Pandemics between survival and devastation : a study of Edgar Allan Poe’s "the masque of the red death" and jack London’s "the scarlet plague

Abstract EN

The pandemic which overwhelmed the world in 2020, namely Covid-19, has changed peoples' lives.

However, some fields have taken the responsibility of helping people to overcome the miseries accompanied this hideous disease.

Among these fields are the field of medicine, health care, and biology.

In fact, literature has the greatest share of shedding light upon pandemics since literature and society are strongly correlated.

This study handles pandemics in two gothic stories “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe and Jack London's “The Scarlet Plague”.

Both stories talk about death as a result of plague but in Poe's story there is nobody who escapes death while in London's story there are people who survive; yet the survivals live a savage life after the decline of civilization because of the plague.