A Literary Analysis of the Use of Symbolism in “The Masque of Red Death”
Edgar Allan Poe paints horrifyingly brilliant pictures in his writing, and “The Masque of the Red Death” is no different. It is the story of a dream like masquerade hosted by the deranged Prince Prosperro. Poe does an undeniably great job at using symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death.” The amount of symbolism is endless in the short story.The main character, Prince Prosperro, the rooms, the abbey, the Red Death, and even the clock symbolize things. Poe’s exquisite use of symbolism is executed perfectly throughout the entire tale.
Symbolism starts early on with this story. The Prince and one thousand of the rich find solace in the secluded abbey. The “castellated abbey” is an abbey that was built up to resemble a fortress, a fortress impenetrable by any outside force. The Abbey is a symbol of the selfish, and usually reckless ways that people try to hide from their problems, or even death. In the story the rich “brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.” The doors were shut and welded close from the inside. No one could get it, but
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no could leave either. The Red Death still entered that abbey, and that means that your wealth, your social position, and your popularity doesn’t matter because death can reach no matter what you do to avoid it. The main character himself is a symbol. Prince Prosperro was a “bold and robust man.” The Prince symbolizes human arrogance, and the foolishness that all of mankind has in the belief that death is escapable. He represents the fact that people can’t even deal with the thought of death. The one thousand people he brings to the abbey represent all of the different types of people. Many people may claim that Poe doesn’t use symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death.” There is only one strength to this claim, and that is the fact that no one can ask Poe what his intentions were for this story. There is no one-hundred percent way of knowing if he used symbolism. However, it is painstakingly obvious through the words he uses that he is trying to tell the reading something more meaningful than just a creepy story about a walking hemorrhagic fever. The “gigantic clock of ebony,” in “The Masque of the Red Death” was the symbol of the passing of time. It even says “the time that flies.” When the partygoers heard the “dull, heavy, monotonous clang” of the clock and everyone was “constrained to pause.” The pause represents the fear of the time that is passing. The sound is a symbol of the inevitability of death. The sound being an unwelcome reminder that life is leaving so quickly, and death is fast approaching. No one could stop the terrifying tones from ruining the party mood or stop the steady ticks of the pendulum. The Seven Rooms represent the circle of life.
From birth all the way to death. The room color blue represents birth, purple means growth, green is youth, orange is the fire of life, aging is white, purple is the coming of death, and black of course means death. The rooms are arranged in order east to west. The east symbolizing beginnings and birth, and the west symbolizing endings and death. The rooms were arranged so that “vision embraced but little more than one at a time,” just like how life only gives you a slight glimpse into the future. The people wouldn’t enter the black room which represents the fear of death. At the end when the Red Death shows up at the masquerade it walks from blue to black, or birth to death. There is also the belief that the rooms represent William Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man or the Seven Deadly
Sins. The last piece of symbolism is the Red Death itself. It represents death as a sneaky and stealthy incorporeal being hiding in the shadows waiting to take your soul. The Red Death is lethal and comes “like a thief in the night.” Poe’s praiseworthy use of symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death” is truly remarkable. It becomes obvious very quickly that reading this bone chilling tale that Poe takes symbolism to the next level. The writing of Edgar Allan Poe is oppressively meaningful, as each word has more than one meaning, and each meaning is incredibly important in the task of understanig the immaculate story of “The Masque of the Red Death.”
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.
the countenances of those who enter it that there are few…bold enough to set foot within it".
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,
Poe has the rooms go from east to west in the same way that the Black Death spread from east to west. The Red Death in this story is a reference to the Black Death that spread from Asia...
In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery, sensory detail and symbolism not only to build suspense, but also to convey the idea that an individual can not hide or run away from death which becomes closer as time passes on. Throughout the story Poe uses imagery details to create suspense in the story. For example when the author is describing the disease that has taken many lives he describes the unfortunate event as, “ Blood was its Avator and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood. One can understand that in the story the tragic death of someone might occur as tragically as the disease is described. Accordingly, as the story progresses the deep shade of the color red is evident in many areas to represent symbolism.
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.
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.
Towards the end of the story, the people encounter the masked man resembling the Red Death and Prospero chases him through the rooms. When the people follow Poe states “ Then summoning the wild courage of despair a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment.”(10). They avoided the black room all night but when all the chaos happened they threw themselves in the room to find out what happened. Just like they eventually went into the room they were avoiding, they eventually all died. The black room symbolizes death, the room was always they and unavoidable just like death
“And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall” (Poe, par. 14). After the mummer kills Prince Prospero, the masqueraders in the abbey perish one by one until the ebony clock runs out and none remain. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the symbolism of the iron fortress, the masque, and the mummer to reveal the theme that man does not have control over their fate, and they cannot run from death.
"The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the 'Red Death,'" (209). As Edgar Allen Poe set the scene for his story, he also created an ominous mood and a sense of suspense supported by the setting. He details the fun and amusement inside the prince's abbey, in contrast to the horror and doom outside, and the reader's curiosity is piqued, because such bliss cannot be maintained for long. Throughout the story Poe explicates and changes elaborate environments to build the suspenseful energy and create a strong structure. In "The Masque of the Red Death," setting is employed to organize motives and action, and to focus the reader on the climax. Poe targets the culminating point of his story using rich descriptions of the abbey, the masquerade, and the clock.
In Shakespeare's poem, “The Seven Ages of Man” it explains the seven stages of life from an infant to death which relates to the “Masque of the Red Death because it explains how life goes by so fast and relates to the colors in each room .For example in the story The Masque of the Red Death it says, “The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet “ black is a color we think of death and in the the end of the story Prospero dies in the seven room. Each color in each room represents timing of life and in a way relates to Shakespeare’s seven stages. Which relates back to how the seven stages and colors relate to life and
Edgar Allan Poe loves to make his readers think. He never fully shows what he means. He hides everything so explicit and secrete. Prince Prospero is the main character and he believes that he’s better than death or can escape it. But, poe illustrates that no one can escape death with a fatal ending. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the symbolism of the black colored clock, the ticking of the clock, and the seventh room to develop the theme of death.
Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death is an elaborate allegory that combines
In the novel, The Masque of Red Death, by Edgar allen poe, many visible elements are used to deliver the theme that no human can escape death. Nor the rich or the poor , can prevent such thing. This story is about a country that gets infected with a deadly plague known as the "read death", poe himself experienced how the disease affected people in his life.I believe he used this story to demonstrate his views and feelings towards this fatal disease.The plague causes death within 30 minutes of being infected . In the story , there lived a prince named Prince prospero, with little compassion , that takes refuge in a magnificent palace with his 1000 friends along his knights and dames of his court, where they spend their days partying and drinking as if blinded to what is going on in their country.There were dancers, musicians,bufoons, even wine. The perfect place for majesty.The palace had gates of iron and every door was bolted in. The prince has no care to the people, who are dying , bleeding from pores, living their last days. Instead if the prince even suspected one of them was infected, he automatically would kill them. The prince was a selfish, uncaring, self centered rich ruler who thought his power and money could avoid death. The palace is made up of 7 rooms, all of a different color. There is a blue,purple,green,orange,violet, white and lastly a black one covered with blood. Allegorical elements can be decribed as life or death in this mysterious story. The plague symbolized the death part, and the ball symbolized life. I believe the colors represented the stages of the prince life, legitemanly fnishing in the 7th room where he layed lifeless. The rooms go from east to west , representing the way the sun rises meaning bi...