Meanwhile, in both stories the characters desire the “will to live”. In “The Masque of Red Death”, Prince Prospero doesn't seem to care about the poor people of his country and shuts himself and his favorites in the castle with a never ending party with his will to live. He believed that death may consciously or unconsciously reject the disease that created terrible surroundings in the country and spare him and his fellows. “However, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all” ( Poe, Masque 12). This demonstrates Prospero’s will to live which represents his inner will to …show more content…
He engages in battle with the enemy by distractions designed to eliminate the fear of death, he follows the figure in every room because after finding the figure he would conquer him and the idea of death. Furthermore, this can be a representation of Poe himself because Poe wanted his loved one’s to have an opportunity to live with the help of their desire to live. Similarly, in “Ligeia”, Ligeia’s husband believes that there might be a connection between his love and the passage written by Joseph Glanvill known as the English moralist. Furthermore, narrator describes the will of Ligeia, she had a strong desire to live and how during her illness, she kept on resisting death. Ligeia’s husband says, “Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor” ( Poe, Ligeia 14). This states that even with the desire to live after resisting death, Ligeia dies because of her illness. But, her will survived because her will to live is reborned in the form of Ligeia’s husbands second wife Rowena. Also, during the time when Rowena had her wine, narrator saw three or four drops of ruby colored fluid in Rowena’s drink but he didn’t say anything, thinking it was an imagination created by the opium that he