The Masque Of The Red Death Symbol Analysis

Poe uses the symbols of the Red Death and Prince Prospero to show that death is inevitable. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.” This quote tells the reader that the Red Death was a very dangerous disease and was horrifying. While the people of the town were dying, Prince Prospero tried hid in his abbey for month. One day, Prospero noticed a strange figure walking through his party. He chased this figure until it stopped in the last black and red room. “There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero.” After months of hiding, Prince Prospero, who symbolizes humanity’s efforts to prevent death, was finally killed by the Red Death figure, who represents inevitable death. Prince Prospero tried to hide from death by building reinforcements around his abbey. There were walls of iron and the doors were welded shut, but the Red Death figure somehow reached Prince Prospero. This proves the thesis because it show how the Red Death and Prince Prospero represent how a person cannot hide from

Imagine dancing through the colorful stages of life, birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and such. However, as you progress through life, you can never shake a sense of foreboding lurking behind you. Suddenly, deep, dark, death devours you. Death, everyone faces it eventually. In the story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, the theme is, “You cannot avoid death.” Poe develops the theme by using many different symbols throughout the story.

Symbolism plays an important part in this story. The ebony clock is particularly significant “there stood against the Western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony.” Poe placed the clock against the western wall for a symbolic purpose. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. The clock is nearer to the setting sun. The placement of the clock indicates an association with an ending. A sunset indicates the ending of a day, while the ebony color of the clock suggests its relationship with darkness and death. The characters react to the sounding of the clock’s chimes in a nervous fashion. “…While the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale.” Poe uses this clock to remind the characters that they have lived through another hour to build up the time of revelation. At each strike of the clock the characters stop everything as if they are waiting for the "Red Death" to come for them at any minute. At twelve, the stranger dressed as the "Red Death" appears. This time everyone begins to fear death. The darkness of the rooms causes shadows to form by the fires' light to increase suspense.

In the story “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe expresses the theme that death is inescapable or inevitable. He expresses this theme through rhetorical devices such as symbolism and allegory. For example, Prince Prospero’s chambers were allegorical because of the rooms’ arrangement which was from east to west. The east represents the beginning of life, while the west represents the end of life. The Darkroom, which was at the end of the hall, symbolized death. It was the room that the guests didn’t want to go in and eventually was the place that they were killed by the Black Death. Another example of symbolism is the clock which as a symbol of the time-lapse of life as a human being. It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony...and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily (Poe 374). This sentence expresses how compelling the clock is and how it attracts the attention of the masqueraders. The author also uses imagery to build suspense upon the reader. An example would be how the author describes the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood-and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror (Poe 378). This describes the dreadful

Within “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe presents symbolic elements of both life and death to entice the audiences’ emotions and leave them in a state of wonderment. Some of the symbolisms that Poe uses are “The Red Death”, Prince Prospero, the color of the seven rooms, the ebony clock, and the “dreams” within the rooms. As each symbol is introduced, the suspense builds and the audience is pulled from the joyous lives of the masqueraders to the looming “Red Death” to create a roller coaster of emotion.

In Poe’s short story, The Masque of the Red Death, he makes it pretty apparent that there is no possible way to escape death, no matter what rank you are. To get across this message he uses the ticking of a clock and the ring every hour to remind you death happens no matter what you do. He also adds in seven different rooms of varying colors blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black/scarlet. These seven rooms may represent a whole unit of time, like the days of the week. Poe also says that the rooms go east to west like the sun’s course. Every color of the room can also represent life itself, blue represents birth, purple is youth, green is adolescence, orange is adulthood, old age is white, imminent death is violet, then finally death itself is black/scarlet.

Everyone fears their own death, thus why some people will do anything to escape it. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, this fear is experienced by all. In the story, a prince named Prospero and his people try to elude the Red Death through seclusion and isolation in the prince's abbey. However, no walls can stop death since it is unavoidable and inescapable. Throughout the story, Poe uses symbols such as the rooms, the masked figure, and the clock to convey the theme that no one can escape death.

Throughout the work, Poe employs a seemingly simple ebony clock to symbolize the destined time of life, which no one can control. The clock is first introduced by describing the pendulum’s “dull, heavy, monotonous clang”, which automatically gives the idea that the clock is oppressive and evokes fear in both the readers and guests (Poe). As the story goes on, the characteristics of the clock unfold even more and reveal the emotions and actions it suggests. For instance, the clock’s “chiming imposes a start-stop movement on the festive

When first introduced, the clock already induces a sense of fear and discomfort. Every hour, the “dancers and musicians alternate between maintaining their pose of light laughter and gaiety and, when the doleful, deep-voiced clock chimes, becoming pale, uneasy, and thoughtful” (Wheat). The clock strikes fear into the hearts of the party-goers and serves as a brief but haunting “reminder of death, the enemy, and time, his companion” (Wheat). This omen of death comes with a reminder of the limited time before the plague kills everyone. As the clock strikes midnight, the guests “become aware of the presence of the stranger who has haunted the abbey from the beginning … [and] the unfeeling gaiety must give way to feelings ‘of terror, of horror, and of disgust’ ” (Wheat). By chiming at the exact moment the Red Death enters, the clock hints at approaching destruction, thus symbolizing the imminent death of every person at the masquerade. After chasing the Red Death through the suite, Prospero then dies in the seventh room, almost exactly next to the ebony clock. Therefore,

The black clock is also a symbolic element in Poe's story. "Its pendulum swung to and

“The Masque of Red Death” is considered an allegory because it is made of many different symbols, from the clock to the colors of the seven rooms. All of the forms of symbolism come together to make the short story. The allegorical meaning of “Red Death” is in fact, death. Even though there was a castle and a dagger to protect the Prince from the inevitable, he still died in the end with the rest of the characters. The allegorical meaning behind the colors of the seven rooms, are the stages of life. From blue being birth to black being the end, death, Poe illustrates to his readers that the castle is setup to include death even though that is something that is not necessarily wanted by Prince

In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero tries to cover the fact that people are dying beyond his walls by throwing an everlasting party. His egocentric and uncharitable traits are shown in this quote: “And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious… He summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court…” (Poe 3) Situational irony is applied in this quote. As people are suffering outside his walls, the main character is throwing a social function trying to mask the lethal contagion spreading all over the country. To further support the theme, “And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He has come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their

“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe is an eerie short story about the “Red Death”, Poe’s twist on the Black Plague. This plague swept across an unknown kingdom killing many people as it went. There were sharp pain, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. Poe had two main themes for readers to think about. These themes were proven through five main symbols: The ebony clock in the black room, Prince Prospero in the abbey with his friends, the colors of the seven rooms in the abbey, the format of the hallway and rooms and, Prince Prospero running after death through all the rooms.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” he uses the symbol of the clock to convey the single emotional effect of fear. One thousand of the prince’s good friends are all hiding out in his castle from the red death. There is no way in and no way out. Inside the castle there are 7 rooms and each has a different color which represents different stages of life. The seventh room is black symbolizing death.

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