In his short story "Masque of the Red Death" Edgar Allan Poe made sure to tell about the seven solid colors rooms being listed as if the order as important of the disease outside of the massive castle. These rooms were listed as followed blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally a black room with emphasized on it having blood red windows. With Edgar Allan Poe is being so infatuated with death, I believe that these rooms are stages to move toward the Prince Prospero and his participants untimely death.
As people were dropping like flies’ cause of the red death plague, people were frightened of even their own family as they themselves could have been infected. But as people were being wary of others, someone took this to the
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Orange portray Adulthood, orange is defined with these positive connotations of sociable and optimistic and negative is superficial and insincere, with my theory you are very optimistic about starting your life as an adult and very sociable with others and optimistic, in the story Prince Prospero is very insincere about his people just locking up himself while they died. White Old age, white has the positive meaning of innocents and purity, and the negative meaning of white is stark and fastidious. Violet imminent Death has a positive connotation and negative connotation of purple, so we would just refer back to the part. Black Death itself has a positive connotation of protection and comfort and negative connotation of depressing and pessimistic, this goes back to my theory of as this is a very sad and negative event, and for this story, it was the same for Prospero guest, and with the other color in the room red was the embodiment of the anger they were feeling, which cause their
Despite all, their love was not strong enough to fight against the plague. They had prayed every night for help for Alice, but shortly they all fell ill. Together they experienced nausea and violently vomited. They began to swell; hard, painful, burning lumps on their neck, arms and thighs then appeared. Their bumps had turned black, split open and began to ooze yellow, thick puss and blood. They were decaying on the inside; anything that would come out of their bodies would contain blood and soon puddles of blood formed under their skin. They slowing withered away together. The home became repulsing; the flowers in their yard could no longer mask the smells of their rotting bodies and revolting bodily fluids. Alice was the first to leave, then John, Mama, and Papa followed. Together they all fell victim to the Black Plague.
Even today, children innocently chant this old nursery rhyme, bringing the old saying into reality, “Ignorance is Bliss”. It’s eerie, to think that this old rhyme in fact gives a perfect description of one of Europe’s worst nightmares, the Great Plague. Many people forget the horrors of the Plague, and when they do remember and think about it, Public heath is rarely a factor that plays a big part when people start to think things through.
Poe continues to describe the blue room, noting how clear and bright the color is, saying,“...vividly blue were its windows,” (4). This description has a very positive impact on the readers, as they associate the color of the room with positive feelings of a new beginning. On the other hand, Poe depicts the black room as having a very morbid and gruesome feeling to it, as he says, “The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color,” (4). This depiction has a negative connotation, as people connect the colors of black and deep red with blood and death. Poe characterizes the blue and black rooms very differently, with the blue room having a positive connotation and the black room having a negative connotation. This distinct difference in the rooms and their colors contributes to the overall symbolism of life and
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 scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face of the victim, caused terror in those watching the afflicted” (7). The story starts off with the prince getting away to a castle with his healthy friends. They were going to throw a masque party, and all was going well until the masker showed up. Everyone was scared including the knights. As the masker made its way from the blue room to the black room, nobody moved. The prince felt like it was his job to get up and take control. He entered the black room with the Masker and that’s when everyone heard a scream, the prince was dead. Eventually, all his friends dropped dead too. In “The Masque of the Red Death” the seven rooms represent the seven stages of life; infancy, childhood,
...sease. The medieval outlook on the plague, mingled with feelings of hysteria and greed, was a fearful one.
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
An unknown eye witness accounts details of the immediate stress the plague brought to Europe. "Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. Fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying.
Slack, P. (1988). Responses to plague in early modern Europe: The implications of public health. Social Research, 55(3), 433-453. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
...y had before it was too late. Similar to Boccaccio, Mee too lists the multiple reactions people exhibited. Fathers and mothers would abandon their children, people would swallow pus from plague victims, and, sick or not, citizens would be trapped inside their houses, left to die . Mee discusses the extremes that people would go to in order to keep the plague from infecting them. As discussed in Mee’s article, once the plague had hit a city it was every man or woman for themselves. Whether it was parent and child or husband and wife, the plague didn’t discriminate against who it would infect and who would not. Venette, Boccaccio and Mee each describe how the Black Plague affected society in different ways. Citizens who were lucky enough to survive the epidemic took major precautions against the infection and many of these precautions were became extreme measures.
Fear of the Bubonic Plague mainly came from people not knowing what was the cause of the Plague, this fear seems to become even more uncertain as the best doctors, scientist, or even the educated do not know the cause of the Plague. This theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam (document 2) sees this fear, as he seems to blame the cause of the Plague in England because of the filth on the street.
Even though this disease is spreading rampantly, the prince, Prospero, feels happy and hopeful. He decides to lock the gates of his palace in order to fend off the plague, ignoring the illness ravaging the land. After several months, he throws a fancy masquerade ball. For this celebration, he decorates the rooms of his house in single colors. The easternmost room is decorated in blue, with blue stained-glass windows. The next room is purple with the same stained-glass window pattern. The rooms continue westward, according to this design, in the following color arrangement: green, orange, white, and violet. The seventh room is black, with red windows. Also in this room stands an ebony clock. When the clock rings each hour, its sound is so loud and distracting that everyone stops talking and the orchestra stops playing. When the clock is not sounding, though, the rooms are so beautiful and strange that they seem to be filled with dreams, swirling among the revelers. Most guests, however, avoid the final, black-and-red room because it contains both the clock and an ominous ambience.At midnight, a new guest appears, dressed more ghoulishly than his counterparts. His mask looks like the face of a corpse, his garments resemble a funeral
Although colors are usually represented and used for the recollection of joyful experiences, Death uses the colors of the spectrum to enhance the experience of the Book Thief and as well as him own life too. In Death’s narration, his use of the colors illustrate the great ordeal of suffering and pain throughout the book’s setting. As an example Death says “The day was grey, the color of Europe. For me, the sky was the color of Jews” (Zusak, 349). This quote effectively describes Death’s use of the colors by relating it to the events taking place. The colors give perspective to the agony and painful hardships going on in the life of WWII. In a regular setting, colors are used to describe happy memories and any basic descriptions of a setting. Death says “Whatever the hour or color…” (Zusak, 5). By saying this quote, Death establishes the colors a...
The rooms in “The Masque of the Red Death” are symbolic and correlates to the progression of the story. The seven rooms in Prince Prospero’s castle symbolizes “The Seven Ages of Man” which is a poem written by William Shakespeare. This poem is about “one man in his time plays many parts. His acts being seven ages.”(Shakespeare, 3-4) Each of these stages are symbolized by the rooms. Each of the rooms has its individual color to correspond with the ages. The rooms that goes from east to west is blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and lastly scarlet. In the same order, these colors represents infantry, childhood, lover, soldier, justice, Pantalone, and old age. An illustration of these ages is when Prince Prospero was chasing after
Bennett Watson Prof. Beach DWC-001 23 April 2018 Shakespeare’s Critique of The Prince Political power carries many different beliefs of how it should be performed. Throughout history, humans have been trying to encode the best and proper way to influence or outright control the behavior of people. When controlled and displayed properly civilization can thrive and continue to develop. Attaining this power and figuring out who should have power is not easy.