Throughout Edgar Allan Poe's works there are common ideas that oppose each other, such as madness versus sanity, reality versus imagined reality, and life versus death. Usually these feelings are taken as contrasting ideas with little similarity between them, such as black and white. However, many of these reasons fall into the gray category. Poe uses the path of common thought to highlight its antithesis; the path of grey. With the new path, emphasize the similarities of opposing ideas until they merge into one solid gray idea. One without the other is nothing but absolutely nothing. Poe creates gray both to discredit society's division between black and white and to highlight that the first perception is not always the most accurate. This is especially true when themes of life and death, love and hate, luck and bad luck come into play. In his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe uses the juxtaposition of opposing ideas to reveal similarities between what appear to be opposites. Within Edgar A. Poe's stories, there is often a duality of emotions or feelings, often in direct conflict with each other. This is the case of two of his stories focused on the theme of life versus death. “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Hop-Frog” are two stories that vividly exemplify the contrast between the two themes. In the short story "Hop-Frog", the main character is driven to find a way out of his prison. . To escape, she believes she must kill her captor, the king. The moment he creates the connection between the king who is death and his death which is freedom, he has created the gray effect. The connection between life and death is established and cannot be separated...... middle of paper ......or, CA: Greenhaven, 1998. 160-68. Print.Roth, Martin. “Inside “Masque of the Red Death”” SubStance 13.43 (1984): 50-53. JSTOR. Network. May 8, 2012. .Sova, Dawn B. “The Masque of the Red Death.” Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2007. 109-13. Print.SparkNotes editor. "Poe's Tales." SparkNote. SparkNotes, April 25, 2012. Web. May 11, 2012. .Templar, Aldwin. "Literary Analysis: The Black Cat, by Edgar Allan Poe." Helium.com. Elio, March 25, 2008. Web. May 9, 2012. .Womack, Martha. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe "The Poe Decoder. Network. 09 May 2012. .