Rooms of the Abby in The Mask of the Red Death
Each room in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” has a deeper meaning not openly expressed by Poe, but left up to the reader’s imagination. Poe did not want the reader to just see words, but feel the impact of each scene. Closer inspection of this story will not only examine what each room may symbolize, but will also analyze Poe’s past to establish why he may have elected these representatives.
Some critics theorize that each room’s color has no significance. However, it may be difficult to consider that Poe would not create each chamber and not intend for readers to visualize meaning through angles, room color and flickering firelight. No matter what each individual reader perceives, as she/he steps through each room with the masquerade ball characters, it is evident that there is more to this story. Each of Poe’s words carries the reader into the story’s specific scene while simultaneously glimpsing into Poe’s dark mind. Why did Edgar Allan Poe choose to write stories of death and horror, including “The Masque of the Red Death?” Critics often contribute Poe’s style of writing to insanity. However, insight into…show more content… Clough tells us, “It should be mentioned here that ‘shadow’ is a favorite word with Poe…. It occurs very frequently, without definite color effect, but lurking often in the corners of rooms or even in the background of nature” (609). Even when Poe uses white it is portrayed as a shadowed white darkened by the night. Clough states white “is frequently contrasted with black”(608). Though Poe did favorably use black and red while writing, in “The Masque of the Red Death” he chose a wide variety of colors.
Poe’s seven colored rooms in “The Masque of the Red Death” are presented to the readers in a specific order, with individual details of