Examples Of Allegory In The Masque Of The Red Death

As a human, fear is natural and unavoidable, but the issue occurs when someone refuses to come to terms with the fact that what they’re afraid of exists. Edgar Allen Poe displays this dilemma in “The Masque of the Red Death,” by using an allegory of the black death. In this short story, a supposedly wise and courageous man named Prince Prospero decides to bring what remains of his courtiers and seclude to his palace to ignore the horrors of a terrible epidemic called the Red Death. After a couple of months, the Prince decides to throw a masquerade. At the masked ball, there were seven irregularly disposed rooms of different colors, including the eerie, dark, seventh room, which nobody occupied throughout the party. As everyone is enjoying themselves,

The figure referred to as the mummer or the stranger chases Prospero through all the rooms and kills him in the final black and red room, and following that, he kills all the courtiers. It is addressed that this figure is the Red Death himself, as he snuck into the party and robbed them of their lives and joy because they didn’t acknowledge his presence before, but in the end, he had dominion over them. This allegory presents that the refusal to address one’s fears is an ignorant act that merely delays consequences, and it is further progressed by the castle rooms, the clock, and the stranger.

Through the symbol of the castle rooms, “The Masque of the Red Death” conveys the ignorance of avoiding inevitable fears. This can especially be seen as the colorful castle rooms 1-6 are contrasted to the dark, eerie apartment number 7. After describing the solemn, dark, emptiness of the black and red room during the party, Poe writes, “But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life” (86). Capitalizing on the “life” in the castle rooms besides room number 7 is an important detail that reveals the meaning of the rooms as a symbol. The courtiers' draw to rooms 1-6 is