What Does The Clock Symbolize In The Masque Of The Red Death

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.

At the end of the first paragraph Poe uses foreshadowing when he writes “And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour” (1). I see this as foreshadowing the event that ends the party and the lives of all those present. The entire thousand assembled die when the Red Death came. The “last chime had utterly sunk” (3) also foreshadows the end where each individual “died in the despairing posture of his fall” (4). Combining both these instances together shows that the whole situation or incident, from the “presence of a masked figure” (3) to “one by one dropped” (4), ended before the clock chimed the next passing hour. The “seventh apartment” (1) also foreshadow the presence of the Red Death. The entire apartment was “shrouded in black velvet tapestries” and the window “panes here

Poe often gives memory the power to keep the dead alive. Which in the short story Poe distorts the aspect of death. By creating a memory as the trigger that reawakens death Poe reveals the theme of the story; that no matter the person's social class death comes for us all. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” he uses literary elements such as allusion, symbolism, and allegory to convey that death is inevitable.

In “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe the allegory of this story is death, symbolically and literally. The literal portion is about the Red Death and how no one can escape it.

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.

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 Masque of the Red Death,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, tells the story of Prince Prospero and his futile attempts to prevent death. During his masquerade party, the prince notices an unusual figure, dressed as the Red Death, and, enraged at the sight of it, Prospero tries to kill it. Poe uses the seventh room, the ebony clock, and the Red Death itself as symbols of death throughout his story.

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

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.

Edgar Allen Poe's “The Masque of the Red Death” is an extravagant allegory of the futility of trying to escape death. In the story, a prince named Prospero tries to avoid the Red Death through isolation and seclusion. He hides behind the impenetrable walls of his castle and turns his back on the rest of the world. But no walls can stop death because it is unavoidable and inevitable. Through the use of character, setting, point of view, and symbol, Poe reveals the theme that no one, regardless of status, wealth or power can stay the passing of time and the inevitable conclusion of life itself, death.

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”

Poe uses allegory to allude to the double meanings of the characters Prince Prospero and the masked figure, as well as the setting of the chambers. Prince Prospero represents prosperity. While his nation is suffering from the “Red Death”, “…he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and lighthearted friends…and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbey” (420). His nobility and wealth give him the ability to ignore the horror around him and live in luxury. This refers to real life in that the privileged are the ones who are able to still live comfortably even if others are in a crisis. Prince Prospero also represents an ignorance, selfishness, and arrogance that come with wealth through right instead of hard work. He believes that “[t]he external world could take care of itself” and that it is “…folly to grieve, or to think” (420). Instead of taking action to help his people, he just leaves them in the grips of the “Red Death”. The “Red Death” is

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