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Symbolism In Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

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On planet Earth there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute; all which revolves around time. Time is infinite, but unfortunately for human beings, they face times rath. Eventually, every living being or organism faces death, you can't escape it or run away from it, death is always around the corner. In “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates this when the noble class and Prince Prospero tried to run away from the gruesome and infectious disease. Symbolism in the story is significant because it gives the reader more insight on how the author feels towards something and gives meaning to ordinary objects. For example, Poe was upset with the noble class because they neglected their problems and …show more content…

For example the blue represented birth, the green room youth, the orange room adulthood, the white room elderly , the violet room the time before death, and the black room was death. Poe made the prince run through all the stages until death for a specific reason. That is because he wanted to give a greater meaning which is everyone goes through all the 7 stages of life and the cycle repeats for every newborn, none can avoid or run away from them they are unpreventable.
As the story went on Poe also used the grandfather clock to symbolize the countdown until and how time flys by. The author displayed this when he wrote “ 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 there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company.”(Pg.2) When the chime stopped the waltzers laughed it off and mentioned that the next time it chimed they would overlook the eerie sound and keep dancing. In the text it also mentioned “ and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.”(Pg.2) The author used the clock to reveal how fast time

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