Symbolism In The Masque Of The Red Death

There are many that have different opinions about death. It can be seen as something to be feared, or it can be seen as something long-waited for and welcomes. In the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allen Poe addresses death as an inevitable and to all things. While the rest of his subjects are falling victim to the Red Death, Prince Prospero thinks it is easily escapable, so he hides away and parties. However, the disease still manages to enter his secure castle and proves that one can no run from misfortune. To show his allegory of life in “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe expresses that death is inevitable through his portrayal of the alignment of the rooms, Prince Prospero, and the mummer. One will go through many stages in life and there will always be a beginning and an end. The stages of life and shown as the seven rooms. Poe writes, “the eastern extremity was hung…in blue—and vividly blue were

This happens in the story when the people in the castle could hide no longer. It took the shape of a costume and mask of a corpse. When the group was terrified but had had enough. “Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of revelers at once through themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpselike mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form” (Poe 88). The mummer is used to symbolize death and misfortune. It took shape when the partygoers feared and avoided death so much that it was more than a figment of their imagination. Because of the mummer’s clothes, they were reminded of the thing they were trying to avoid. Out of fear, they tried to aggress the mummer but it fell away into nothing. The mummer shows that misfortune may come no matter if it is not