Here is the answer of the given question above. The <span>excerpt from "The Masque of the Red Death" that best shows Prince Prospero’s self-centeredness is this:
</span><span>But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.</span>
The reader can look at the surrounding words to help them find the meaning. the surrounding words are called context clues.
Charlie notes that he had been "foolish" to "ever have thought that professors were intellectual giants." He realizes that they are simply people, who are "afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge."
