemic, all stories under discussion nonetheless
give us some warnings about the seemingly uncontrollable forces of nature, the
importance of a healthy living style, and, to say the least, empathy in a time of
upheaval.
If authorial similitude is worthy of any clue, the characterization of Fortunato in
‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is easy to explain. The jester-clothed Italian is keen on
drinking alcohol that he risks his life by entering the catacomb with his vengeful
companion in search of the wine cask only to meet his death. Likewise, the medical
investigation has proved that the death of Poe is attributed to his severe drinking bouts
(Francis, 2010; Hernández & Estañol, 2009; Møllegaard, 2016). Unlike that of its
author, however, Fortunato’s death follows the modified pattern usually shown in
Poe’s writing, i.e., the bizarre buried-alive method as used in ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The
Fall of the House of Usher’ with the death of, respectively, the narrator’s wife and
Madeline. Although it is argued that Poe’s universal theme becomes the most poetic
with the presence of a beautiful woman in the death configuration (da Silva, 2015),
‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is slightly different. It is but an all-men story featuring
brotherhood rivalry and wine-tasting competition. Besides, the victim is a man vis-à-
vis fame Fatales in Poe’s short stories and poems. The gender difference here is
interesting. The death of Fortunato is therefore a variant to Poe’s conventional plots.
The male victims here complement Poe’s dead women pattern. When read against
COVID-19 casualties, death is indeed gender blind.
858 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
Death in ‘The Sphinx’ also bears some resemblance to COVID-19 casualties.
The narrative makes no mention of the victims of the Cholera pandemic against which
the short story is set. The narrator evades the disease but he is consumed by his fear of
it. While trying to hide his heightened fear from the cousin and host, the narrator fails
to do so upon seeing a creature resurrecting from the river. He acknowledges his horror
as the following:
E8 “I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as an omen of my death or,
worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania”. (Poe, 2005b)
It is worth noting here that Poe’s technique is to alarm the reader by using
accounts of the resurrection of the death often appears in his writings. The narrator
comes across as lifeless and dispirited. To conclude, although ‘The Sphinx’ does not
involve the death of the (main) character, the shadow of death is here to stay.
5. CONCLUSION
This study has shown that Poe’s living experience and the society of his time
shape the background of ‘The Mask of the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’,
and ‘The Sphinx’. Death of loved ones, loss of job, rejection, chronic illness, extreme
anxiety are all sources of distress in Poe’s writing. Coupled with his own bitter life,
Poe uses his literary technique to shock the reader through his aesthetic of fear and
mentally disturbed characters. In the three short stories, distress is evident in a different
character, to different degrees, for different reasons – all depicted to correspond to the
uncanny settings and narratives about diseases and death of the characters.
This study has also shown that Poe, as an American writer of the Romantic
Period, elevates dull realities to a realm of higher truth through exotic, supernatural,
and old-time settings, while making statements about the dark side of humans and
nature through his aberrant characters. Albeit the old setting, old characters, and old
narratives, the three works discussed portray similar occurrences to todays’ turmoil
whereby the outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe has instilled fear, anxiety, and
other devastating impacts especially to the weak. Prospero’s discontinuity of self-
isolation on account of the masquerade party results in more fatalities, just like the lack
of community compliance to social distancing during the current pandemic. Illness of
various kinds in Poe’s short stories are worsened in time of plague, hence the
resemblance to the ferocity of COVID-19.
Some aspects however pale in comparison to the COVID-19 situation. The
mask-wearing as part of sudden lifestyle changes during the current pandemic is non-
existent in Poe’s stories in terms of its purpose. The masks worn by the characters in
fiction have such symbolical meanings as evasiveness and identity concealment,
unlike health protection in the real situation. In this context, further research on Poe’s
other short stories or works belonging to Dark Romanticism by other writers would
provide valuable insight on how to cope with difficult times through reflective reading
of literature. Reading Poe is thus doing real-world observations. If we believe that
literature provides help, the contemplative reading of Poe may help endure and
maintain hope while waiting prayerfully for the COVID-19 pandemic to discontinue
spreading.
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 859
REFERENCES
Abdullah, I. (2020). COVID-19: Threat and fear in Indonesia. Psychological Trauma:
Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(5), 488-490.
https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000878
Arranz, C. P. (2014). Edgar Allan Poe, Md: Medical fiction and the birth of modern
medicine. Trespassing Journal, 4, 63-78.
