“The Masque of the Red Death” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe that focuses on how people can’t run from their death. No matter how hard you try and no matter the amount of precautions you take to escape it, when it wants you, it will have you. While demonstrating the focus of life and death, Poe clearly illustrates how the fatal disease called the red death killed the characters in the story.
According to Poe, the red death had devastated the unknown country for a long time. Poe used the words redness, horror, blood, pains, dizziness, bleeding, and dissolution to describe it. Poe told of how within thirty minutes of catching the disease the person would die. This disease could be compared to the plague or the Black Death. However, Poe must have not wanted the title or references of the disease in the story to appear to be any other disease than the red death because he repeated the actual name of the disease each time it was discussed in the story. The people of the county all feared the red death because of the horrible ending it always brought, death. Other diseases sometimes kill the people that it inhabits, but not the red death. The red death always ended with death. Therefore, because of the existence of the red death in the country, the Prince, Prince Prospero (the only character that speaks in “The Masque of the Red Death”), decided to save himself and all of his friends from the disease.
Prince Prospero thought he could save himself and one thousand of his friends by building strong walls around the castle in which they lived. The walls and iron gates were intended to save them from this horrible disease. The Prince’s name, Prospero, is a lot like the English word prosperity which means success and good well-being. Poe giving the Prince this name is somewhat bizarre considering he is the first one to die in the story. Perhaps Poe did this to prove that no matter how wealthy and successful you are, you can’t escape death or anything else that is destined to find you. Prince Prospero was wealthy enough to allow one thousand of his friends to live with him, he had numerous servants, and he threw parties almost every night. It seemed like everything was going fine inside the walls of Prospero’s home while the disease was killing whatever it may outside of the castle walls. However, right underneath Prospero’s nose was the next ingredient to his death that he himself created.
Prince Prospero was going to throw a costume ball on the night of his death which was set up in seven different colored rooms that were all in order from east to west. www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section10.rhtml gives a great example of why the rooms were set up in order from east to west. Section ten told of how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. When the sun rises it is morning time and the beginning of the day. When the sun sets it is night and the end of the day. Therefore, a full day could symbolize one’s lifetime. Since the first room is in the east, it is the beginning of a person’s life. As the characters kept walking through the rooms farther west, their lives began to come closer to the end. Once someone encounters the room farthest west, death is displayed.
Martha Womack who wrote Adventures in American Literature found several points that link the seven rooms in Poe’s story to the seven life stages. She told of how the history of the world was thought to consist of seven ages, the ancient world had seven wonders, universities divided learning into seven subjects, there were seven deadly sins, and there are seven cardinal virtues. All of these examples of the use of the number seven suggest why Poe chose to use seven as the number of rooms in his story. The number of rooms to demonstrate the seven life stages was important for the conclusion of the story; however, the colors of the rooms were far more stimulating.
Each room was a different color and had window panes to match the color of the room except the last room. The first room was blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth white, the sixth violet, and the seventh room was black. Poe told of the black room by saying that it was shrouded in velvet. According to C.D. Wiley, “shrouded” is a word always associated with death. The black room, being the last life stage and symbolizing death, had scarlet window panes. Scarlet is a deep color of blood which is why the red window pains symbolized blood. The color red was even used in the title “The Masque of the Red Death” to make the complete connection from the color red to blood to death. Blood may be the cause of why each and every person is living, but when we think of the word blood we think of death. According to an unknown reviewer of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe called this story, “The horror of blood.” Whoever entered the colored rooms, which were the stages of life, kept on passing through one after another on to the end while time was in the background ticking away.
The time that was ticking away was the ebony clock that was draped in black velvet and sat in the seventh room. The ebony clock chimed every hour. Each time the clock paused, everyone that heard the pause became skeptical and fearful. Musicians, dancers, and giddy friends all paused. Poe even informs readers that between each chime of the clock three thousand and six hundred seconds elapse, showing that even though an hour may seem like a large amount of time, it is merely seconds. Also, when thinking about not having much more time to live, seconds are even smaller than they may realistically be. The clock finally stopped though after the red death entered Prince Prospero’s party and killed everyone there. To symbolize death, Poe included the following phrase in the story, “And the life of the ebony clock went out with the last of the gay” (75) This quote demonstrates the significance of the clock by showing how the clock stopped when the characters lives ended.
The red death couldn’t enter the party without a disguise, which was the perfect opportunity to present itself at the costume ball Prince Prospero was throwing. The people who attended the ball had on lavish costumes. However, none of the costumes were anything like the costume the red death had on. The costume the red death had on was “shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.” The mask resembled a corpse, in addition to the entire outfit had blood sprinkled all over it. Midnight was when the red death appeared at the costume ball. At that time, the clock as well as everything else paused. Prince Prospero demanded for the masked guest to tell who he was. When he did not, Prince Prospero took a dagger and followed him through each room. When they entered the last of the rooms, the dagger fell to the floor and Prospero was killed. Prospero being killed in the last room, which was the black room, proved that the black room symbolized death.
Poe’s story “The Mask of the Red Death” proves the point that death can not be escaped. No matter how old, how wealthy, how depressed, or how scared we are, death will have us when it wants us. Charles O’ Donnell who was in From Earth to Ether, told that Poe knew the bible well and used it as a source of inspiration. At the end of the story Poe gives a bible verse that allows the story to be put in prospective. I Thessalonians 5:2-3 tells of how death comes like a thief in the night and even those who seek peace and safety shall not escape it.
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