Enfermidade, medo e decadência em Edgar Allan Poe: uma análise de “O baile da morte vermelha” e “A queda da casa de Usher”

Abstract

This study analyzes the representation of illness, fear, and decadence in the short stories “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allan Poe, considering their elationship with the historical and cultural context of the nineteenth century in the United States. The research adopts a qualitative and bibliographical approach, with an interpretative analysis of the short stories, organized around three main axes: illness, fear, and decadence. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, illness appears as a collective plague, marked on the body and crossed by social effects, especially by the separation between those who can seek protection and those who remain exposed to risk. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, illness assumes an intimate and psychological dimension, associated with nervous disease, hypersensitivity, family ruin, and the instability of domestic space. The analysis also shows that fear acts as a structuring force in both narratives, appearing either collectively or as an inner experience of disorientation and threat. Decadence, in turn, emerges as a consequence of illness and fear, expressed in the ruin of the house, in the exhaustion of the family lineage, and in aristocratic excess in the face of calamity. It is concluded that Poe uses gothic elements not only to produce horror, but also to reveal human, social, and moral fragilities, making his short stories significant for thinking about experiences of instability, finitude, and collapse.