An Explanation Of 'Black Room' By Edgar Allan Poe

The colors of the rooms range from light to dark. The first room is blue, symbolizing "truth or insight," "spiritual values, wisdom or healing," (Todeshi, 71) giving the reader a feeling of peace and tranquility like a clear blue sky. The rooms go on leading to a deeper and somewhat darker feeling ending with the last or seventh room. This room is mostly black in color symbolizing an association "with negativity, sin, or evil," and representing "depression, illness, or disease." (Todeschi, 71).

There are different types of reading. There are novels, nonfiction works and tons of different genres. But, some people like a story that is short and to the point; Edgar Allan Poe is an author who can provide that. Although he had a rough life, Poe worked very hard to become the skillful author that is known today. Some people like horror stories and others like romances. Edgar Allan Poe is a widely accepted poet and author. He is known for his sullen horror stories and all of the tragedies in his life. Two of his most known stories are “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” At first, the stories seem like they have nothing in common. After analyzing the stories, they actually have quite a bit in common.

After killing the old man the narrator further defiles his body because he feels as if although the eye is gone there is still quite a bit of power left. As a wise man once said although a single twig may break a bundle of twigs is strong. In the same sense he butchered the old mans body into pieces to separate his view of power into subsequent pieces making them weak. Throughout the story he still tries to explain that he is sane and that what he is doing is true justice, even though butchering a dead body is completely in human. As he states, “If still you think me, you will think so no longer… The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs” (Poe 7).

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the leading figures of American literature. He is known as a poet and a critic, but is most famous as the first master of the short story form, especially tales of the mysterious and gruesome. In Poe’s poems, like his tales, his characters are tortured by nameless fears and longings. Today Poe is acclaimed as one of America’s greatest writers, but in his own unhappy lifetime he knew little but failure.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Edgar Allan Poe the paragraphs at the beginning, really sets the mood to rest of the story and is pretty effective for what is to come. The mood is creepy, sinister, and horror type, both in the sound and words, helping create this atmosphere. It does this by using very complex and gloomy vocabulary. The author exaggerated this story to show a problem that people all have within them. Which in this case, is that one has madness inside them.

Charlotte Gilman uses objects in the room to help with the setting and the picture of this creepy mansion. The use of the bolted down bed and the torn up wallpaper give us a more in-depth detail of the setting. Near the middle of the story the narrator says “I lie here on this immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by hour” (Gilman 383). Through this description we are shown that, symbolically, just as she is to stay in the room and mansion the bed is also nailed down. Charlotte Gilman uses this description of setting to show irony and slip an image into the readers mind. The narrator also states in the middle of the story “The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred” (Gilman 382). The torn up wallpaper, just as the bolted down bed, shows how strange and creepy the mansion really is and how it may drive someone crazy. Charlotte Gilman adding these specific descriptions brings a physical image to the bedroom in the mansion.

“But first let me tell you of the rooms in which it was held” (Poe). The black room and the blood red room obviously represent death and pain. (Shmoop.com)The other rooms however were not as easy to understand. For these rooms I had to do a little research on the internet. Most of the commentaries I have read agree that the rooms are symbolic of life from the beginning to the end. The commentators suggest that the rooms are introduced from east to west representing the rise of the sun to the setting of the sun. The rising (birth) to the setting (death) of the sun is shown by this. (Shmoop.com)The blue room represents birth the miracle of life and the blessing and struggle that it is. Purple, the next room represents infancy to adolescence. Green t...

There are seven colored rooms, first blue, then purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally black. This gives the reader an odd feeling, because the walls, floors, windows, curtains, and furniture in those rooms are all the same color. The most eerie being the black room which contains a ticking clock. When you think of the sound of a ticking clock, it is monotonous and shows us the moving of time. However, in this story it is used to show us how time is running out for the guests, and the fate that no one can avoid--- death. Actually, each room has a corresponding meaning. Light blue meaning birth, purple meaning early childhood, green meaning adolescence and late childhood, orange meaning adulthood, white meaning mid-life, violet meaning old age, and black meaning death. Knowing this and connecting it with our sensory details only make us more uncomfortable, because we can tell what is coming in the

Death will always happen no one can hide. The 7 rooms might represent the 7 stages of life. Poe writes, “but in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decoration,”(84). The symbol represents with the gloomy black and the scarlet red blood like design of the room.

Edgar Allan Poe uses symbolism to show the transition leading to death by using each of the seven rooms in the castle to represent a stage of life. The first room was all blue with vividly painted blue tapestries, which symbolized birth and beginning of life. The next room was all purple with matching panes of purple. With the passing of each room went the passing of time. The last room is all black with matching tapestries. The only thing that did not match were the window panes which were scarlet a d...

The darkness symbolizes many things. First, and most importantly, it stands for the death and evil in the play. The darkness could partially block out all of the horrible things that occur in the night.

The Haunted Palace, an allegory written by Edgar Allan Poe, conveys a story about a king whom seems threaten for himself and his palace. Edgar Allan Poe uses the uses of imagery, foreshadowing, and close attention to diction. The poem opens up in the green valleys. Poe shows the calm and green valleys to illustrate and foreshadow peace and tranquility early in the presents of the king. Edgar Allan Poe introduces his palace and the environment as a calm, beautiful, and established happy place, but seems to foreshadow a change. The speaker draws attention to the beautiful yellow banners that used to fly from the roof of the palace. The yellow from the banners represent sunshine, hope, and happiness. Edgar Allan Poe also states the smell of the atmosphere around the palace smells fresh, clean, and pure. The imagery and moment Edgar Allan Poe displays for the setting of the palace encourages untouchable and uncorrupted land; however, the moment seems too perfect by enabling the thought of corrupted evil through the usage of this allegory.

The element gloomy, decaying setting, is a big factor in this short story. “ All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.” Prince Prospero had a castle that was hidden and hard to find from anyone with the plague and was extremely secure, or he thought. Not only could people not get in, they couldn’t get out either. Prince Prospero claimed it was a nonstop party. There was seven rooms all had a themed color, everything in the room was the same color. The first is blue, then purple, green, orange, white, and violet. There is also a window put just right to give each room a neat lighting effect. The seventh room was different than all the rest it was the farthest room, and it was all black with the windows a dark red.

After wards though the room is described as “‘faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcase . . . that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table” (Wilde). There are major differences between the two descriptions of the same room. Wilde though does not provide any reasoning on what might have caused room to change and the loss of books from the bookcase. Tearle provides a fascinating idea on what might have caused the differences,

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit."