THE RED DEATH

The Red Death is a fictional plague sweeping through the land. Prince Prospero,
the main character in the short story, is hiding from the plague in an abbey, along
with a bunch of other nobles. Despite the plague being quite horrific and consisting
of symptoms like sweating blood and dying within 30 minutes, the nobles think
they are safe in the abbey. He stocks the abbey with enough food to survive and
leaves the surrounding country to its fate while holding wild parties within the
building.
The author, Edgar Allan Poe, using illusion or misdirection keeps the reader is
suspense throughout this story called "The Masque of the Red Death". Symbolism
such as the colored rooms, the impressive clock, the feeling of celebration being at
a party all makes this story feel like a fairytale. Poe used this fairytale style and
converts it into a nightmare in disguise.
Symbolism plays an important part in this story. The ebony clock is particularly
significant “there stood against the Western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony.” Poe
placed the clock against the western wall for a symbolic purpose. The sun rises in
the East and sets in the West. The clock is nearer to the setting sun. The placement
of the clock indicates an association with an ending. A sunset indicates the ending
of a day, while the ebony color of the clock suggests its relationship with darkness
and death. The characters react to the sounding of the clock’s chimes in a nervous
fashion. “…While the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the
giddiest grew pale.” Poe uses this clock to remind the characters that they have
lived through another hour to build up the time of revelation. At each strike of the
clock the characters stop everything as if they are waiting for the "Red Death" to
come for them at any minute. At twelve, the stranger dressed as the "Red Death"
appears. This time everyone begins to fear death. The darkness of the rooms causes
shadows to form by the fires' light to increase suspense. The story takes place in
seven sharply separated rooms.
The Prince and his guests believe that they can hide from the Red Death by
locking themselves away from the suffering of the rest of the world.
The clock interrupts the masquerade every time it chimes. The clock does not only
mark what time it is; as a foreshadowing device, it suggests that time is running out
for Prospero and his guests, though they seem oblivious to this.
Moreover, the Red Death arrives at the masquerade dressed as its own victim: “His
vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the
face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror” (Poe 441). It is a literal
representation of death walking among the living. The Red Death is able to move
around the abbey unimpeded, as its disguise unsettles the masqueraders. An
enraged Prospero seeks to slay the masquerader who dares to dress like a corpse
and pursues the Red Death from the easternmost room to the Velvet Hall. As soon
as he raises his dagger against the corpse-figure, Prospero falls dead (Poe 442).
When the guests tear away the disguise, they find no form beneath the clothes.
Shortly after, the masqueraders die of the Red Death. The lack of a tangible body
beneath the disguise suggests that death does not need a physical form, and it
cannot be stopped by any means.
After five or six months, Prospero decides to hold a grand masked ball, which he
holds in the seven rooms of an imperial suite. Instead of having the suite form one
long hall, Prospero has the apartments segregated by sharp turns, and tall stained
glass windows on each side of the room look out into the surrounding corridor.
Each room features a different color, which matches the color of the window: the
first room is blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth
white, and the sixth violet.
The seventh room, however, is slightly different in that although the dominant
color is black, the windows are blood red. The lights shining through the window
from the corridors creates such a ghastly effect in this room that most of the guests
avoid the room altogether. In this apartment is also a giant ebony clock, whose
pendulum swings ominously and whose hourly ringing is so disturbing that it
invariably disconcerts the musicians, dancers, and other revelers, causing everyone
to pause until the chimes fade away, at which point everyone nervously resumes
their actions.
At midnight, when the clock strikes twelve times, a masked figure appears whose
costume arouses emotions in the crowd that range from surprise and disapproval to
terror. He stands out even in the gaudily dressed crowd because he is dressed as the
Red Death. The tall, thin figure wears funeral garments marked with blood and a
mask that resembles a corpse with the disease's characteristic red stains. Despite
their debauchery, the crowd is stunned rather than amused by the costume, and,
from the blue room, Prospero angrily demands into the silence that the figure be
seized, unmasked, and hanged.
The Masque of the Red Death" is in essence a story about the human desire to
avoid death and the ultimate futility of such avoidance. Prince Prospero's name
recalls both the term for wealth and the Shakespearean magician of "The Tempest"
whose duchy was usurped, and he uses his wealth to give up his rule over his land
and to flee death by shutting himself away with a thousand of his noblemen.