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Common themes in literature
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“The Masque of the Red Death” is an allegory that explains lots of features of life and death. One symbol is the clock, the clock is the timeline for people's lives in the story and death. I think this because the clock is the the black room which leads me to my next point which is the seven rooms. The seven rooms are from east to west like the sun. The rooms altogether represent the stages of life. In a way PRInce Prince Prospero symbolizes mankind and its inability to deal with the realities of death. Prospero, like many men, thinks he can avoid death or at least put it off. When the Red Death begins to kill most of the people in Prospero's kingdom, he attempts to use his wealth and possessions to escape death, but that doesn't work in the
end. In conclusion the “The Masque of the Red Death” show lots of life and death features.
Edgar Allan Poe's writing style is based on the supernatural and the unknown. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero invites the revelers to come to the castle to party until the danger of pestilence is gone. The party was interrupted by an intruder who was dressed in all black (like the Grim Reaper) and was associated with the plague of the "red death." The reaper killed everyone one by one in the end. The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. An allegory is symbols that are presented in the story that have two levels of meaning. An example can be the clock in the story. The clock told time and represented the time they had left before they died. There were seven chambers that were different colors, and the last chamber was black, which was the last chamber that represented death. I think the seven rooms symbolized the days until you die and the clock symbolized the time until you died.
All people wish to avoid suffering, and those with wealth usually take too long to realize that they cannot avert it. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe tells the readers of death, and how the upper class deals with it. In this story, Prince Prospero and his wealthy friends hide away in a castle to evade death. This obviously does not work, as death is inevitable, but of course, they attempt to save themselves anyways. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the courtiers, Prince Prospero, and the stranger to symbolize the members of the influential upper class and their habit of using their power to postpone their own impending doom.
In “The Masque of the Red Death,” the location of the rooms represents the cycle of life and death, with the bright blue room all the way to the east, where the sun rises and the day begins, and the black, morbid room all the way to the west, where the sun sets and the day ends. The reader comes to understand that the most eastern room represents the beginning of life, while the most western room
“The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face of the victim, caused terror in those watching the afflicted” (7). The story starts off with the prince getting away to a castle with his healthy friends. They were going to throw a masque party, and all was going well until the masker showed up. Everyone was scared including the knights. As the masker made its way from the blue room to the black room, nobody moved. The prince felt like it was his job to get up and take control. He entered the black room with the Masker and that’s when everyone heard a scream, the prince was dead. Eventually, all his friends dropped dead too. In “The Masque of the Red Death” the seven rooms represent the seven stages of life; infancy, childhood,
The rooms of the palace in the short story represent different stages of life. The blue room represents birth, the purple room represents growing up, green is the spring of life and youthfulness, orange is maturing like autumn leaves, the white room represents aging and getting older, the violet room is darkness, and finally the black room is symbolizing death. Another example of symbolism is seen in the story on page two: “while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation” (Poe). This ringing of the clock in “The Masque of Red Death” symbolizes the shortness of life and is a reminder to those attending the masquerade that death is near and there is no escaping
The deathly ringing of the clock resonated throughout the chambers and faded away like they always had. But this time, the festivities did not flare back to life, for the new figure had control over the attention of everyone. This unique figure was shrouded in a robe as black as a void that covered all of his body except for his face, which was concealed by a peculiar mask. Contrary to the darkness of the robes, the lean mask was a pure, ghostly white with two blood red, curved lines, thicker at the top of the mask and thinner towards the bottom, through the eyes which were void holes. The air around him was cold and stale, like death lingered around him, waiting for its next victim. From the outskirts of the crowd, he moved in closer to the revelers, with each step echoing unnaturally loud. People shuffled away from him, afraid some terrible fate may befall them if they get close in proximity to him, as he strolled toward some unknown destination.