Baraban, E. V. (2004). The motive for murder in "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar
Allan Poe. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 58(2), (2004),
47-62. https://doi.org/10.2307/1566552
Battle, R. W. (2011). Edgar Allan Poe: A case description of the Marfan syndrome in
an obscure short story. The American Journal of Cardiology, 108(1), 148-149.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjcard.2011.02.352
Bazil, C. W. (1999). Seizures in the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. Archives of
Neurology, 56(6), 740-743. https://doi.org/10.1001/archneur.56.6.740
Bertin, P., Nera, K. & Delouvée, S. (2020). Conspiracy beliefs, rejection of
vaccination, and support for hydroxychloroquine: A conceptual replication-
extension in the COVID-19 pandemic context. Frontiers in Psychology, 11,
2471-2479. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.565128
Beyers, C. (2009). Byron. In K. J. Hayes (Ed.), Edgar Allan Poe in context (pp. 251-
259). Cambridge University Press.
Buday, M. (2015). From one master of horror to another: Tracing Poe’s influence in
Stephen King’s The Shining. Prague Journal of English Studies, 4(1), 47-59.
https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2015-0003
Chen, L., Xiong, J., Bao, L. & Shi, Y. (2020). Convalescent plasma as a potential
therapy for COVID-19. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 20(4), 398-400.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30141-9
Clarke, F. (2016). Gothic vibrations and Edgar Allan Poe. Horror Studies, 7(2), 205-
217. https://doi.org/10.1386/host.7.2.205_1
Crow, C. L. (2009). History of the gothic: American gothic. University of Wales Press.
da Silva, M. A. (2015). The fantastic configuration of death in Poe: A reading of
“Morela”, “Ligeia” and “Eleonora”. Revista de Letras, 55(2), 29-44.
Di Renzo, L., Gualtieri, P., Pivari, F., Soldati, L., Attinà, A., Cinelli, G., Cinelli, G.,
Leggeri, C., Caparello, G., Barrea, L., Scerbo, F., Esposito, E. & De Lorenzo, A.
(2020). Eating habits and lifestyle changes during COVID-19 lockdown: An
Italian survey. Journal of Translational Medicine, 18, 1-15.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02399-5
Dubey, S., Biswas, P., Ghosh, R., Chatterjee, S., Dubey, M. J., Chatterjee, S., Lahiri,
D. & Lavie, C. J. (2020). Psychosocial impact of COVID-19. Diabetes &
Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, 14(5), 779-788.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsx.2020.05.035
Ehrlich, H. (2014). Poe in cyberspace: To like, friend, or follow? Poe in social media.
The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 15(1), 118-123.
https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.15.1.0118
Esplin, E. (2016). Borges's Poe: The influence and reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in
Spanish America. University of Georgia Press.
860 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
Esposito, S. & Principi, N. (2020). To mask or not to mask children to overcome
COVID-19. European Journal of Pediatrics, 179(8), 1267-1270.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-020-03674-9
Faber, P. (1989). Charles Baudelaire and his translation Edgar Allan Poe. Meta, 34(2),
253-258. https://doi.org/10.7202/002735ar
Filippakopoulou, M. (2015). Transatlantic Poe: Eliot, Williams and Huxley, readers
of the French Poe. Peter Lang.
Francis, R. (2010). The final days of Edgar Allan Poe: Clues to an old mystery using
21st-century medical science. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 60(2), 165-
173. https://doi.org/10.2190/om.60.2.d
Frank, A. (2014). Transferential poetics, from Poe to Warhol. Fordham University
Press.
Freedman, W. (1996). Poe’s “Raven”: The word that is an answer “Nevermore”. Poe
Studies/Dark Romanticism, 29(1), 23-31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-
6095.1996.tb00080.x
Gelfert, A. (2014). Observation, inference, and imagination: Elements of Edgar Allan
Poe’s philosophy of science. Science & Education, 23, 589-607.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-012-9551-8
George, M. W. (2008). The elements of library research: What every student needs to
know. Princeton University Press.
