What Does The Water Symbolize In The Masque Of The Red Death

Everyone fears their own death, thus why some people will do anything to escape it. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, this fear is experienced by all. In the story, a prince named Prospero and his people try to elude the Red Death through seclusion and isolation in the prince's abbey. However, no walls can stop death since it is unavoidable and inescapable. Throughout the story, Poe uses symbols such as the rooms, the masked figure, and the clock to convey the theme that no one can escape death.

As a gothic writer, Edgar Allan Poe created horror using gloom as his weapon. Hidden within the suspenseful story of “The Masque of Red Death” is an allegorical tale of how individuals deal with the fear of death as time passes. Frantic activities and pleasures (as represented by Prince Prospero and his guests) seek to wall out the threat of death. However, the story reminds the reader that death comes “like a thief in the night”(Poe 3), and even those who seek peace and safety shall not escape. Poe uses symbolism to illustrate that man cannot hide from his own mortality.

Poe describes the abbey, “The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion.” (Poe, p. 420) Poe proposes that Prince Prospero made significant efforts to keep the Red Death away from the abbey/the people inside, demonstrating mankind’s attempts to prevent death. According to the author, “They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within.” (Poe, p. 420). Those inside had no way out, symbolizing the precautions man makes to avoid death. As stated by the author, “..there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before” (Poe, p. 424). This explains the uninvited presence of the Red Death. Regardless of the earthly power of men, death will always find a way to you. The crenellated abbey is a symbol that aids in developing the

The story “Masque of the Red Death” uses many symbols throughout the story. The story begins telling about the grim disease that killed many people. It spreads quickly and kills within 30 minutes. The Prince Prospero, who symbolized the rich and prosperous, wanted to throw a great masked ball where no one would get in or out so the disease couldn’t spread or be brought into the palace. As the ball went on there a clock that rang every hour. It stopped the people from dancing and symbolized time passing. The people just resumed dancing after it rang like it was nothing, however. The party was going fine until an intruder invaded the ball. This intruder symbolized the Red Death, and “came like a thief in the night”. The prince tried to stop him with the aid of a knife, but then fell dead, like the rest did after. “Masque of the Red Death” used lots of symbols in it such as the Prince, who represented the rich, the clock, that represented the time passing by and the people’s inevitable death, and the intruder, who represented the Red Death and how merciless it was.

He stands out even in the flamboyantly dressed crowd because he is dressed as the Red Death. The tall, thin figure wears funeral garments marked with blood and a mask that resembles a corpse with the disease's characteristic red stains. Despite their debauchery (stolen from SpongeBob), the crowd is shocked rather than amused by the costume, and, from the blue room, Prospero angrily demands into the silence that the figure be seized, unmasked, and hanged. The prince's guards begin to move towards the masked intruder, but the figure begins to slowly walk towards Prospero, and everyone in the crowd is too afraid to grab him.

Edgar Allen Poe’s chilling short story Mask of the Red Death begins with people dropping like flies, as the king of the land decides to take his close friends with him to live in one of his palaces. leaving his subjects to survive on their own. A puzzling creature known as the Red Death has been terrorizing and killing off people one by one, and no one has a way to stop it. Through characterization of both Prospero and the Red Death, Poe foreshadows Prospero’s eventual death in the end of the story.

Poe uses the symbols of the Red Death and Prince Prospero to show that death is inevitable. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.” This quote tells the reader that the Red Death was a very dangerous disease and was horrifying. While the people of the town were dying, Prince Prospero tried hid in his abbey for month. One day, Prospero noticed a strange figure walking through his party. He chased this figure until it stopped in the last black and red room. “There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero.” After months of hiding, Prince Prospero, who symbolizes humanity’s efforts to prevent death, was finally killed by the Red Death figure, who represents inevitable death. Prince Prospero tried to hide from death by building reinforcements around his abbey. There were walls of iron and the doors were welded shut, but the Red Death figure somehow reached Prince Prospero. This proves the thesis because it show how the Red Death and Prince Prospero represent how a person cannot hide from

Death. These sues of symbolism helped me to understand the theme of no one escapes death. Poe used multiple characters as symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Prince Prospero was used to represent the arrogance of man. He had figured that if he used enough money he could keep out the plague.

