“The Masque of the Red Death” is an elaborate allegory that combines objects in the story With visual descriptions to give focus to the readers imagination. In the story, a Price named Properso tries to evade the red death through isolation and seclusion. He hides behind the 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 Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death are used to symbolize death. Poe’s use of language and symbolism is shown in his description of the seventh room in the suite, the fire, and the ebony clock. These objects are used to depict the theme of the story, death “held illimitable dominion over all.”
The first symbolic mean of death is represented in the seventh room in the suite. The story takes place in seven connected but carefully separated rooms. “The seventh apartment was closely shrauded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.”
Poe usesthe seventh room to symbolize the final stage of litfe, death. He sees the black velvet tapestries as blood flowing from the celing and walls to the floor. The relationship between blood and death is important because he wants the reader to have a Visual image or the Diood pouring down ne wals as a Torm or death. In creatng tnis room Poe links the colors red and black with death and time. The fire lighting the suite of rooms is another object in the story that represented death. .There stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass…But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted paves, was ghostly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the cowntenances of those who entered..”The seven rooms are lighted from without, and it is only in the seventh room where the color of the Windows does not correspond with the color of the room, but instead is a deep blood color through which light iluminates the westernmost chamber of black…”
The tire was meant to produce a shadowy atmosphere in the west and a favorable one in the east. This is symbolic to the sunrise in the east and sunset in the west because light means life and darkness means death. Poe uses darkness as another visual representation of death.”.. The details of incident and background [in the storyl flash themselves on our imagination with almost painful distinctness.” The ebony clock is another symbolic element in the story. The significance of time in the story is seen in the symbol of the gigantic clock of ebony, which is drapped in black velvet and located in the final room. Although the clock is an object, it quickly takes on human aspects as the author describes it as having a face and lungs from which comes a sound that is “exceedingly musical”‘ but “so peculiar” that the “dreams are stiff frozen as they stand.” The gigantic ebony clock With the dul, heavy, monotonous clang…emphasizesthe passage of time.
Hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, the lite of the ebony clock slowly dies. Poe uses the clock as a symbolic mean that man can escape death, but in the end it is inescapable.” The striking of this clock has…a sobering effect on the revellers. Upon the last stroke of twelve…there appears amid the throng9, a figure attired in the blood dabbled grave-clothes of a plague victim.” The ebony clock is a reminder to Prince Properso and his guests of their remaining time before death. Poe’s description of the clock’s chimes is succestul as a constant remainder of their death. Edgar Allen Poe’s visual descriptions of the seventh room, the fire, and the ebony clock, in his short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” effectively show the importance of language and symbolism to visualize death. The symbolism of certain stories of Poe is rather clear.. The Masque of the Red Death” is a parable of the inevitability and universality of death, the human condition of man’s tate, and the fate of the universe. “The masque of the Red Death” is one of Poe’s best made tales and one of his more explicit allegoriesS.