Goh, Y., Tan, B. Y. Q., Bhartendu, C., Ong, J. J. Y. & Sharma, V. K. (2020). The face
mask: How a real protection becomes a psychological symbol during Covid-19?.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 88, 1-5.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2020.05.060
Gowen, E. (2019). A global sickness: Medical science and print culture in the narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pym. The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 20(2), 269-288.
https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.20.2.0269
Harrison, E. A. & Wu, J. W. (2020). Vaccine confidence in the time of COVID-
19. European Journal of Epidemiology, 35(4), 325-330.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-020-00634-3
Hernández, C. D. & Estañol, B. (2009). The medical history of Edgar Allan Poe.
Revista Medica de Chile, 137(6), 852-3. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0034-
98872007000900019
Kaplan, H. (2018). Democratic Humanism and American Literature. Transaction
Publishers.
Kopley, R. (2008). Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries. Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616448
Kopley, R. (2010). Naysayers: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. In J. Myerson, S. H.
Petrulionis, & L. D. Walls, The Oxford handbook of Transcendentalism (pp.
597-616). Oxford University Press, Inc.
Korostyshevsky, D. (2016). Rum maniacs: Alcoholic insanity in the early American
Republic. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 71(2), 226–
228. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrv046
Luchetti, M., Lee, J. H., Aschwanden, D., Sesker, A., Strickhouser, J. E., Terracciano,
A., & Sutin, A. R. (2020). The trajectory of loneliness in response to COVID-
19. American Psychologist, 75(7), 897–908.
https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000690
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 861
Martin, A., Markhvida, M., Hallegatte, S. & Walsh, B. (2020). Socio-economic
impacts of COVID-19 on household consumption and poverty. Economics of
Disasters and Climate Change, 4, 453-479.
Martin, J. (2020, July 21). Father James Martin: Wearing a mask is pro-life. America:
The Jesuit Review. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/07/21/Covid-
mask-wear-pro-life-catholic-james-martin
Møllegaard, K. (2016). Fame after life: The mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s
death. Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 65, 129-150.
https://doi.org/10.7592/FEJF2016.65.mollegaard
Møllegaard, K. & Belcher, R. K. (2013). Death, madness, and the hero’s journey:
Edgar Allan Poe's antarctic adventures. International Journal of Arts & Sciences,
6(1), 413–427.
Nicola, M., Alsafi, Z., Sohrabi, C., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., Agha, M. &
Agha, R. (2020). The socio-economic implications of the coronavirus pandemic
(COVID-19): A review. International Journal of Surgery, 78, 185-193.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.04.018
Ornell, F., Schuch, J. B., Sordi, A. O. & Kessler, F. H. P. (2020). “Pandemic fear” and
COVID-19: Mental health burden and strategies. Brazilian Journal of
Psychiatry, 42(3), 232-235. https://doi.org/10.1590/1516-4446-2020-0008
Ozili, P. K. & Arun, T. (2020, March 27). Spillover of COVID-19: Impact on the
global economy. SSRN Electronic
Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3562570
Perz, C. A., Lang, B. A. & Harrington, R. (2020). Validation of the Fear of COVID-
19 scale in a US college sample. International Journal of Mental Health and
Addiction, 25, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00356-3
Poe, E. A. (Ed.). (2005a). Collected works of Poe (Vol. 2). ICON Group Internatioal,
Inc.
Poe, E. A. (Ed.). (2005b). Collected works of Poe (Vol. 5). ICON Group Internatioal,
Inc..
Purnamasari, I. & Raharyani, A. E. (2020). Tingkat pengetahuan dan perilaku
masyarakat Kabupaten Wonosobo tentang Covid-19 [Level of knowledge and
society behaviour in Wonosobo Regency concerning Covd-19]. Jurnal Ilmiah
Kesehatan, 10(1), 33-42.
Qian, M. & Jiang, J. (2020, May 25). COVID-19 and social distancing. Journal of
Public Health, 1-3. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10389-020-01321-z
Rachman, S. (2010). Poe and the origins of detective fiction. In C. R. Nickerson (Ed.),
The Cambridge companion to American crime fiction (pp. 17-28). Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521199377.003
Roback, J. D. & Guarner, J. (2020). Convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19:
Possibilities and challenges. Jama, 323(16), 1561-1562.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.4940
Schöberlein, S. (2017). Poe or not Poe? A stylometric analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s
disputed writings. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32(3), 643-659.
https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqw019
Semtner, C. P. (n.d.). 12 true stories behind Edgar Allan Poe’s terror tales. Biography.
https://www.biography.com/news/edgar-allan-poe-horror-stories-facts
Semtner, C. P. (2015). A young girl’s recollections of Edgar Allan Poe. Resources for
American Literary Study, 38, 53-64.
