Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

Chantae Rodriguez
“The Masque of the Red Death” “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe tells a short story about the Red Death and Prince Prospero’s attempts to avoid it, but failing to do so in the end. In the story, Poe uses imagery to convey wealth, death, and the journey through life. He uses a castle and a prince, a stranger and a clock, and different colors of rooms to tell his interesting and mysterious story. The main room of the story is the red and black room because the darkness of death lies within this room. The color red is very symbolic throughout the story because of the variety of red mentioned in the setting. “The gruesome description of the Red Death gives the color a ghastly connotation, especially in light of the red window panes contained in the death room at the far western end of the imperial suite” (Lorcher). Lorcher describes the red and black room as being the death room, and how the name of the illness gives a much darker meaning to the color red. For example, in the story Poe uses “a deep blood color” instead of a deep red color because he wants the setting to be dark and mysterious (Poe 342). “But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all” (Poe 342).The guests in