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Symbolism of the masque of the red death
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“The Masque of the Red Death” was written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 19th century. This story was written during the Gothic era. The stories that are written in the Gothic era is usually has to do with death, and lots of people were fascinated by the stories. There are many symbols in “The Masque of the Red Death”, yet I chose three, the first is all the colors of the room, second is the ebony clock and the last is the inside and outside of the abbey. The first symbol is all the colors of the room. This symbolizes the ages of one’s life or the seven deadly sins. The colors are the rooms are “…blue- and were the windows. The second was purple… the third was green…the fourth was orange…the fifth was white…the sixth was violet…the seventh was …show more content…
black…” (Poe 359). The blue symbolizes lover or greed. The purple symbolizes old age or anger, the green death or lust, orange infant or sloth, white symbolizes school boy or gluttony, the violet justice or envy, and the last room black that symbolizes soldier or pride. That’s what the different colors or the rooms are and what they symbolizes. The second is the ebony clock.
The ebony clock symbolizes death. “…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…” (Poe 359). This symbolizes death by the people not able to stop the inevitable. An example of this is they could not prevent the clocks sound from diminishing their energy or like they could not stop the pendulum from swinging. That’s what the ebony clock symbolizes. The last symbol is the inside and outside of the abbey. This symbolizes division. “…looked out upon a closed corridor…” (Poe 358). That means the doors are closed, which means no one can get in or out. An example of this would be your fence, you use it to keep your dog in, yet at the same time you use it to keep other animals outside the fence. So the fence locks your dog in and locks other animals out. That’s how the inside and outside of the abbey symbolizes division. As you can see three symbols in “The Masque of the Red Death” is the colors of the rooms, the ebony clock and the inside and outside of the abbey. To tell you again what they symbolize is the ages of one’s life or the seven deadly sins, death and last division. Those are my three symbols. What’s your three
symbols?
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 third symbol is Bobby spray painting the wall. Bobby paints a self-portrait of a “Pale Ghost Boy” referring to himself and he is also holding a faceless baby in a carrier. The faceless baby could represent feather lack of identity because he’s new to the world. And Bobby painting himself as “pale” and “ghostly” because he could be scared and could feel like no one supported him. This symbol is important because it shows how he isn’t fully mature because he is spray painting but it shows how lonely he feels being a single parent taking care of Feather.
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 Masque of the Red Death was very serious from the beginning to end. The story never pulled away from the sense of a looming threat. Poe did not waste anytime, he cut straight to the point and set the tone right away. The tone relates to people language and the specific words that he uses to create illusion and imagery. Poe uses different times of words to define his language which is called Old English today. Poe sentences are also short and they are practically identical in the simple structure. Poe is a very different writer than most writers today, he has a unique way about his language.
...ic meanings that still are puzzling art historians today. Some of the key symbols that Stokstad points out in the text is the dove, representing the Holy Spirit; the white lilies as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. She also points out, two rather unknown symbols to the sacrilegious, the date of the Annunciation in signs of the zodiac on the floor, as well as the lone stained glass window that is symbolizing God rising above the three windows that are placed in the background behind Mary. These three windows represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the gloomy house was symbolic of the Ushers and their own isolation. The narrator’s first impression was symbolic of events to come. He felt “a depression of the soul… a sinking, sickening of the heart.” He found Roderick to be “a bounden slave… to an anomalous species of terror.” In “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator’s description of his isolated observation of the old man night after night increases the sense of terror, especially for the victim. The symbol was the old man’s “evil eye”. Another symbol was the sound of the beating heart that caused him to rush to kill the man. Fear sent Prospero and his friends into hiding in one of his secluded abbeys to escape the Red Death. Terror is evident from the narrator’s description of the dying. That fear was in the hearts of all who attempted to find “security within.” There are many symbols in the story like the eight rooms that represented the stages of life. The black room represented the final stage of life. The sound of the ebony clock that caused the masqueraders nervously to “pause” was like a foreshadowing. The “masked figure” in the Red Death mask was a symbol of death for all who hid from
In the "Masque of the Red Death," the first sentence, "The Red Death had long devastated the country," sets the tone for the whole story. Poe describes the horrors of the disease, stressing the redness of the blood and the scarlet stains. The disease kills so quickly that one can die within thirty minutes of being infected with the disease. To create a frightening effect of the revulsion of this disease, Poe uses words such as "devastated," "fatal," "horror of blood," and "sharp pains and profuse bleeding." In summary, the story relates the prince, trying to be safe and away from the horrible death, invites a thousand friends to be in seclusion in his abbey away from the disease. During a celebration , a masked ball at the abbey - with incredible described rooms and moods - a surprise masked intruder causes death to all.
...Plessis, Eric H. du. “Deliberate Chaos: Poe’s Use of Colors in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 34.1-2 (June-December 2001): p40-42. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 April 2012.
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
The first symbol was a tall, bronze ladder that was narrow and stretched all the way to Heaven. The ladder represents the path that everyone must climb in order to get to Heaven. On the ladder are iron implements, all of which were various weapons, and that if you were not careful, you would be "torn to pieces" (2). The iron implements were the tools that were used to torture people, especially in the arena where the Christians were killed. One could also see the implements as obstacles that people face while trying to live a good life and get to Heaven. The dragon found at the bottom of the ladder is representative of the temptation of the devil (2). When the dragon put his head down and Perpetua stomped on it, it showed that she had power over the devil and that she was able to resist his temptations. The huge expanse of garden symbolizes Heaven. The white-haired man milking his ewes and dressed like a shepherd is referring to God watching over all his people like a shepherd watches his flock. The thousands of people dressed in white are either representing the angels and saints in Heaven or the thousands of believers that have died before and now live in Heaven. Finally, in her vision, Perpetua is given a small morsel, and she accepts it with both hands, and the people say "Amen". These actions symbolize those of Eucharist and that she was receiving the Body of Christ. After this had happened,
used to symbolize death. Poe's use of language and symbolism is shown in his description of the
The poem consists of an undeniable narrative structure. Told from the third person, Poe also uses symbolism to create a strong melancholy tone. For instance, both midnight and December symbolize an end of something and the hope of something new to happen. Another example is the chamber in which the narrator is placed, this is used to show the loneliness of the man.
The Masque of the Red Death was written by a well-known author, Edgar Allan Poe. In this passage he writes about the bubonic plaque; a devastating time period of death. Prince Prospero, on the other hand a very happy man secludes himself from the world of disease and death by closing his gates and throwing a huge masquerade ball creating a life of party. In my analysis I will be using the following symbols; the ballroom for life, Prince Prospero as the concept of avoiding death and fire as death.
The author’s message in The Masque of the Red Death,is that you can’t escape death. He conveys this message through his descriptive writing and the mood he sets. He built gates to keep out the disease from entering his kingdom. He had his people build, “A strong and lofty wall” with “... gates of iron.”. He believed that, “the external world would take care of itself.” (36), so he wanted more safety for himself than for his subjects. Later in the story, Poe writes about the apartments in the prince’s house. There were seven apartments with different colors. The first was, “blue - and vividly blue were its windows”, the second was, “purple in its ornaments and tapestries”, the third was, “ green throughout”, the