Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

There were sharp pains and dizziness. This was followed up by heavy bleeding at the port and finally death. In this piece by Edgar Allen Poe, Prince Prospero locked all of his guests in the castle so they could try to escape death. Death is not something that you can escape it comes with life. In the Masque of the Red Death, the seven rooms represent the colors of the stages of life stated by the color theories. The rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with birth and west is associated with endings and death. The sun rises in the east and goes down in the west. The first room represents infancy. The color of this room is blue. The color blue represents Mary, who is usually clothed in blue to symbolize virtue. Mary is the mother of Jesus, and mothering …show more content…
“In the seventh room, the effect of the scarlet light on black velvet was ghastly. It produced so wild a look upon the faces of those who entered that there were few of the guests bold enough to set foot within the room at all” (9). This was a very horrific room. One of the other features was the ebony clock. When the clock struck every hour, there was a very awkward silence in the house. All of the deaths in the castle started in the black room. The color black represents death, evil, and mystery. The ideas of death are very dark thoughts. The color black is worn to funerals to show the loss of loved ones. Black is also connected with evil and mystery. The last and final room, was very mysterious. “The seventh room was hung with black velvet curtains, while the floor was covered with a carpet of the same material. Only this room the windows did not match the furnishings. Instead, the glass was scarlet- a deep blood color” (8). The guests that stepped in this room were very brave and it did not happen a lot. The people that did step in there died. The scarlet color in the room has a correlation to blood and