As for Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Masque of the Red Death, readers who possess knowledge of Poe's dark and depressing past can imagine the reasoning behind his construction of the text. Poe lost three women, who were very important to him, to tuberculosis. His ability to create dark and horror filled texts, backed with his personal knowledge of the disease, could easily lead one to decide that Masquewas an attempt to describe the horrible affects which tuberculous had upon its "host".
