Do you know that feeling that you get inside when you're walking through a haunted house? You know that somebody is about to pop out at you and scare you, yet when they do, you jump anyways. That feeling you have is suspense. In the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, the author, Edgar Allan Poe, uses suspense in many different ways. The two main ways that suspense is used is foreshadowing and symbolism. Without these types of writing, the feeling of suspense would be absent from the story.

The first way that Edgar Allan Poe uses suspense is the use of foreshadowing. In this short story, he used a lot of foreshadowing. One example of foreshadowing is the color of the windows in the last room. They were scarlet color, the color of blood, and this revealed to readers that no good was going to come out of this story. Readers can see how they can never really escape what they were trying to run away from in the first place, which was the “Red Death”. Also, the author uses foreshadowing just by the fact that everybody was at the ball to escape the plague. Readers realize how the guests are not going to stay safe forever. It's evident that there will soon be a bad ending for the masqueraders. Lastly, the masked figure at the end of the story reveals a lot to readers. Readers are almost able to predict the outcome of the story. It is clear how things are starting to take a turn for the worst in Prince Prospero's palace. The masked figure, the guests trying to escape reality, and the blood-red windows all foreshadow and create suspense to the readers. They all represent the famous line, “You can run but you can't hide.”

Edgar Allan Poe also builds up suspense in his symbolism. His symbolism allows his readers to visualize what is going on in the story which helps them see the true horror of what is actually going on. For example, the color red comes up a lot in the story. The color red represents death and blood. In the story, red also represents the “red death”, which everybody is trying to escape. Readers can tell how important blood and the color red is in the story when Poe states, “No