In the story “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, it shows a prince trying to hide from a plague in his castle with the rest of the royals. In the castle there are seven rooms that are lit in different colors, each room to the readers mean something or have a meaning. Some say that the rooms mean nothing and are just colors that were choosen, but if you look at Poe’s history and the struggles he went through then you will see that those colors do have a symbolic representation of his emotions. Every room in the castle is a representation of what Poe felt throughout his life and still did up to that point. 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. …show more content…
They show the continuous growth of life and the progression of a person, from a baby to the old person they will eventually become. These phases of our life are symbolised by the clock in the black room, it represents just how people view time. To many people time is a basic concept, an hour is just an hour; yet, do you ever notice all the seconds that go by? Before anyone notices, years go by and they are left wondering where it all went. The mask man travels through the rooms at a fast pace, showing just how fast life can go by. Death will always catch up to everyone, no one can hide from
The fires in each of the suite rooms serve as a representation of death. Poe depicts
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.
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.
The theme of death being inevitable is first developed through the seven colored chambers by using symbolism. Poe describes the process of the disease, emphasizing the redness and blackness throughout the story. After setting the tone, Poe shows the desperation of the people attempting to escape death by hiding in Prospero’s enclosed fortress. The seven chambers that Prince Prospero presents in his isolated fortress move “from east to west—from blue to black—the seven stages of man” (Poe 374). The usage of the colors that is illustrated within each of the chambers creates a mysterious mood of transformation that is developed in the connection of life. Poe hints that death will come through these progressions of the rooms. Each room corresponds to the different stages of a human’s life. The blue colored room symbolizes the rising sun from the east as well as the beginning of a person’s life. The purple room suggests the beginnings of growth. The green colored room suggests the youth of
Another example is , “It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony, Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull heavy, monotonous clang, and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousands and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies) there came yet another chiming of the clock.” The clock is symbolizing time and that its chiming every hour but chiming in the creepy and mysterious way because its a gigantic ebony clock in the seventh room and the color is black room. The color black symbolizes death and his whole room is black and also the windows are blood red. The clock is signing that time is passing by fast and it brings death closer worrying people. It is hard for people to not notive the clock because its big and its chime every hour and knowing your probably going to die
Even the color of the clock represents darkness. In addition, the 7 chambers also represent the time leading to their death. They correspond to the seven ages of man, from birth to death, as well as to the seven deadly sins, the worst of which is pride (Sova). As the rooms go from East to West the colors reflected in the room by the glass windows tend to darken. “The chambers end with the westernmost, "decorated entirely in black with a giant ebony clock””
it as window into Poe’s dark and tortured soul as a man with psychological and addiction issues. Beyond that, the story has a very well explained theme: that no one can escape death and if you run away, it will come for you sooner or later. The guests thought that, being in a refuge with nothing coming in or out, they would be safer; however, it turns out that the Red Death came after them and hunted them down. The clock symbolizes time of their death, as if the time for their death came closer each time. It seems like the higher social classes always have a bigger chance of surviving because of the easy access to resources. However, the higher class always seems to go down faster. The color of rooms also come in play to all this as every color seems to give a certain mood, and very few dared to enter the seventh dark room as it may represent death, and they were afraid of
For example, the narrator describes the first room as, “in blue- and vividly blue were its windows” [3]. The direction of the rooms, beginning at the east, clearly symbolizes the beginning of life, similar to how the sun rises in the east. The color seems to stand for the idea of stability and security, while the windows themselves represent something quite similar: the perspective of confidence and intelligence. The blue colored windows leave the people attending the masquerade ball looking out into the real world, with the windows serving as a filter painted with optimism and intelligence. It allows the people to continue to ignore reality. Likewise, the following quote vividly describes the last room: “The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceilings and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon the 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…” [3]. This room remained empty until the last scene of the story, as no one had dared to enter this apartment. Because the color black is associated with death and because the eerie ebony clock had towered in this room, the apartment symbolized
Edgar Allan Poe is a famous American author known for writing gothic, dark, and haunting stories and poems. He always uses symbolism in his stories to set the dark mood. One of his most famous short stories is “The Masque of the Red Death”. In this story, the “Red Death” has been killing many people. A prince named Prospero locks himself and his friends in his castle to keep out the Red Death.
