Chapter 22, 23 &24-
As mentioned in these chapters Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe has a character that dies of something called the Red Death. The person to die of this fictitious disease is Prince Prospero, and all of this occurs within thirty minutes of him catching this deadly pathogen. The prince tries to avoid dying from the disease by shutting himself in his castle along with some of his friends. Nobody knows where the Red Death came from. It is, as Foster would describe, picturesque in terms of a disease, the perfect killer, quick and painful. Red Death could be a play-off of Black Death, the Bubonic plague. It swept through, quickly killing people with ease and in a very gory manner. The fictitious Red Death involves sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding from the pores, which leads to death within a half an hour while the Black death is more flu-like, causing fever, headaches, chills, weakness, and swollen tender lymph glands and also caused sores all over the victims body which leaked pus and caused pain. Black Death was referred to as death itself, so metaphorically Red Death is a metaphor as well, just used in a literary work with different symptoms and effects.
Another disease not so pathogenic in nature would be one expressed in Shakespeare's Romeo and Julliet. Romeo, although perfectly healthy in the prime of his life, dies from one of the most fatal diseases one could ever "catch"; he essentially dies of a broken heart, or dies in order to avoid hurting for his loved one, Juliet. His passion for her blinds him into making a rash decision when he thinks that she is dead after staging her death in order to be with him, despite their family disputes. Romeo kills himself in order to "be with Juliet" because he believed she was dead. Upon awakening from the elixir that Juliet drank to appear dead, she sees Romeo dead and ends her life as well.
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