Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

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Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the year of 1809 and successful wrote the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” and plenty more. (Edgar Allan Poe Bio) Struck by tragedy throughout his life Poe displayed his often encounter with death through his short stories and poems. A multitude of women in Poe’s life died of tuberculosis such as his birth mother, adopted mother, as well as his thirteen year old cousin and wife. (Edgar Allan Poe Bio) The turmoil that Poe experienced throughout his life showed through his stories in which brings us to the character Prince Prospero in “The Masque of the Red Death” who took drastic measures in order to escape death. Edgar Allan Poe uses a multitude of symbols to tell this story and…show more content…
The colors were displayed in chambers with “windows of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened” (Poe 1). When Prince Prosepero commenced to kill the Red Death he started in the blue room and drew his dagger as he ran through all the chambers and ended in the black. As he ran through the rooms he passed through every stage or phase of life as he fell to his death at the feet of the plague that he ironically was attempting to flee from. “Blue represents birth, purple represents a transition to royalty, green represents the growth of youth, orange represents strength and maturity, white is purity, and violet -- the last stage before the red and black room representing death” (Garrett-Hatfield). Prospero as well as the closest to him all die in the same chamber in which at first no one dared to enter because of the ominous look death has a negative outlook and is most likely to be avoided “that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all” (Poe…show more content…
When reading the reader learns that in all actuality this character is a supernatural being and not a living flesh human. In description the Prospero and his partygoers view the tall figure as a masquerader dressed as the Red Death “was made so nearly to resemble countenance of a stiffened corpse” and its “vesture was dabbled in blood” (Poe 3). Poe’s usage of black in red when the reader comes in contact with this character gives the reader a foreseen death before it has even been told “his use of both red, which to him symbolized terror, horror, an ending of life; and black, which symbolized death” (Garrett-Hatfield) gives away the feeling that something bad is to happen soon. Death gives a powerful message within this story that who you are or what social class you are placed doesn’t matter. Even though the Prince gathered the “hale and light-hearted” and as well as “the knights and dames of his court” and locked them within his castle, he failed to realize that there is a time and place for everyone to die (Poe 1). No matter how wealthy or powerful a person may be it is inevitable to escape
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