I found this reading interesting. This reading is very complex and can be hard to understand. This story has seven rooms and they are colored in order from the beginning of life to the end of life. The color red in Poe’s short story represents the death and blood parts of the story. The seventh room was black and ebony. This room has no light and represents the darkness of death. The color ebony is for the clock that stands in the room. The colors blue, purple, green, orange, white and violet are the colors of the first six rooms. If you look at all these colors they represent a prism. The reflect progression, and lending faith to interpretation. Blue represents birth, purple is youth, adolescence is green, orange is adulthood, white is old age, and violet is imminent death. This stuck out to me just because it was interesting to read. This quote from the reading stuck out as part of the death room, “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”(Perkins
There are seven “appliances of pleasure” that the prince has put together for the party: “buffoons […] improvisatori […] ballet-dancers […] musicians […] beauty […] wine […] and security […].” (Poe 438). The section of the abbey that prince is holding the party in also contains “seven apartments” that are set up in a strange manner and gaudily decorated (Poe 438-439). In a setting so dripping with extravagance, greed, and indulgence, the number seven stands out as sort of “religious motif,” with the “seven chambers in the abbey” tying in to “the seven deadly sins, seven cardinal virtues, and seven stages of human life” (“An Introduction to ‘The Masque of the Red Death’” 189). It makes sense then, as well, when each of the chambers is described as containing different “hue[s] of […] decorations” that pertain to the “stained glass” of the “narrow Gothic widow[s]” that accompany each suite. The first few rooms are shrouded in lighter, more vibrant colors than the rest – blue, purple, and green. These colors, blue and green in particular, bring up images of springtime and new growth, and associated with that are the stages of birth, early childhood, and abundance of youth, or the “dawning of life” (Rosenblum 25). The room that follows is “lighted with orange,” a warm color that is vivid, yet the color of dying leaves in autumn (Poe 439). It brings up thoughts of times of harvest and
In the story " Masque of the Red Death" he uses symbolism of the rooms, clock, and the red death to portray his theme that no one can escape death. The " Masque of the Red Death" represents death and life. The seven rooms symbolizes the progression of life. The blue room represents birth.
Poe organizes the rooms in a certain that we do not understand until we actually think deeply and research about the seven rooms. Another critic, Zimmerman, mentions “ The arrangement of the chambers reinforces the awful reality of time as it leads inexorably to disease death, darkness and dissolution”(Zimmerman). Here Zimmerman expresses that the rooms symbolize a timeline of human life. He states that the order of the chamber or rooms just leads to the harsh reality of death, which happens to everyone. In the story, Poe takes us through each room and describes each room like a timeline to us ending with the dark room. He does this on purpose to express the rooms as a symbol of human life. Zimmerman also says’ The progression of the colored rooms is circular rather than a straight line”(Zimmerman). Zimmerman helps explain the layout of the rooms. He thinks that the rooms are in this way to portray the image of a clock, and the rooms symbolizing time, it makes sense. Poe takes the characters through these chambers and they end up all dieing in the end, but as he takes them through some die off. Then when they get to the last chamber most of them get killed. This helps explain how life works, we all will end up in the same place.
However, 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, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered..."The fire was meant to produce a shadowy atmosphere in the west and a favorable one in the east. This is symbolic to the sunrise in the east and sunset in the west because light means life and darkness means death. Poe uses darkness as another visual representation of death.
In the short story ¨Masque of the red death¨ an allegory written by Edgar Allan Poe, a party is being host by Princess Prospero and taken place in seven rooms of a castle in Europe during the fourteenth-century and the time of when the ¨Red Death¨ swept through Europe. The party was taken place after six month of contemptuously being locked away in the castle from the ¨Red Death¨. In the party there was seven rooms of different colors; there was blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and a black rooms to make it a more festive and happy party. The black room was decorated with black cloth and golden lamp even though they did not emit any light in the room, only the glass windows fail to coordinate with the room. They were of a deep blood