Allegory in The Masque Of The Red Death Essay

An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. In the story, a terrible disease called the Red Death struck the country. Its incredibly fatal and gruesome, and it had already killed off half the kingdom. The ruler of the kingdom, Prince Prospero, does not care about the decease of his kingdom and proceeds to throw a masquerade ball in his mansion far away in the woods. During the ball a masked person appears and he portrays a frightening corpse who died of the Red Death. Prince Prospero is infuriated and demands the guards to arrest him. They are all to shocked and afraid to do so. So Prince Prospero goes for him only to be killed, along with the others who participated in the ball, by the Red Death. In this story there are objects that symbolize death coming. The symbols used in the Masque of Red Death, including the arrangement of the chambers, the clock, and the abbey, all have a representation used to portray the coming of death. They all represent a meaning that uncovers a whole other story by itself.

The arrangement of rooms represents time passing by. The blue room represents birth. The next room is purple suggests the beginnings of growth. Green, the next color, suggests the spring of life (youth), orange the summer and autumn of life. White, the next color, suggests age (when you think of age you imagine old people with white/grey hair, and bones). Violet (a combination purple and grey) represents darkness and death. And black represents death, the very end of life. As said in the book, The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries

The clock represents time flying by, till the end of time. Its eerie chiming on the hour is a regular reminder that their lives are drifting away with the time, and that death is approaching. Everything stops, including the music and the talking of the people, as the bell chimes as they stop, fear stricken, and in the back of their minds they realize that death is coming closer and closer by the hour. As said in the book, It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock.

They Abbey represents a shield from the Red Death. Although it only shields them from the deadly disease for only a couple of hours, it does shield them from the death. They believe the house is an escape from the death but only to realize that a masked person arrives at the party portraying the red death it self, spreading the red death to everyone in the abbey. As said in the book, The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.

As you can see, the symbols used in the Masque of Red Death all represent a meaning that uncovers a whole other story by itself. It shows that the arrangement of the rooms represents stages of a life going by, the clock represents time running out, and the abbey represents a shield away from the world outside. This story shows that death is the only certainty in life and those who try to avoid/escape death are unwise.