Themes In The Masque Of The Red Death

I. Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important American writers of the nineteenth century. Much of his work was inspired by the events that happened around him. Poe's works embodied the short stories creative theories and the eternal theme he devoted to his life: the horror after beauty has gone, the horror of death, the horror of gloom and the horror of weird phenomena.
Published in 1842, The Masque of the Red Death was the representative of Poe’s aesthetics and writing themes. In this horror story, "Red Death" is rampant outside the walls of the Royal Palace. Prince Prospero encloses himself and his 1,000 friends in the castle in order to avoid being infected. However, while these people are indulging themselves in a luxurious

And the seventh room is in the far west with everything in black which is often associated with death. This reminds readers of the sun rising from the east and setting in the west, which indicates the cycle of life. The different colors of the seven rooms symbolize the different physical and mental states of the seven phases of life. The settings of the seven rooms are different from ordinary castles. The rooms are made very irregular, from which only a small part of the castle can be seen. Every twenty or thirty steps there is a sharp corner, and every turning around these corners a novel scene would show up. Allan Poe used this to show that the road to life can not easily be predicted and that every one phase of life is different which always surprises people. There is neither a lamp nor a candlestick in these seven rooms, but on the corridor surrounding the house, a heavy incense burner is placed across from each of the windows, and the light from the mortar in the censer passes through the stained glasses, lighting up the whole room. The color of the glass in each room is the same as that of the interior of each room, except for the seventh from the far west. The windowpane here is scarlet, red, thick and blood-red, and black velvet curtains are densely covering the room from the ceiling to the walls. Flames are shining through the blood-red window glass behind dark curtains. In front of the west wall of this house lies a giant ebony clock, through which Allan Poe associates red and black with death and