Life and Death in The Masque Of The Red Death Essay

The Masque of the Red Death

The story The Masque of the Red Death is a thought turning tale, of a country, possibly a fictional country, that endured a, murderous plague. It was a traumatizing, pain stricken time, and many people died horrible deaths. Edgar Alan Poe, the author captured the story from his detailed perspective. He described the rooms as if the personalities of the environments where alive. The elements of the plague where, horrific, skin crawling, and killed with no remorse. It represents life and death, a few ways.

There are a few reasons why this story represents life, and death. The first reason this story is allegorical, is the seven rooms. The red and black room should represent death because black represents death, evil and mystery. The red represents blood, vigor, power, rage and anger. The blue room represents birth, possibly due to the fact that blue represents, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, and truth. The room next to this blue room is purple. The color purple represents color. The symbolism of life and death is intensity. Intensity represents progression or growth, because as life continues it gets harder, or more intense. The white room should represent purity and holiness. The green room represents spring; in the spring things are born. So in a sense spring represents the youth and life. Orange the color of the leaves on trees in the fall, or like the sky as the sun sets in the summer. I think the room that is most scary, is the violet room because its so close the black. This symbolizes being close to death or, facing reality and accepting death. If looked at in a symbolic perspective, life to death the rooms would go in this order, blue, purple, green, violet, white, then red and, black. The colored rooms could possibly represent the different moods the protagonist was in.

Another symbol in this allegory is, the clock that was located in the dark room. The clock was big and black. The significance of the clock is obviously constant time. Time can be interpreted in different ways, for example if the clock where, located in the green room, it would symbolize time continuing. If the clock were located in the white room, it would represent time slowing down and running out. The clock being located in the black room definitely, means time is ending.

The actual plague that killed the people is an allegory itself. Mainly due to the way Poe described it in such a vivid description. It was described as painful, there was blood profusely leaking from every pore on the victims body, drenching them in blood. It was more on the lines of a dream, because of the amount of people being found dead covered in blood. Poe took a real epidemic, and twisted into a even more brutal massacre.

After analyzing this horrifying, mind bending, tale I have come to this conclusion. The illness was based on an old time sickness black plague which no one survived form. It was described to be even more vicious, and fatal then the most detrimental plague known to man. It was dressed up in wild colors to add suspense and, confusion for the characters in the story. The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory because it did have symbolism in many of the scenes, and there was a contrast of life and death. Overall death is inevitable.