Preview

The Seven Stages of Life The Masque of the Red Death Edgar Allan Poe

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
545 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Seven Stages of Life The Masque of the Red Death Edgar Allan Poe
Charity Chukwu

Mrs. Edmondson

English III

November 13, 2008

The Seven Stages of life

Fate is inevitable and there is no escaping it. "The Masque of the Red Death" is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe explaining how Prince Prospero stays in a state of denial unwilling to accept death until it is too late. The seven rooms in which Prospero presides in represent the seven rooms in which Prospero presides in represent the seven stages of life with their colors and features. As he rushes through each room Prospero realizes the consequences of going through life too fast.

A dark and haunting death cast over Prince Prospero's city. To escape from it he invites his royal healthy friends to a party in his abbey safely secure from any danger outside the walls of the castle. Time flies as they carelessly have fun in the seven colorful rooms in which the party is held. When an unwanted stranger comes into the rooms the guest face an unexpected death. Prince Prospero rages through the seven rooms only to meet the same fate.

The main allegory in the story is the representation of the seven rooms in the abbey. With their various colors the rooms tell of the human life cycle. Starting with birth, the windows of the blue room are vividly blue. Upon coming into the world there is a bright innocence that is shown in the souls of people. Purple is the color of the next chamber representing the toddler years. The purple ornaments and tapestries the room gives a playful vibe giving the child in everyone something to have fun with. The third room is green and so are its casements. Green shows the teenage adolescence of life moving away from play things and into education. Thus the green room ends the final stages of the infancy years.

Entering adulthood the orange room appears. Orange is young and bursting with energy. The room shows how vibrant and exiting growing up can be. This is the age people are wild and reckless without a care in the world. Moving on to the white room more

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    He starts of describing the seven apartments and how bizarre they look “There were seven…while the folding doors…” (234). the fact that there were seven rooms is symbolic in itself due to that there are seven stages in life. Poe uses the number of rooms to describe the stages of life in a way that the first room symbolizes birth and the seventh room symbolizes death. In every room there are decorated stained glass windows along with the carpet that coordinate with the color of the room. The first room, blue symbolizing birth, purple is the developmental stage of life, green for the nourishment. The orange room represents the setting of the sun, the ending of life, leading to the white room for the ascension into heaven. The seventh and final room being black velvet represents death. It is in the seventh room that draws a feeling of fear among the prince’s guests and is avoided. The room is entirely decorated in black except for the window panes which were that of a scarlet. “There stood…a brazier of fire… (235). There is a fire that prominently illuminates the room where an ebony clock stands striking at every hour.…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Masque of the Red Death” story response Throughout “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe , he shares his ideals on the inevitability of death through the main character in the story, Prince Prospero. Prince Prospero embodies three of the deadly sins such as, pride, greed, and sloth. In the story Prince Prospero says “Who dares” -- he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him -- “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him.”…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Foremost, in "the Masque of the Red Death," the country had been exposed to the bubonic plague. Victims of the plague died an untimely death. Prince Prospero, in an attempt to defend himself from the epidemic, locked the gates so no one could leave or enter his premises. At the night of the masquerade, the guests of the prince found themselves in a hall of seven linked room, each devoted to a single solid color. Once the guests made their way through the blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet rooms, they came to an eerie black room with blood-red windows. The seven chambers in castle represented one's journey through life; moving from east to west, just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so did the guests metaphorically travel from birth to death. Coincidentally enough, the last and black room, symbolizing death, was also the room the guests feared the most, in the same sense the guests also feared death.…

    • 530 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, the color of the most eastern and most western chamber are significance to the message of the story. In Roppolo’s Literary Criticism, he explains, “To Blair, as to many others, there is ‘allegorical signification’ in the seven rooms, which, ‘progressing from east to west—from blue to black—connote the seven ages of man from the blue of the dawn of life to the black of its night.’” The message Poe presents is that no living thing can avoid its fate of death no matter how it tries to protect itself or escape it. The blue most eastern chamber represents the birth of dawn and the black velvet and red most western chamber depicts death and night, demonstrating that as Prince Prospero and the guest run through…