862 | Studies in English Language and Education, 8(2), 848-863, 2021
Semtner, C. P. (2017). Poe in Richmond: Poe’s tell-tale hair at the Poe museum. The
Edgar Allan Poe Review, 18(2), 275-280.
https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.18.2.0275
Sher, L. (2020). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates. QJM: An
International Journal of Medicine, 113(10), 707-712.
https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa202
Shulman, E. (1997). Edgar Allan Poe: Drawing the line between self-destructive life
style and actual suicide. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 34(1), 29-69.
https://doi.org/10.2190/3C77-7240-WNDC-BBKE
Sommerfeld, S. (2018). [Review of the book The portrayal of the grotesque in
Stoddard’s and Quantin’s illustrated editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884): An
interdiciplinary analysis of the relations between the visual and the verbal, by.
F. González-Moreno & M. Rigal-Aragón]. Revista de Estudios
Norteamericanos, 22, 359-363. http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/REN.2018.i22.20
Stephanou, A. (2013). Lovely apparitions and spiritualized corpses: Consumption,
medical discourse, and Edgar Allan Poe's female vampire. The Edgar Allan Poe
Review, 14(1), 36-54. https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.14.1.0036
Stroparo, S. M. (2017). Mallarmé: tradutor e poeta, poeta e tradutor. Domínios de
Lingu@ gem, 11(5), 1556-1566. https://doi.org/10.14393/DL32-v11n5a2017-9
Sun, C. (2015). Horror from the soul—Gothic style in Allan Poe's horror
fiction. English Language Teaching, 8(5), 94-99.
https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n5p94
Suppawittaya, P., Yiemphat, P. & Yasri, P. (2020). Effects of social distancing, self-
quarantine and self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s well-
being, and how to cope with it. International Journal of Science and Healthcare
Research, 5(2), 12-20.
Szabo, L. V. & Crișan, M. M. (2018). Edgar Allan Poe in Transylvania: Poe’s short
stories and gothic elements in nineteenth century Romanian literature. Palgrave
Communications, 4, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0082-z
Taylor, S., Landry, C. A., Paluszek, M. M., Fergus, T. A., McKay, D. & Asmundson,
G. J. G. (2020). COVID stress syndrome: Concept, structure, and
correlates. Depression and Anxiety, 37(8), 706-714.
https://doi.org/10.1002/da.23071
Teive, H. A. G., de Paola, L. & Munhoz, R. P. (2014). Edgar Allan Poe and
neurology. Arquivos de Neuro-psiquiatria, 72(6), 466-468.
https://doi.org/10.1590/0004-282X20140048
Vora, S. K. & Ramanan, S. V. (2002). Ebola-Poe: A modern-day parallel of the red
death?. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8(12), 1521-1523.
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0812.020176
Wallace, C. L., Wladkowski, S. P., Gibson, A. & White, P. (2020). Grief during the
COVID-19 pandemic: considerations for palliative care providers. Journal of
Pain and Symptom Management, 60(1), 70-76.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2020.04.012
Wang, C., Pan, R., Wan, X., Tan, Y., Xu, L., Ho, C. S. & Ho, R. C. (2020). Immediate
psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the
2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic among the general population
in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public
Health, 17(5), 1729. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051729
N. Dewi, Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by
Edgar Allan Poe | 863
Wilsey, A. M. (2012). “Half in love with easeful death”: Tuberculosis in literature
[Unpublished barchelor’s thesis]. Oregon Pacific University.
Yang, A. (2010). Psychoanalysis and detective fiction: A tale of Freud and criminal
storytelling. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 53(4), 596-604.
https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2010.0006
Yunhadi, W. (2016). Intrinsic analysis of the short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
LINGUA: Journal of Language, Literature, and Teaching, 11(1), 1-12.
https://doi.org/10.30957/lingua.v11i1.12
Zhang, L. & Liu, Y. (2020). Potential interventions for novel coronavirus in China: A
systematic review. Journal of Medical Virology, 92(5), 479-490.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.25707