The beginning of the short story Edgar Allan Poe uses a metaphor catalog of macabre details usually Gothic fiction (Osipova 25). Edgar Allan Poe comes out with very strong details to how the red death kills the people from the start he has a gruesome tone to the story. This is shown at the beginning to help the tone progress as the story goes on. All the macabre detailing throughout the story helped convey how unpleasant and terrifying the red death is and why Prospero desire to conceal from it. When he decides to take people with him to the palace he thinks that he will be safe however since the red death is all the peoples guilt and fears it goes after them because Prospero fears it the most. “Poe’s use of ambiguity here is masterful; the physical reactions he describes could very well be consistent with terror, distaste, and rage, but they could just as likely be symptomatic of the disease”.(Bennett 46). Poe select to make The Mask Of The Red Death a very terrorizing story conveying that you can't hide from fear because sooner or later it will get you. The way the people feel whenever they get the disease is very crucial to the story because they are being taken over by their guilt. All of the terror that people feel could just be some sign of the disease which is the red death. The narrator plays an important role in The Mask of The Red Death because it is 3rd person which whose everyone's feelings. In the end scene where the Red Death is actually shown as the Grim Reaper is three things omniscient narrator, supernatural being, and the dreaded plague itself (Guercio 76). Edgar Allan Poe changes the point of view throughout the story to give it a different effect and angle to how the tone is set. At the part when the red death uses third person omniscient it shows the people reading the book how important it is. He uses that type of view to show that he is over everyone else. The narrator is the only one that uses third person and the fact that the red death uses it tells everyone that is has a higher value that how they have portrayed him the entire story. It shows its real self in other words takes off his mask to reveal his true power over people.

The partygoers then run at the masked figure and also attempt to kill this mysterious figure, but soon face the same fate as Prince Prospero, death. The symbols in the mask combine to interpret the true meaning of the story, that Prince Prospero thinks that he can outwit the Red Death with his status, but he soon learns that the Red Death cannot be escaped proving the theme that not even the wealthy can escape

The Red Death symbolizes death and blood. It is Poe’s own version of the bubonic plague or Black Death.”...Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him…”(3). In the story, Prince Prospero thinks that the Red Death is a masquerader who mocks those who are dying outside of the chamber. However, it is not exactly a natural human being, it is a supernatural being. In the end, Prospero ends up getting eliminated by the Red Death when he runs and tries to kill it with a dagger. “Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.” (3). In the story, the Red Death kills in a gruesome and disturbing manner. No matter how protected and secluded you can be, it is impossible for death to be

Finally, Poe uses both Prospero's abbey and the personification of death as symbols to develop the theme that no one escapes death. Prince Prospero's abbey, which is where the masked ball is held, is represented as a giant barrier which is ultimately used as protection from the Red Death. However, it also represents the social barrier between those who are wealthy and those who are underprivileged. Only those that are "hale and light-hearted" (Poe 1) and are "from among the knights and dames of his court" (Poe 1) are privileged enough to attend enter Prospero's "castellated abbey" (Poe 1). Poe, on the other hand, shows that by the end of the story that no matter how prepared Prince Prospero is, no one, not even those that hold great wealth

By twelve midnight, all the guests saw a scary and bloody strange figure wearing a mask, they became very anxious, so the prince commanded all the guests to snatch this unknown guest and expose his identity. Obviously no one did. They were all terrified and shocked so they marched away from that unidentified stranger. After wards the prince caught him all by himself. He started running after the stranger trying to catch him but he couldn’t, the stranger kept going from room to room. At last, he reached the dark, gloomy, gory and bloody room where the stranger had to face the prince. Right before the prince was about to to stab the intruder, the prince fell on the ground dead. After the incident, the presence of the Red Death” was acknowledged (Poe). Then suddenly and bizarrely, all the guests started falling one after the other. Blood started splattering all around the halls. Then the clock stopped; with the last person dying in the

Poe uses allegory to allude to the double meanings of the characters Prince Prospero and the masked figure, as well as the setting of the chambers. Prince Prospero represents prosperity. While his nation is suffering from the “Red Death”, “…he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and lighthearted friends…and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbey” (420). His nobility and wealth give him the ability to ignore the horror around him and live in luxury. This refers to real life in that the privileged are the ones who are able to still live comfortably even if others are in a crisis. Prince Prospero also represents an ignorance, selfishness, and arrogance that come with wealth through right instead of hard work. He believes that “[t]he external world could take care of itself” and that it is “…folly to grieve, or to think” (420). Instead of taking action to help his people, he just leaves them in the grips of the “Red Death”. The “Red Death” is

Earlier in the story, the figure is described as a,“. . . spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers)” (Poe 8). Another way that the masked figure is used is to make the tone of the short story more dark and brooding. The actions of the figure begin to reveal that it might be more than what it seems, which reveals that it is being used to represent the Red Death.