What Is The Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death is Poe details how futile attempts to inhibit the inevitability of mortality ultimately fail, regardless of how lofty or respectable one’s status in life. Prince Prospero is described as eccentric, extravagant, and even materialistically vain all of which is simply a charade to offset his fear of death, but fails to prolong his life. Prospero’s somewhat foolish behavior can be seen when Poe writes “while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence” highlighting the fact that Prospero refuses to even entertain the idea of external conflicts like that of the Red Death (Poe 3). It is also paramount to note that the party that Prospero has decided to host is a masquerade, the masks that the party’s attendees are symbolic of their
The setting of “The Masque of the Red Death” serves to visually represent the transience of life through allegory and imagery. Poe alludes to Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” from As You Like It when describing the “seven [rooms] – and imperial suite” (Poe 4). The seven rooms begin with the blue apartment representing “the infant, / Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms”, then the purple apartment illustrating “the whining school-boy with his satchel / And shining / morning face”, the green apartment depicting “the lover, / Sighing like furnace”, the orange apartment illustrating “[the] soldier, / Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard”, the white room embodying “the justice, / In fair round belly”, the violet room signifies “the lean and slippered pantaloon, / With spectacles on nose and pouch on side”, and the final apartment , the black apartment, is representative of death (As You Like It 2.7.5-21). The employment of heavy chromatic imagery and allegory in setting conjures up a dramatic and