Often in short stories, symbols are present. Symbols represent meanings beyond what they literally are in the story. In the short story, The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, the gigantic ebony clock is symbolic. The ebony clock is symbolic because it symbolizes death and that time never stops. Symbols represent something other than themselves, which is significant to the story. The ebony clock in the seventh room symbolizes death. According to the short story, it states, “But in the western or black chamber, the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hanging through the blood-tainted panes, was ghastly in the extreme…It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic
