He is a selfish man who cares only about his well-being and nothing about others who are dying from the red death. However, there are also literary scholars who say that this story is much more than what it appears to be. Poe may have meant something quite different about Prospero's actions.

Says Canada, for example, while literary scholars have analyzed all of these aspects of Poe's work, they have studied many more, as well. "Of particular interest is Poe's fascination with psychology. An outspoken admirer of phrenology, a pseudoscience based on the premise that various functions are controlled by specific regions of the brain, he tirelessly explored subjects such as self-destruction, madness."

Some critics argue instead that Poe's story had a religious motive, because Poe is often seen as a philosophical-religious writer who expounds on the conditions of salvation and psychological reconciliation to the will of God (Wagenknecht, 217;...
[ View Full Essay]