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Symbols In The Masque Of Red Death

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While reading the short story “Masque of Red Death,” many themes can be found. However the predominant theme is that you cannot escape from death. Other themes such as insanity, fear, and mortality all connect back to that one theme. It is a true universal theme, that can not only be found in most of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, but also in other forms of creativity such as poetry or music. The theme of the inevitability of death can be supported with several symbols scattered in “The Masque of Red Death.” The story as a whole is an allegory, having double meanings in the plot --- in the literal and symbolic elements. The rooms in Prince Prospero’s house were seen as unique and peculiar by his guests, with odd turns and interesting designs.”Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence” (Poe …show more content…

This was due to “the duke’s love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time” *(Poe 4). Everyone steadily avoids the last room in fear of the ‘vibe’ in the black room. Eventually the prince chases the cloaked ‘man’ into the alleyway and dies immediately. The guests follow him and meet the same fate. “And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall” (Poe 10). This immediate death inside of the black room shows the inevitability of death, no matter how they tried to ignore the plague. The huge black clock in the room that marks each and every passing hour so loudly that all of the guests at the party take note of it, it seems fairly obvious that the clock is a symbolism of the fleetingness of life and the inevitability of death. You

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