The Masque Of The Red Death Allegory Analysis

Despite the belief that one can live forever, death is certain. Edgar Allen Poe wrote his short story, “The Masque of the Red Death” with a greater meaning than simply the Red Death, or plague. He wrote this story, symbolizing the stages of life. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe uses the symbols of the hallway, the rooms, and the braziers, to enhance the allegory, and to show how death is inevitable and one can not spend their life worrying about it.
At the beginning of the story, the symbol of the hallways is introduced when explaining the layout of the castle. The castle was arranged with “a sharp turn at every 20 or 30 yards, and at each turn, a novel effect” (Poe 83). The hallway had many sharp, twisted turns, in which one could easily get lost or lose their direction. The hallways also lead from east to west, and “there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony” (Poe 84). The sun, much like how the

The overall allegory of these rooms symbolizes the individual stages of life a person goes through. The rooms were “so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time” (Poe 83). People live life not knowing what is behind the next door, leaving the inside unknown until one reaches that particular stage in their life. When “death” arrives at the prince's party, “he makes his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first,” (Poe 87) through every chamber. The details in life are unpredictable, but for the most part, everyone goes through the same general stages. This symbol of death makes its way very calmly, all through the rooms, ending in the black chamber, or death. The narrator stresses the idea of being “uninterrupted” because life moves fast; it will not wait for anyone, and one can not worry and wait for death to