Every person has their own way of having a symbol for something. For example, how someone‘s symbol for success would be money while another person’s symbol would be family. “The Mask of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe is about how there is a disease called Red Death and it is killing everybody. In the story, all of the rich people blocked themselves in the castle to evade the Red Death, as in reality where all of the rich people have money to buy medicines to protect themselves from sickness and death. There is no cure for the Red Death, just like in life there is no cure for death, eventually death will find you. The symbols of the stages of life, time running out, and death apply to the theme of no man escapes death.
One symbol that represents the stages of life is the 7 rooms in the story. Each of the seven rooms have seven
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In the story Poe states,“ In this room stood a great clock of black wood. Gently it marked the seconds as they passed; and when it was time to mark the hour the clock spoke with a loud, clear voice, a deep tone as beautiful as music, but so strange that the music and the dancing stopped and the dancers stood still to listen. And then, after another sixty minutes, after another three thousand and six hundred seconds of Time, of flying Time, the clock struck again, and the dancers stopped as before.”. The great clock represents the time running out until you die. When the clock stopped the dancers stopped moving like when a heart gives out. Time running out isn’t the only symbol in the story.
The last symbol that exemplifies death is the Red Death. Poe stated in the story,“THE RED DEATH HAD LONG BEEN FEEDING ON THE COUNTRY. No sickness had ever been so deadly - so great a killer - or so fearful to see.”. The Red Death represents death as a person. Death killed everybody and left nobody alive because nobody can escape death. Death isn’t the only symbol in the