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Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

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“The Masque of the Red Death” is about a Prince who does not care about his citizens, who are poor and suffering severely. Instead of trying to take care of his people he decides to throw a huge masquerade ball to distract everyone from what is really going on. Everything goes downhill when an unexpected guess shows up. The two most opposing rooms were colored blue and black. Some guests were too terrified to enter the black room because it made them think about death. In this story, there are several rooms, each a different color, and each representing something different. The purpose of using the color scheme in stories it to have a deeper meaning put into the story.
Poe used colors to put more suspense and meaning into his story. He used a variety set of colors to represent essential and meaningful points within the story. He carefully chose those colors based on how he wanted to display the stages of life. …show more content…

Blue expresses birth, the beginning of life. This color represents honesty, wisdom, peace and calmness, blue is the color of responsibility and trust. This room was designed with vivid blue windows. The prince had each room designed differently from one another. The meaning of this was to make the prince’s people feel safe and calm. He was trying to distract the people from the plague that was going on outside of the walls and taking the lives of innocent people. No one would dare to enter the black room, however the prince has purposely made this room to express fear and death. The color black is related with evil, mystery, and power. He designed this room with “black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue” (Poe, L61). This room was the only room that did not have windows that matched the room, they were a deep blood red color. It also was barley lit because of how dull the lights

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