Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

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.

In the story “Masque of the Red Death” there were many symbolic objects that states the ones in the church will not be able to escape death while trying to escape the church in haste to escape the Red Death that the stranger brought in. The three symbolic objects that I will talk about is the iron hinges on the doors, the ebony clock on the west wall, and the stranger that shows up to the party unexpectedly. First I will talk about the symbolic meaning of the iron hinges.

Poe used the rooms of the fortress as a symbol of the progression of a human life. The fortresses design contains seven distinctly different rooms. H.H. Bell, Jr., an expert on Edgar Allan Poe, has suggested that Poe seems to represent these rooms as an “allegorical representation of Prince Prospero’s life span” (Bell 241). The greatest piece of evidence for this is the order in which Poe arranged the rooms. The first room is positioned in the far eastern side of the mansion and the last room’s placement resides in the far western side. Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day, the arrangement of the rooms suggests the beginning and the end of life. Poe exemplifies this idea with the coloration of the last room. Black, a color connected with night and death, covers the walls in the last room. Also, the color of red seeps through the stained glass windows representing the bloodiness often incorporated with death, particularly the Red Death so feared at this party. Prospero’s guests avoid the last room out of fear, just as the living avoid reminders of death. Meanwhile, music and dancing

In the story there are seven rooms. The last room symbolises the last stage of life, death. In the story it says “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 a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations .The panes here were scarlet a deep blood color” (Poe).

Most are afraid of this happening, but there is no way they will ever be able to escape it. This happening is death. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is an iconic piece of gothic literature with a dark theme. He uses normal objects in his story such as rooms and hallways and gives them a deeper meaning to connect to the moral of the story. Poe’s short story is heavy with symbols which lead to the ultimate theme of his piece that there is no way to escape the inevitable no matter what your social standing may be. Poe showcases this thought through his many forms of symbolism to support this theme.

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are best shadowly and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?” (Poe). There is no such thing as having the ability to predict or tame the wrath of death, for all we can do is learn to accept it. In the story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, the main character, Prospero, shows through his arrogant actions that death will forever overpower the human instinct to stay alive. Poe uses symbolism to convey the battle between man and nature through the idea of the masquerade that serves as a fortress against the wrath of the disease, an excuse to disguise the true colors of man, and the honest truth that man will never become immortal.

“No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.” (446). The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe is about a devastating plague that is going around a country. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the many gothic literature writers. He loves to write about insanity, murder, and the evil within humans and the human mind.

Everyone is different, but we all have one thing in common. Death. “The Masque of the Red Death” was a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. The main characters are Prince Prospero and the Red Death figure. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” there is a disease that is killing many people. Prince Prospero is hiding from the disease in his sheltered home with a thousand of his friends. The disease’s causes people to sweat blood and die within 30 minutes. Prince Prospero and his friends think they are safe in his home and they keep partying until it is midnight. Suddenly, Prospero notices a mysterious figure that looked like someone who died from the Red Death. Prospero chases him through the 7 rooms until they are both in the last room, which is black and red. The Red Death figure turns around and then Prospero dies. Then all of Prospero’s friends run towards the Red Death figure and they all drop dead. Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to enhance the story’s allegory that death is inevitable

“No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and horror of blood” (Poe 446). Edgar Allan Poe is well-known for his gothic elements, bizarre plots, and chilling tones. The short story The Masque of The Red Death by Poe is no different. In the story the kingdom has been long devastated by the horrific “red death”, and their leader is failing to help them. Poe’s short story is strong in various uses of symbolism; thus, leading to the theme that death is inevitable.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe portrays a presumably impenetrable acropolis brimming with ill-fated royal subjects; these surroundings produce a blood curdling setting. Prince Prospero encloses himself and a thousand of his comrades into his acropolis in hopes of escaping, “The Red Death”, the disease plaguing the outside world. After five or six months of isolation, Prince Prospero hosts a masquerade to entertain his guests. The partygoers in attendance wear grotesque masks and costumes to the gathering. These hideous masks ‘which might have excited disgust’ represent the partygoers’ attempts to mock death itself. However, the masks additionally conceal their own fears of death from each other. This allegory displays that even though the guests believe themselves to be secure in Prince Prospero’s acropolis from “The Red Death”, they are internally aware that they may still be at risk for infection, further building the reader's suspense till the partygoers’ inevitable doom.

        The clock and the seven rooms symbolize life and how quickly time passes. The seven rooms represent the stages of life, where the first room, the blue room, is birth and the seventh room, the black room, is death. In the story, the Prince is in

But we will never know the real reason. It could be because of William Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Men”, or Christianity’s seven deadly sins. There are more speculations, but my personal perception would be one of these two. Although Poe was not very religious in his later years, he went to church a lot when he was a child which could have influenced his stories. The vivid colors used in each room would lead me to assume that the rooms actually represent the stages of life. On the most eastern side (where the sun rises) would be infant, then the colors in-between would be your years after infancy, then lastly on the furthest western side (where the sun sets) would be death since the room is black.

Thoughout Poe’s life, he experiences much pain and sorrow, he saw the birth of new things in his life, but also saw death takes those things from him. He tells the readers in the story that the rooms are from east to west, this is also a represtation of life and death, with the east meaning an new beginning and the west meaning a end of things. All these rooms together represent the seven stages of life: birth, youth, adolesence, adult, old age, close to death, and death itself. Poe lived the first four stages, but he also felt and experienced the last three though his mother and lover.

One of the most apparent symbols in the text are the bizarre colored rooms. The rooms represent the cycle of life, blue is birth, purple childhood, green adolescence, orange adulthood, white is the elderly years, violet is dying, and finally black is death. The rooms are arranged like the sun rise and set with the blue room all the way in the east and the black at the west end. Furthermore, the rooms have similar styles, all one color with the decor and windows matching said color. However, the black room is different with black velvet curtains, and the windows a blood red color. The light from the hall isn’t able to enter the room so a candelabra was placed behind each window so that it “projected its rays through the tinted glass… And produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered” (2) The