The Masque Of The Red Death Symbolism Essay

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Death can come in many different forms or at any time, one can try to escape it, but death will always catch up. In the Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe, Prince Prospero and the partygoers tried to run and hide from the disease that would kill them. They tried barricading themselves in, but a dark, mysterious figure slips through. The figure ends up to being the characters undoing. Poe wrote a dark, compelling story containing symbolism, theme, and irony.
Symbolism is used to support the structure and theme of the story. In Masque of the Red Death, every hour a black ebony clock would go off, a symbol of what was to come; the passing of life. The black ebony clock would bring silence to the partygoers every time it would ring, making them nervous and afraid. Though the partygoers tried to cover up their fear, the clock petrified them because it was a reminder of death, “[the] strikes [of] the ebony clock ... [made everyone] still, and [everyone] silent” (Poe 499). In the tower there was seven rooms that symbolized the phases of life. Prince Prospero himself was a symbol of how wealth can’t be used to escape death. The partygoers were dressed with a mask, that can be seen as a symbol of how they …show more content…
The theme of The Masque of the Red Death is that death is inevitable and cannot be controlled. Theme plays a big role in stories, much like this one. Throughout the story, the theme could be concluded in many ways, the irony, how the conflict is resolved, the title, and symbolism. The conflict of death in this story is resolved by the mask figure slipping through the tower, killing the prince and the partygoers because death can not be outrun and “the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” ( Poe 503). The title, The Masque of the Red Death, can be interpretted as a disease and the word “masque” could be seen as the word mask, which is to hide. Poe’s theme could be also hinted at by the the use of
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