The reflection of class conflict in Edgar Allan Poe's stories The Mask of The Red Death and The Hop-Frog

Karl Marx claims that societies are shaped fundamentally by class conflicts. According to Marx, these conflicts encompass the processes by which an oppressed class seizes power and gradually becomes an oppressor class. This class struggle continues in various forms today, and its traces and effects are reflected through various mediums. One of these, and arguably the most significant, is literature. Literature reveals the beliefs, lifestyles, emotions, and thoughts of societies, providing profound insights into social structures. From this perspective, literature contributes significantly to sociological research, while sociology also informs literature. The relationship between literature and sociology broadens the interpretive and analytical scope of literary works, allowing for a more comprehensive examination of social class dynamics within these works. This study explores how the struggle of social classes is reflected sociologically through Edgar Allan Poe's works The Masque of the Red Death and The Hop- Frog. By delving deeply into the interaction between literature and sociology, the study employs methods such as Marxist literary criticism, sociological literary criticism, and discourse analysis to thoroughly investigate class analysis. In this context, a detailed analysis of the social class dynamics and their literary representations in Poe's works has been conducted. The focus of the study is on how thematic elements in Poe's writings can be related to class conflicts and the effects of these themes on societal structures.