Symbols In The Masque Of The Red Death

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As Steve Jobs has once stated “death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life”. It is all a part of human nature to attempt to escape death. For Prince Prospero, when the red death swept through his country, he resorted to isolating himself away in his castle. Throughout the short story The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe uses various symbols to convey the idea that death is inevitable.
Prince Prospero uses his wealth and status to attempt to elude death by secluding himself and others in his castle. The prince himself represents mankind and its inability to handle the realities of death. Therefore, Prince Prospero throws a magnificent masquerade since “the external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve, or to think” (Poe 37). The Prince Prospero represented prosperity. …show more content…

At the end of the hall, “the seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries…. And the panes here were scarlet- a deep blood color” which symbolized terror and death (38). Throughout history, the number seven was symbolically represented as shown through God who created the world in seven days, through the seven wonders of the world, and through the seven deadly sins. Starting at birth and ending on death, it was the red and black room where the masque intruder had stood in and killed Prospero and his guests. Not only that, but the arrangement of the rooms also held a symbolic meaning of the progression of life as it was laid out from east to west, sun rise to sun set, with the seventh room facing the

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