Edgar Allen Poe, in the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, shows how people may try to outsmart death and surpass it, but in the end they will die since death is inevitable. He reveals this in the book by showing all the people closed up in the abbey that belongs to Prince Prospero. They are trying to escape the “Red Death” and think that they can escape the death by hiding away in the abbey. They manage to stay safe for six months but in the end they all die after the stroke of midnight during the masquerade ball Prince Prospero puts on from the Red Death itself which appears after midnight and leaves no survivors in the end. Poe develops the theme of how no one can escape death through the use of the point of view, the setting, and symbolism.
At the masque the clock rings a deep eerie ring each hour causing people to realize death is approaching, even if they don’t want it to. The quote, “While the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grw pale”(Poe 84), shows the people at the dance realizing in the back of their heads, that they knew death was bound to happen. The clock symbolizes death approaching the partiers. Even the happiest, care free of them all felt the effects of the sudden realization of the fate they ran away from. The seventh room holds the clock that tells the people death is approaching, this is showing that because the rings were coming from the black covered room facing west, death was on its way. With each ring of the clock the people realize it is impossible to hide from the
“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe is a story about the red death, terror, and death. Within the story, there are many ways symbolism is shown. One of the main ways this story shows symbolism is the ebony clock. The ebony clock is located in the black room, meaning that the clock could symbolize death, as well as life because of the chimes that happen every hour.
In the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar uses many examples of symbolism and imagery throughout the story that helps the reader understand the story more and gives the reader an image in their head. This story is about a Prince, Prince Prospero and many men and women in his country that are hiding in his castle from the plague. Then something unexpected happens after the echoes from the clock disappears into the silence. The clock is a very important piece of imagery in this story. Every time the clock struck, it told how many minutes or hours all the humans of royalty had to live, but unfortunately they didn't know that. “But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell
In the short story, The Masque of Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe, Prince Prospero, the main character, seems to be a flat character. Prince prospero is a flat character because the story doesn't give a lot of background information about him, besides the fact that he is indeed a Prince with no worries. Prince Prospero can also be characterized as a dynamic character and a static character. He is a dynamic character because in the beginning of the story, the Prince is happy and doesn't have any worries but he changed when the red death comes to his party. The Prince’s mood changes to anger because the red death is scaring everyone at his party and disturbing the peace. Edgar Allen Poe uses both direct characterization and indirect characterization.
Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death is an elaborate allegory that combines
In his short story "Masque of the Red Death" Edgar Allan Poe made sure to tell about the seven solid colors rooms being listed as if the order as important of the disease outside of the massive castle. These rooms were listed as followed blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally a black room with emphasized on it having blood red windows. With Edgar Allan Poe is being so infatuated with death, I believe that these rooms are stages to move toward the Prince Prospero and his participants untimely death.
Prince Prospero was foolish to think he could escape the threat of the masque of the “Red Death.” When Prospero sees that his “dominios were half depopulated,” he assembles over 1000 knights, dames, courtiers, and entertainers within a “castellaed abbey” complete with a thick walls and gates of iron. Poe states , “all these and security within. Without was the ‘Red Death.’” Prospero surrounds himself with 1000 people inside the walls of this fortress. Within such a great number, he cannot honestly believe that the “Red Death” is not hidden within them. He is also foolish to believe that thick walls and iron gates could hold the disease was spread. The narrator describes how extravagantly detailed each of the seven
The two stories we are presented with today tackle the supernatural in radically different and direct ways. These stories were written by the authors Edgar Allen Poe and Washington Irving as part of a series of short stories. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story, Poe uses the supernatural theme of a demonic figure to portray the mass death befalling the people of a castle by the means of a deadly disease. On the other end we see Irving using the supernatural theme of reanimation and the dead coming forth to claim the souls of the living. Both use these supernatural elements in figurative ways to convey literal themes in a much more dynamic and grand manner. The link between reality and the supernatural is played out well in both of these stories and the use of elements of supernatural horror makes the already dark elements of each story even darker in the eyes of the reader. Let’s now proceed forth and evaluate both stories, their themes and the meaning of the