Masque of the Red Death
and Symbolism
By: Kevin Ouyang
Original Story written by Edgar Allan Poe
Thesis
Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" is his best example of symbolism regarding death and time.
Summary
A rather queer Prince Prospero and a thousand of his followers and Court lock themselves in one of the prince's "castelated abbeys"to survive a lethal plague known as the ReD Death.
Example 1
The Rooms
Example 2
Room colors from east to west: BLue, Purple, Green, Orange, white, violet, and black
On the fifth or sixth month of this isolation, the prince holds a masquerade in an imperial suite (imperial suites have seven rooms) where, at midnight, the physical incarnation of the Red Death spontaniously appears and kills Prospero and everyone else there.
The Ebony Clock
NEar the end of the story, Prospero runs after the REd DEath, traversing the whole suite from blue to black. WHen he gets to the black, Prospero dies. This insinuates that the suite represents life, with Prospero technically going through the entire expanse of life before he dies in the black room, or death.
Note also that barely any guest entered the black room on their own free will before the red death appeared, which can
show our innate fear of death.
In the story, the clock hangs on the westernmost wall in the westernmost room, or the black room. This suggests that the clock has something to do with both time and death, so given the "spell" the clock's chiming seemed to put on the masqueraders, it is not to hard to say that the clock is serving as a cold reminder to humanity that death is inescapable and that there's no escaping it or the "ravages of time". No matter how hard you try to ignore it, it's still there.
Symbolism
Brett Zimmerman, of York University believes that the rooms can also represent half of a clock's face, as the windows are said to "follow the winding of the suite", and if the rooms are 20 or 30 feet long, they can only form a semi-circle. As a result, zimmerman thinks that the rooms can either show the span of half an hour or the seven hours from 6 pm to 12 am. This is because of Another supporting detail noting that the Death is mentioned to have walked with "a slow and solemn step more as if to sustain its role", "a solemn and measured step", and a "deliberate and stately step", which foolows the behavior of the hour hand of a clock. From this, Prospero can be thought of as the minute hand, with his drawn dagger or "bare blade" sprinting across the suite to get the red Death.
Zimmerman also thinks that, as all the masqueraders are trapped in the suite in fear of the Red Death, it shows that humanity can never escape time.
To use something to represent or allude to a typically more abstract idea, concept, or object.
Symbolism In Poe's Career
Real World connection
In my opinion, The story really touched on the power death and time have over us. Even before we die, death already has a huge presence in our lives, whether in the form of a lost relative, disease, or war. Time also has a hold on us, no one can escape its consequences or be impervious to it. We can resist it, but it will still break through. Even today, even with all the drugs, treatments, and surgeries available, you still cannot elude wither death or time forever, you need to die.
Symbolism is nothing new in Poe's career. In fact, critics have long noted Poe for his constant use of it. In fact, literary critic Jean-Paul Weber once called Poe the "maniac of time" in one of his essays. One literal example of this is in the"Tell-Tale Heart" where the crazed narrator obsessively mentions watches and time over and over again: "there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton", "A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine", "hearkening to the death watches in the wall, and much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton".
What sets "The Masque of the Red Death" apart from all of Poe's others works is that it has a clearly defined moral, one of "universal applicability" as said by Brett Zimmerman, which speaks of the predetermined fate of humans.