How Does Poe Create An Allegory In The Masque Of The Red Death

For instance, the panes were scarlet, a deep blood colour. The "bloody" red room thus becomes a place of ending not only due to the westward location, but also because of its color. Poe describes the last, black room as the dreadful endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The room is feared by the guests because it reminds them of death, which is why no one enters the room. The room is involved in all of the main scenes throughout the course ofthe story. For example, this is the room Prince Prospero and his guests die from the Red Death and also where the clock is located. The reader sees how important the rooms are throughout the story and its main contribution to the theme.

Poe used the rooms of the fortress as a symbol of the progression of a human life. The fortresses design contains seven distinctly different rooms. H.H. Bell, Jr., an expert on Edgar Allan Poe, has suggested that Poe seems to represent these rooms as an “allegorical representation of Prince Prospero’s life span” (Bell 241). The greatest piece of evidence for this is the order in which Poe arranged the rooms. The first room is positioned in the far eastern side of the mansion and the last room’s placement resides in the far western side. Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day, the arrangement of the rooms suggests the beginning and the end of life. Poe exemplifies this idea with the coloration of the last room. Black, a color connected with night and death, covers the walls in the last room. Also, the color of red seeps through the stained glass windows representing the bloodiness often incorporated with death, particularly the Red Death so feared at this party. Prospero’s guests avoid the last room out of fear, just as the living avoid reminders of death. Meanwhile, music and dancing

Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism to show the transition leading to death by using each of the seven rooms in the castle to represent a stage of life. The

Instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Pospero” (Poe 4). The rooms go east to west and blue to black velvet. This in itself is very symbolic, beginning to end and birth to death. Prince Pospero following the mummer through the seven rooms represents the prince going through represents the Prince going through the different stages of life and this is very significant. It implies that the mummer is death because he lures Prince Pospero into the final stage of life and when the mummer confronts the Prince he dies of the Red Death. Through all this it can be concluded that the mummer going through the seven rooms leading the prince to his death implies the figure is death and is further strengthened when everything else seemly stops.

In, “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe uses the clock and the seven rooms to show that life has to come to an end. Three symbols that help explain life are the seven rooms which show the seasons and age, and the clock in the Black Room. The seven rooms show how life is a cycle and the stages of life. These seven rooms help represent life in the way of seasons. For example the green room is spring, the white room is winter, and the orange room is fall. These rooms show how life goes into a continuous cycle that keeps on going but it always comes to the end. The rooms start out with blue which stands for rebirth and is pure while the last room which was the color black stood for death and darkness. The clock in the Black Room stands for death.

Death is something everyone frets on a daily basis. Edgar Allan Poe stresses how death is an unavoidable reality in his short story “The Masque of the Red Death”. Prince Prospero, a lying, cowardly, untrustworthy leader pretends to be helping his town as people are suddenly dying off from the Red Death, when he is actually just protecting himself and leaving his town helpless. This story is shown through the use of many symbols and events. Ultimately Poe utilizes symbolism in order to convey the certainty of death.

This story illustrates the obstacles of death caused by the “Red Death” and to what extent one could go through to escape death. The Prince Prospero thought he could escape death by closing the castle and invite his “thousand friends” (Page: 4) for a masquerade. He did that, as he thought the disease of the “Red Death” wouldn’t approach his castle, but he later on finds out that it wasn’t the case, as you can NEVER escape death. Prince Prospero’s idea of a masquerade is to make seven different rooms where the masquerade would be held. Poe describes these rooms rapidly by

Because inevitability of time and death seems to be the recurring theme, the most likely significance behind the number of apartments would be the seven stages of life. The first apartment is said to be placed most eastwardly and is blue in décor, which could signify the rising of the sun, the beginning of life, and the color of day. And the seventh, and most westerly apartment, is black with red accents and represents the end of life, the setting of the sun, and death. Poe did not intend a specific meaning for the number seven, just for the reader to be aware of the passing of time and the idea that the prince was trying to recreate a perfect world complete with "…all the appliances of pleasure…Without was the Red Death." (238). The Prince's recreation of the world is ironic because it is modeled after the one the Prince and his followers are trying to escape. The seven perfect rooms foreshadow the evitable downfall of perfection. The number seven appears six times in the text which may lead to some significance behind that number as well.

