The personification of death in “The Masque of the Red Death” is striking and terrifying:
[...] the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. [...] The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. 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. [...] But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
Death’s arrival in the imperial suite of Prince Prospero shocks the prince and all of his guests, who flaunt their wealth and excess in the midst of the devastating plague sweeping the nation. The phrase “out-Heroded Herod” in the passage above alludes to King Herod, a figure who appears in the Christian New Testament. Appointed King of Judea by the Romans, he is known for his brutality and massacres of innocents. Thus, the phrase “to out-Herod Herod” means “to exceed in violence or extravagance.” The fact that the personification of Death appears to have “out Heroded Herod” therefore indicates the total devastating effect of his presence in the imperial suite. The inescapability of death and its imposing, all-encompassing dominion over humanity is made uncomfortably clear with his literal manifestation in the passage above.
