Arrogance Kills Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is a typical dark Poe story, but it contains some unique themes and symbolism. In the story a disease known as the red death is ravaging the fictional place where the story is set, and it causes its victims to die quickly and painfully. Even though this disease is spreading rampantly, the prince, Prospero, does not care. He decides to lock the gates of his palace in order to keep away from the plague, ignoring the illness that is ravaging the land. Although he possesses the wealth to assist his people, he uses his wealth to protect all the rich people (Poe 386).
This story is full of multilayered symbolism and allegory for how Poe viewed life and America in general. After several months, he throws a fancy masquerade ball. For this celebration, he decorates the rooms of his house in single colors. The easternmost room is decorated in blue, with blue stained-glass windows.
Purple walls and matching stained glass adorn the next room. Each room, continuing westward, follows in the same fashion in the colors: green, orange, white, and violet. The seventh room is black, with red windows. In this room is a huge ebony clock. When the clock rings each hour, its sound is so loud and distracting that everyone stops talking and the orchestra stops playing. When the clock is not sounding, the party is swinging.
The Term Paper on Edgar Allan Poe Red Death
... of black, with an ebony clock on its western wall. In creating this room, Poe links the colors red and black with death and ... the Red Death." (See Style for allegorical interpretation. ) Style and Interpretation Poe's story takes place in seven connected but carefully separated rooms. This ... When the mummer is seized toward the end of the story, all "gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave ...
Most guests, however, fear and avoid the black room. His selfishness in throwing the masquerade ball unwittingly positions him as a caged animal, with no possible escape (Poe 388).
The colors of the rooms represent the stages of life. He also makes it a point to arrange the rooms running from east to west. This represents the cycle of a day, because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, with night representing death.
Poe makes the last, black room, as the endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The clock that is in there also reminds the guests that death is always a second, a minute, an hour closer. Also, the fact that it is a costume party allows their fear of the red death to be made into a party theme of sorts. At midnight a new guest appears, dressed more eerily than the rest of the guests.
His mask looks like the face of a corpse, he is wearing a funeral shroud, and his face has spots of blood like the victims of the Red Death. Prospero gets mad that someone would be so audacious as to mock him like that. The other guests are so scared that they don’t stop the new guest and allow him to walk all the way to the black room. Prospero finally catches up to the new guest in the black room. As soon as he confronts the new guest, Prospero dies.
Everyone else is so surprised, and now mad, that they rush in to attack the figure, but when they get to it there is nothing but a pile of clothes and a mask. They all die of the Red Death (Poe 388).
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (Poe 390).
The new guest obviously represents the Red Death and his entry into the party symbolizes that you cannot run from the inevitable, which in this case is dying from the Red Death or on a larger scale, life and death in general.
When Prospero follows the new guest from the first room to the last, black room, it represents the journey from birth to death that everyone, once again, inevitably, takes. There is also some economic symbolism, some of which I have already mentioned. Prospero is rich and doesn’t care about the poor, so I think that the Red Death is some sort of economic equalizer or an early communist allegory, because it does not care if you are rich or poor at all. It takes the money and power out of the hands of the few and puts in the hands of the masses and treats everyone the same.
The Essay on “The Masque Of The Red Death” By Edgar Allan Poe
... mean Poe used the color red in association with blood, fear, and death .the windows also caused red light to shine into the room. Everyone ... he holds a masked ball in order to help his guests to ignore what is happening outside the castle walls. Throughout ... abbey with the colors and order of rooms representing the stages in life. The black room is probably the most symbolic amongst the ...
The story may also be an allegory for how Poe viewed the economic inequities of the time in America, with, once again, the power in the hands of the few and not the masses. “The Masque of the Red Death” is full of incredibly deep symbolism and allegory for how Poe viewed the time period and life overall. Although it is a short story, it is still compelling fiction that makes you think deeper. Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 9 th ed.
New York: Longman, 2005. 386-390.