Then there is white which symbolizes the elderly, and then the violet room was for the dying. The final room was black and that is where death took place. In the story once the characters enter the castle-like abbey of Prince Prospero, nobody could enter or exit because of the welded locks that kept all evil from the outside world out. Another example of Poe’s symbolism is when he is describing the clock and its effect on the guests,

Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The Masque of the Red Death”, is about a man named Prince Prospero and his attempts to avoid a dangerous plague. The plague is known as the Red Death. He plans to avoid the plague by hiding out in his abbey, along with other revelers during a masquerade ball in the seven rooms in the abbey. Through the locked gates, the mysterious figure finds its way into the party and causes death to all of the masqueraders. This story is often analyzed as an allegory about the inevitability of death.

In “Mask of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe uses setting and symbolism to deliver the theme that no one escapes death. The story follows the naïve and pompous Prince Prospero, and his feeble attempt to escape dying from the Black Plague. As the plague spread through his kingdom, the prince called one thousand of his closest friends to reside within the safety of the castle in order to seclude themselves from the horror and death going on outside. During the last months of their seclusion, the prince decided to hold a masquerade ball in order to amuse his many guests living within the confines of the rather odd castle. The dance takes place in a variety of unusual apartments within the castle, spaced apart so the guests would only see one room at a time. The apartments flowed east to west, each decorated in a different color and theme while following a pattern of blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and finally ending in black. During the ball, guests enjoyed a dreamlike atmosphere as they danced through the many colored apartments, each of them avoiding the final black room. This final dark patterned room contained a large ebony clock which chimed eerily every hour, causing the party goers to pause their merriment for a few moments of uneasy silence. As midnight drew near, a new guest arrived, sporting a costume more ghastly and morose than any other. The mask he wore resembled that of a plague victim, and his clothes resembled a funeral shroud. Prospero became angry

Poe makes it a point to arrange the rooms running from east to west. This progression is symbolically significant because it represents the life cycle of a day: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, with night symbolizing death. What transforms this set of symbols into an allegory, however, is the further symbolic treatment of the twenty-four hour life cycle: it translates to the realm of human beings. This progression from east to west, performed by both Prospero and the mysterious guest, symbolizes the human journey from birth to death. Poe crafts the last, black room as the ominous endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The "Black Room" is described vividly. “The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes were scarlet-a deep blood color" (73). This room is a symbol of the end. There were seven rooms, and this was the last one. However not apparent at the beginning it is to be the scene of the grand finally; where "Prince Prospero" meets his demise by the hand of "The Red Death". In conclusion I believe this symbolism in this story is a hidden attempt to show man that he/she cannot turn its back to the woes of the world. One man or group cannot turn his/her back on society because sooner or later the problems

This symbolism shows Poe's gothic writing style by not being upfront with the meaning, but having the reader think about the darker meaning. Another gothic style is the fear within the story, the people in the castle are scared of the dark room and the end of the hallway, the room of horror and death. The rooms within the hallway are different colors, starting with light and happy colors, and working its way to deeper colors, colors usually associated with dark images. The colors represent the people's life, from the happy innocence of childhood, to the despair and darkness of death. The people in the castle fear the darkest room at the end of the hall because that room represents their death.

Jacob Coffman wrote his term paper over the gothic short story "The Masque of the Red Death," which was written by Edgar Allen Poe. Coffman's thesis was arguing over three-key points that have been debated over by numerous amounts of scholars.  Coffman focused on three main key points: the significance of the colors used to describe each room, identifying who the narrator is and what their actions are in the story, and the argument over the novel that was Poe's inspiration for writing "The Masque of the Red Death," that being the novel "I Promessi Sposi," which was written by the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni.

In Masque Of The Red Death symbols play a large role throughout Edgar Allan Poe's story. The prince, the rooms even the clock holds a symbol. It's how you look or Comprehend the meaning behind it. Words can always have different meanings many it's how you look and put two and two together. This stories Symbolizes many things from life and death. There are many little meanings that can play a large part in this story.