What Does The Last Room Symbolize In The Masque Of The Red Death

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DEATH! When and where symbolism was used in a story that Poe wrote. In the Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism to show how the colors of the last room mean DEATH, how the mysterious/ masked person represents Red Death, and lastly how the castle means a barrier from the Red Death.

The colors of the last room, black with blood red windows, symbolizes DEATH. We can see that is being expressed in this quote: “ The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The planes here were scarlet - a deep blood color”(457). This is saying that all the colored rooms had the same color decorations except the last one which was black with red windows. The windows were a “ deep blood color” and occasionally when we think red we think death. Therefore, the last room embody’s DEATH. …show more content…

You can see that for yourself in this quote: “ But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of Red Death. His vesture was dabbed in blood - and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror”(460). There was blood smeared all over him. Also, he just looked horrifying, creepy, and spooky to be around. With which means he was a “type of Red Death”. Then at the beginning of the story this a description on how some people that were suffering from the red death looked like, “ The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face o the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men”(456). This quote was just a description of people with the disease. They had blood all