"Masque of the Red Death”: Color Symbolism Symbols are everywhere, embodying meanings larger than life. One can find symbolism in music, literature, and even in decoration! They play huge roles in specific themes or emotions in certain situations. In “Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, death is personified, terror reigns, and tragedy strikes, as he tells a short tale of the infamous “Black Plague” that reigned over Europe in the middle ages, and how death is absolutely inevitable. In the story, Poe used an intense amount of symbolism within the seven colored chambers to establish the mood of the story, the seven stages of life, and to emphasize the terror of the situation.
The Mood of the Story
Poe’s use of color sets the eerie …show more content…
As described at the beginning of the story, The rooms were so different from one another, “that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time” (Paragraph 4). This is said in the same way to mean that you will only get a tiny glimpse into the future. To go more in depth, Poe uses very specific colors for each room, laying them out extremely carefully and precisely, and as an end result, the colors of each room hold a meaning to a specific time in a person’s life. Even a person who would analyze the meaning of each room would only get a tiny glimpse of each part of their life; no details. Poe lays each color out specifically for this reason. Also, the course that each and every character in the story would walk in the end is from birth to death. As the personified Red Death walks from the blue room to the black room, “ it walks the course of life, leading from birth to death. Prospero follows that course when he chases it: he runs from the blue room to the black room, where he dies. His followers also rush into the black room to unmask the Red Death, and also die” (Shmoop). Literally and metaphorically, the characters walk the course of life by walking from the blue room, which resembles birth, to the black room, in which resembles death, therefore creating the irony that the colors of the seven chambers do symbolize the seven stages of life. Overall, both pieces of …show more content…
First of all, The black chamber is seen the whole time as a symbol of terror by the reader and characters. The chamber in itself obviously spooks the characters, which is evident in their continuous act of avoiding it. The black chamber is the only one whose colors fail to correspond to the color of the window panes, and “the panes here were scarlet--a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room” (Paragraph 4). Also in the black chamber, there is a huge ebony clock, whose “pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the
The Mood of the Story
Poe’s use of color sets the eerie …show more content…
As described at the beginning of the story, The rooms were so different from one another, “that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time” (Paragraph 4). This is said in the same way to mean that you will only get a tiny glimpse into the future. To go more in depth, Poe uses very specific colors for each room, laying them out extremely carefully and precisely, and as an end result, the colors of each room hold a meaning to a specific time in a person’s life. Even a person who would analyze the meaning of each room would only get a tiny glimpse of each part of their life; no details. Poe lays each color out specifically for this reason. Also, the course that each and every character in the story would walk in the end is from birth to death. As the personified Red Death walks from the blue room to the black room, “ it walks the course of life, leading from birth to death. Prospero follows that course when he chases it: he runs from the blue room to the black room, where he dies. His followers also rush into the black room to unmask the Red Death, and also die” (Shmoop). Literally and metaphorically, the characters walk the course of life by walking from the blue room, which resembles birth, to the black room, in which resembles death, therefore creating the irony that the colors of the seven chambers do symbolize the seven stages of life. Overall, both pieces of …show more content…
First of all, The black chamber is seen the whole time as a symbol of terror by the reader and characters. The chamber in itself obviously spooks the characters, which is evident in their continuous act of avoiding it. The black chamber is the only one whose colors fail to correspond to the color of the window panes, and “the panes here were scarlet--a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room” (Paragraph 4). Also in the black chamber, there is a huge ebony clock, whose “pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the