Poe's Short Stories

Some people argue that the masqued ball in The Masque of the Red Death is just a dream. How does Poe use specific diction here that would support that argument?

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The whole sequence sounds bizzare and surreal. Consider Poe's diction below:

There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these --the dreams --writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps.