Symbolism In The Masquerade Of The Red Death

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Death is all around us, and no one can hide from it. In the short story “The Masquerade of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe, Poe tries to show this to the reader with his use of symbols and allegory. In the story a prince throws a nice masquerade party to avoid the fact that everybody else in his country is dieing. When the reader finishes the story, the picture Poe was trying to create becomes clear. There are lots of symbols used throughout the story to explain the allegory of one’s life, but I am going to focus on three. With the use of the rooms, the clock, and the alignment of the rooms, Poe is able to portray that one can not hide from death.
The rooms played a big role in the theme and in the allegory. Each room represented a different …show more content…

In the story the clock symbolizes the countdown and constant reminder of death. Poe wrote, “It was in this apartment [the seventh], also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony,” (Poe 84). It was not just put in a random room, Poe put it in their for a reason and it served a purpose. The clock was current reminder to the partiers that death was waiting for them and as you already know it was put in the last room because that room stood for death in someone’s life. The clock was also very loud. Whenever it would reach the beginning of the hour, it would ring through out the castle so loud, “... the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions;... and 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 reverie or meditation,” the narrator described(Poe 84). They all did this in fear, because they did not know when death would strike them, and the old did what they did because they knew death was near. As for the allegory the clock is always ticking, you are a step closer to death after every second that goes

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