Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

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Some people like to think that there is a such thing as eternal life. But what they need to know is that death comes for everyone and it is inevitable. In the "Masque of the Red Death" Prince Prospero gathers a large group of friends to live in an abbey for a year. They soon will find that they cannot escape what is everlasting. The "Red Death" is a disease that comes for anyone and everyone.

In an abbey gathered a large group of friends along with their host, Prince Prospero a " happy and dauntless and sagacious" man. They were to stay in this abbey for a year. As the time went on Prospero was full of boredom. He decided to throw a masquerade ball. Spread through out seven bizarre apartments, he had an exquisite evening to happen."The
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All "bearing a brazier of fire that projected it's rays through the tinted glass windows and glaringly illuminated the rooms." They were like the life or the light that was keeping that was keeping them alive. "But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hanging through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few bold enough to set foot within." In a corner of the black chamber was a "tall ebony clock" where each time "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 sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions" and as their blood turned in their skin they halted until the last clang came …show more content…
The musicians stopped playing, which gave sign to the people that he was there. No one knew who he was especially the host himself, Prince Prospero. For Prospero made all the masquerade dressings and costumes and that masked stranger did not have on anything he made. He looked and dressed so terrifyingly that when he walked the people would part way to let him pass by. "Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him — "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? " said Prospero surely showing but not saying his higher status. As the masked figure was walking toward the prince he was backing up and soon was cowardly running away from the stranger. As he was running he went from one room on the east side to the last one on the west side. As if to get his dignity back he grabbed a dagger and held it to the masked figure and ran after him. "When the latter having attained the extremity of the the velvet apartment turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer, there was a sharp cry the dagger dropped gleaming upon the carpet, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero." The people aware of what just happened went after the masked figure and "gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpselike mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by a tangible form." The stranger was nothing. Just a mask

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