“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
The fires in each of the suite rooms serve as a representation of death. Poe depicts
For instance, the panes were scarlet, a deep blood colour. The "bloody" red room thus becomes a place of ending not only due to the westward location, but also because of its color. Poe describes the last, black room as the dreadful endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The room is feared by the guests because it reminds them of death, which is why no one enters the room. The room is involved in all of the main scenes throughout the course ofthe story. For example, this is the room Prince Prospero and his guests die from the Red Death and also where the clock is located. The reader sees how important the rooms are throughout the story and its main contribution to the theme.
The author, Edgar Allan Poe, using illusion or misdirection keeps the reader is suspense throughout this story called "The Masque of the Red Death". Symbolism such as the colored rooms, the impressive clock, the feeling of celebration being at a party all makes this story feel like a fairytale. Poe used this fairytale style and converts it into a nightmare in disguise.
Uses of light symbolism in stories is typically used to depict signs of pureness and life. Poe utilizes this literary element in his description of the rooms. When Poe describes the first of the seven rooms he says “ at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue and vividly blue were its windows.” Poe uses the color blue to represent the beginning of life, along with the room being on the eastern side, since the sun rises on the east. Another example
In "Masque of the Red Death", there are several differently colored rooms, which at first glance are simply several disparate pigments. After looking at the story as a whole, it is clear that these specific room colors each mean something other than itself. Spoken in "Masque of the Red Death" about two of the seven rooms is, "That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue...The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black..." (Masque 5). The author, between discussing these opposing rooms, mentions the other rooms and their colors, also. Each of these rooms symbolizes the seven stages of life. The blue room represents birth and new life, as it is at the east where the sun rises beginning each new day. Meanwhile, the black room is the farthest west where the sun sets, ending the day. This black room embodies death, which is uncoincidentally where everyone dies in "Masque of the Red
Edgar Allan Poe was known for his mystery and macabre poetry and short stories, and there is one story that fits this genre perfectly. It is about a prince and his people hiding from a disease, the red death, but they find themselves trapped inside the abbey with it. Edgar Allan Poe wanted to send a message through an interesting plot with a hidden theme. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” by Edgar Allan Poe, the theme that trying to avoid death will make life go by quickly is developed by the colored rooms, monotonous clock, and the masked red death. To create an interesting theme, the author used symbolism to develop the theme, and the first one he used were the colored rooms.
Prince Prospero decorates lavishly for the masquerade ball. Each room has a different color as a theme, and the windows contain glass stained to match the respective colors of the rooms. Fair colors paint the faces of everyone. At first they wear masks for the ball, but at the story's conclusion, they all bear the bloody mark that signifies the Red Death. The Red Death, which is characterized by ‘scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim,’ has entered the palace unrecognized (“Explanation”
"The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon the carpet of the same material and hue. ... The panes were scarlet—a deep blood color.... There was no light of any kind... but in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme,” (“The Masque” 342). Poe brilliantly uses color to achieve the desired mood. The color black often represents melancholy or death. Scarlet, of course, exhibits the color of blood. Poe exploits the use of these two colors, black and scarlet, to create a feeling of macabre.
“The curtains of my bed were in flames.” (10) Even in the simplest of sentences, Poe has the ability to create such powerful images in our minds. Almost instantly after reading this sentence you get a picture in your mind of a huge fire and scrambling of people waking up to flames almost not being able to escape. So powerful. “It was a black cat -- a very large one -- fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one.” (16) Poe’s describing words, vocabulary, and attention grippers are extremely beneficial to the readers as demonstrated several times above. Edgar Allan Poe who wrote The Black Cat along with a bunch of other literary works is naturally a master at creating imagery as well as a certain mood that he wants his readers to get into their
Prince Prospero’s castle had multiple rooms and all are painted different colors. The rooms were painted, lined up in a series, and they allegorically represent the stages of life. The colors of the rooms are blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. Poe makes it a point to arrange the rooms running from east to west. This progression is symbolically significant because it represents the life cycle of a day: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, with night symbolizing death.
In “Mask of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe uses setting and symbolism to deliver the theme that no one escapes death. The story follows the naïve and pompous Prince Prospero, and his feeble attempt to escape dying from the Black Plague. As the plague spread through his kingdom, the prince called one thousand of his closest friends to reside within the safety of the castle in order to seclude themselves from the horror and death going on outside. During the last months of their seclusion, the prince decided to hold a masquerade ball in order to amuse his many guests living within the confines of the rather odd castle. The dance takes place in a variety of unusual apartments within the castle, spaced apart so the guests would only see one room at a time. The apartments flowed east to west, each decorated in a different color and theme while following a pattern of blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and finally ending in black. During the ball, guests enjoyed a dreamlike atmosphere as they danced through the many colored apartments, each of them avoiding the final black room. This final dark patterned room contained a large ebony clock which chimed eerily every hour, causing the party goers to pause their merriment for a few moments of uneasy silence. As midnight drew near, a new guest arrived, sporting a costume more ghastly and morose than any other. The mask he wore resembled that of a plague victim, and his clothes resembled a funeral shroud. Prospero became angry
Poe’s use of symbolism is very evident throughout the story of “The Masque of the Red Death”. Much has been made about the meaning of the rooms that fill Prince Prospero’s lavish getaway. One such critique, Brett Zimmerman writes, “It is difficult to believe that a symbolist such as Poe would refuse to assign significance to the hues in a tale otherwise loaded with symbolic and allegorical suggestiveness” (Zimmerman 60). Many agree that the seven rooms represent the seven stages of human existence. The first, blue, signifying the beginnings of life. Keeping in mind Poe’s Neo-Platonism and Transcendentalism stance, the significance of blue is taken a step further. Not only does blue symbolize the beginning of life, but the idea of immortality is apparent when considering these ideas. “Perhaps ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ then, is not quite the bleak existential vision we have long thought it to be”, expounds Zimmerman (Zimmerman 70). Poe’s use of each color is significant to the seven stages
The overall conflict of the story “The Masque of the Red Death,” has to do with how death
There is a terrible sickness spreading throughout their town. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.” (Poe 78 ) In the story “The Masque of the Red Death” fear is the main theme. Prince Prospero invites a thousand of his friends to his castle. There are seven different colored rooms in the castle. The guests fill all the different
The seven rooms in the house also conveyed stages in life ending with death. These rooms were set up from east to west. This meaning that the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, and death comes in the darkness. "In this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color." The guest's avoided this room because it was a sign of death.