    • 178 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death“ is a very gothic laced story resembling humanity. Poe uses the allegory of a Masquerade Ball in a castle and all of its attendees as a sample to represent a broad hidden statement about the grimness and blindness of man under all of their face level of partying and bliss. This being the case, results in an unfortunate and untimely demise for them as they are visited by an enigmatic figure. The hidden message in Edgar Allan Poe’s allegory, “Masque of the Red Death,” is that no matter what circumstance that comes at man, he will always be the embodiment of sin awaiting death at the end of his road.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The introduction of Poe's famous short story, "The Masque of the Red Death" illustrates the disease that is gruesomely killing it's victims. There was sudden dizziness, sharp pains, and then profuse bleeding from the pores, lasting about half an hour until killing it's victim. As The Red Death is rapidly spreading throughout the country, Prince Prospero is optimistic and derives a plan. He decides to lock the gates of his palace inviting only a thousand of his peers to be spared from the disease. After five months the Prince throws an elaborate masquerade ball, decorating each room in a certain color. The first chamber was vividly blue, the second was purple along with it's tapestry. The third was green and the fourth chamber was orange, the fifth was white and the sixth was violet. The seventh apartment was the most grotesque of all, decorated in black with velvet curtains. It is the only chamber that the window hue did not correspond with the walls, the window was a scarlet red symbolizing blood. "Death cannot be barred from the palace...it is in the blood, part and parcel of our humanity, not an external invader." (Kennedy 111-133.) At midnight an unknown guest appears, dressed as…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Man is insignificantly cursed with constantly craving power, attention and control over what they have no jurisdiction in.“Prospero attempts to control death by fitting it into his own work as a motif rather than as a reality”(Dudley). In Poe’s “Masque of The Red Death” Prince Prospero feels that power and control are the key to success and survival, although he doesn’t realize that his depressive plan of trying to control the unknown and create power will end with his demise.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Masque of the Red Death” displays the gothic element of a character's motivation caused by fear. Prince Prospero insured his and his guests safety with “The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts” (Poe 430). In order to protect himself and the guests from the contagion he had the doors of the abbey sealed shut. The fear of getting the contagion caused Prince Prospero to seal himself in the abbey. Prince Prospero’s fear is not only shown towards the contagion but towards the masked figure. After he saw the masked figure, Prince Prospero shouted, “Who dares insult us with the blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him - that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise” (Poe 433). Prince…

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is an elaborate allegory that combines objects in the story with visual descriptions to give focus to the reader's imagination. In the story, a prince named Prospero tries to dodge the Red Death through isolation and seclusion. He hides behind impenetrable walls of his castellated abbey and lets the world take care of its own. But no walls can stop death because it is unavoidable and inevitable. Visual descriptions in the story are used to symbolize the death that came to a dark, unkind and ignorant prince. Prospero failed to see that death "held illimitable dominion over all."…

    • 353 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plague, terror and death swept the country. “No pestilence had ever been so fatal”. In Edgar Allen Poe’s the Masque of Red Death, the author uses setting, imagery and suspense to convey the theme that death is inescapable.…

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe is the story of Price Prospero’s attempt to quarantine himself and his courtiers from the deadly disease, the Red Death. One of the major themes in the short story is: No one can escape death, not even the rich and powerful. To convey this message, Poe used symbols to express the images of wealth, power, control, vanity, the stages of life, and the inevitability of death. Two of these symbols are explained below.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe lived a life filled with hardships and mistakes. The experiences he endured transfer over to his writing, as his writings are gruesome and usually negative. He is notable for those writings, and “The Masque of the Red Death” is a good example of his practices.…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1. Explain the unique aspects of the rooms, including how many of them there are and what makes them different?…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gothic Poe and Hawthorne

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Gothic literature was influence by gothic architecture. The story of “Masque of the Red Death,” Poe uses the castle to gives it a gothic style. Prince Prospero and his friends also welded the doors shut so no one could enter. The story is set in Prince Prospero castle, cut off from the world, which is struck by plague. Poe describes the placements of the windows, the rooms and the clock. The castle had seven rooms which represents the seven stages of life. Each of the room has a different color theme to it. Poe describes the color of each room, “The first room is blue, the second is purple, the third is green, fourth is orange, fifth is white, sixth is violet and the seventh is black with red drapes, and a clock in the center of the room that announces at the end of each hour.”…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The story symbolizes the inevitability of death, and brings to reality the quote “you can run, but you can’t hide”. The colors presented in “Masque of the Red Death” play a huge role in this symbolism. They create the mood of the story, they represent the stages of life, and they highlight the horror of the last night of happiness. Overall, Edgar Allan Poe carefully depicts the use of colors in his story, and they will forever be recognized as allegorical genius in this iconic tale of greediness, power, and fate. Symbolism can be found in places high and low. Be sure to look closely, and one can reveal a meaning of something they never would have thought…

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays