The tone that Poe achieves in The Masque of the Red Death is terror, alarm, and, above all, horror. Poe wanted his reader to leave the piece unable to stop thinking about it, to leave with fear in their mind, in their bones and in their heart. Poe achieves this through the words he uses and the way he uses them. Poe's structural style is very articulate, he does this to keep the flow of his writing very strong and fluid. In The Masque of the Red Death he deals with each of his paragraphs on a topic, in doing so he is able to choose extremely specific language to coincide with each idea. The other aspect of Poe's writing that contributes to his success is the words he uses, or the color of his writing. There is no arguing that Poe doesn't have an absolute talent for word choice, not a single word is written that doesn't lend to the excessive atmosphere of the writing. Poe depends on the vividness and dramatic quality of each of the words he chooses. The way he describes the Red Death as “scarlet spots” appeared on the victim's face on the “scarlet” glass of the window that illuminated the black of the seven-colored room. Poe's explicit choice of words not only contributes to the success of his composition, but also enhances its feeling