Symbols In The Masque Of The Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe is widely remembered for his gothic fiction works, often featuring the recurring theme of death. “The Masque of the Red Death” is no different. Poe uses different literary devices in his many works to help convey the meaning. The “Red Death” is no different. The theme is used to create the story’s base for the rest of the work. Imagery is used to help allow the reader to actually picture what’s going on based on the authors given description. Lastly, he uses symbolism to give the story a deeper meaning. Edgar Allan Poe uses many literary devices in his works, theme, imagery, and symbolism being three of the ones used in “The Masque of the Red Death”.

“The Masque of the Red Death” has a few different themes. One being how death is unavoidable. Prince Prospero tries to avoid
Poe uses seven rooms and their colors to symbolize the stages of human life. Blue represents birth, the unknown from which a human enters into the world. Purple represents youth. Green suggests the spring of life, representing adolescence. Orange represents adulthood or the summer and autumn of life. White invokes the idea of white hair and bones, representing old age. Violent represents imminent death. Lastly, black/scarlet represents death. The guests not entering this room indicates their fear of death. The Red Death is used to symbolize the inevitability of death. No disease with the exact symptoms described in the story exist, but it’s believed that the diseases description has elements of tuberculosis, a disease that killed many people close to Poe. It also invokes memories of the black plague, which depopulated much of Europe during the middle ages. Finally, the ebony clock symbolizes a constant reminder of death and its inevitability. The guests could neither stop its pendulum from swinging nor could they prevent its threatening tones from interfering with their