"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe could be the least optimistic writer ever. His stories contain decay, sadness, death... never a happy ending or an optimistic point of view. The Masque of the Red Death is definitely not the exception. 

In this story, Poe tells us about a plague, "The Red Death", which made people bleed from every part of their bodies. Disgusting, horrible, but that was the story's reality. And so the prince, Prince Prospero, along with his close friends and maybe family, hid in his abbey to prevent the Red Death to take them to its hell. 

And so, everybody was there in the seven room abbey. Everybody wearing their respective masks, as it was a mascarade. Six rooms were full of color, full of life; and the left one was black and red. Terrifying. No one dared to enter into that room, and when the clock inside it hit the hour, everybody would stop doing whatever they were doing but breathing. After the clock stopped sounding, everybody would return to their activities. 

An unexpected guest, a man bleeding, with a mask that was actually not a mask, arrived, causing Prince Prospero to get angry at the joke of disguising as the "Red Death". Only that it was not a custom. It was the Red Death which walked passing every single room until it reached the black one, giving death to everyone. 

The message in this story is very clear. Death. Hiding from it. Colorful and cheerful life in the different stages of life. The last room of our lives: darkness, death, and a clock which tells the time you have left. And when you notice that time is ticking by, you get paralyzed, but then continue with your life. And finally, the most representative: Life will always end in Death, and if Death is near you, you will not be able to avoid it. Having the most powerful fortress will not make Death turn away. 

So that was a story full of allegories, full of hidden messages within its different elements, such as de Red Death itself, the rooms, the prince, the abbey, the clock... everything represented more than in their main escence. I believe it is a very enjoyable story if you can read the allegories. 

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal." Fiction, Science Fiction. The intelligence model was Hazel, Harrison's mother, who we can say has an intelligence below average. Everybody was handicapped so that they would look the same, do the same. No one better than anyone in anything. But all of this cannot be possible if there is not a mastermind behind: Diana Moon, the handicapping program directress.

Everybody is fine, nothing happens; they are used to getting punished for trying to think and do "unusual" stuff. They even agree on having handicaps. They support the equality. Specifically, George and Hazel, the main characters of our story.

Suddenly, Harrison, their son, who was taken away for having removed his handicaps, is announced on TV as a great danger for anyone who dares to cross his path. Harrison appears. He proclaims himself the emperor and frees the ballerina who was appearing in the previous show his parents were watching. She was the best ballerina for the number and kind of handicaps she was wearing. So he frees her and the music men, making them give their best, not their limited best. And so they do. Harrison and the ballerina dance and float in the air, kissing. In that moment, Diana Moon shoots them. They die. Hazel cries, but she cannot remember why. George misses the moment. Life continues.

Clear example of how excesses are not good. Even good things over their limits are not at all good. Equality made the world gray, without variety of people... it made the world a zoo, animals in their cages. Everything ruled by an absolutist and her fellow tyrants: Diana Moon. What is the purpose of having everybody limited from their capacities, from their dreams? It is a matter of control, of power, and that is what Diana Moon was. Harrison rebelled against that kind of world, wanting to break free. Revolution. He got death in exchange, and not a place in someone's memory at least, not even his parents'.

That is sad, wanting to make a world where everybody could develop a personality, develop themselves, and getting killed by a tyrant. Even though it talks about the future and an extreme situation, which obviously looks impossible to us, this story's elements show us not a very far away situation. Wanting control over all, rebellion, love, conformism, and just taking everything for granted... they are not very far away from us, and if we just look around, we will find all these.

I liked the story, and it is very interesting to read it and to think about it.

"Night" by Elie Weisel

There is so much to say about this story. Powerful, touching. The story of a teenage jew, Eliezer, during the darkest times for the world in the twentieth century: the second world war. He, as many others, was deported to the concentration camps, and lived his own terrifying story in there. He started thinking about understanding the Kabbalah, but ends up worrying about what to eat, what to do to help his father... how to survive. 

To start with, himself. How powerful it was to be wanting to devote his life to something and then having his plans changed for something he would suffer and could not complain about. Being so young, with so many plans in mind, with a wonderful family... it was just not fair, not only for him, but for every deportee and people who suffered.

The experience he had made him go even against his values. Everything he knew to be good and the faith he had in human beings was lost form the very first moment he arrived at a concentration camp. He tried to keep up the faith in something, but in the end his only wish was to survive for his father, as they loved each other. But he would end up looking at him as an obstacle rather than a reason to live. It is impressive how a mind that aims towards kindness and values ends up just worrying about its personal fate. The situations were strong, definitely.

And his dad, being almost everyone's councelor and adviser, ends up not knowing how to keep up the hope for light, for day. He almost lets himself die, instead of having the courage to continue living. Someone so admired and respected for his inner strength...

But of course I cannot know about that. It sounds so easy to tell about what one thinks should have happened, but just to imagine the situation, the people, the atmosphere... It makes me drop a tear. Those dark times are only within my mind, within what I can know it was, but I cannot think of myself in those situations. I just cannot, it is difficult to put yourself in a situation you cannot even imagine, just barely. 

Four moments in the story stay in me more than the others:

• The first one was when he sees the babies being burnt. I can just say it made me cry. My imagination flies very high. I had to stop reading for a minute. 
• Then, when some guy says that because he was strong, he was made to put his father in the furnace. Wow! That truly shocked me. I stopped reading again. I could not imagine how it would be to be in his place, having to see your dad's face craying, maybe begging, and still having to do it, to burn alive the one that gave you life and loves you. Despite being a very little part in the book, it stuck inside me. 
• When the boy plays the violin in front of the mountain of dead and nearly dead bodies. It is just amazing, a "just in movies" moment. I cannot say anything else, but that I cannot describe how wonderful it felt when reading that. Sadness, Relief, Hope, everything put together. It was truly a little heaven in the middle of hell.
• And the fourth one, when Elie looks at a mirror for the first time since he was deported and sees "a corpse looking at him". That much he had changed! He was no longer himslef and maybe it was the same terror that fills you when watching a ghost movie, or a disgusting image, that despite being tolerable in the sense that it does not blind you, it makes you not wanting to see it. Poor boy.

After reading Night, I had breakfast. I did not want to eat. There was fruit, milk, bread and eggs on my place. I was very touched by the book. And the same as the other WWII stories, it is unbelievable how they are actually true. It is a book that should be read. You feel the story and understand many things about how the concentration camps worked. 


(Sorry! I swear I tried to be breve!)

Allegories

What is an allegory? I had never thought about it, because I had never heard that word, or at least in the context we are in: Literature. What I now know by definition is that it is the meaning behind the elements in a piece of art that the author uses in order to convey a meaning, so that it can be interpreted, rather than be stated directly in the piece.

But of course everyone has dealt before with allegories, maybe not with art and neither conscious of what it was. But hidden messages... who has not done that before? Everyone has created a drawing with a meaning that nobody understands but them, or them and their close friends, family, etc. The point here is that the different elements within something that contain a meaning are allegories. 

It is important, in art for example, to have a background, to know who the author was, or maybe just the context he or she lived in. Many elements in a piece of art we can understand very easy, but it is because we have a background on it. Modern/ Contemporary art can be read easier by someone who does not have a lot of background in history, for example. This is because that person shares the same world and society with the author, so they can connect better and have communication, which is the objective of art: to tell something. 

That is why Greek or ancient art in general can be very hard to understand if there is not a proper background. The same can happen when dealing with abstract art, as its elements are very simple but convey a strong meaning. 

To my point of view, which I think many share, it is wonderful to be able to discover the message behind something and to be able to exploit that. Allegories are hidden messages waiting to be discovered.