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

In “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, the author uses symbolism to elucidate that death is an inevitable force that no one can escape. After the death of many from the plague spreading through the country, the Prince takes action: “he summoned to hs presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys” (1). Prince Prospero and his friends depart to the confines of one of his castellated abbeys in an effort to escape. The Prince ensures that neither means of ingress or egress will occur, but the ruddier light is still able to flow through the blood-colored panes in the seventh room. Thus displaying that no matter what one does in an attempt to stop their conspicuous death, it always has a way in. No one is brave enough to seize the masked figure as he
“made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple -- through the purple to the green -- through the green to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him” (4). The sun rises in the east and sets in the west representing the path the revelers walk through behind the masked figure starting from the blue room to the black room, where they are killed. The seven rooms also symbolize the seven stages of man, starting with the blue room which represents birth and ending with the black room representing death.
Hence those who try to avoid death are veritably trying to escape the fear of the unknown. As the clock strikes midnight, the partiers stop one final time: “and thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of the masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before” (3). Throughout the night, the clock striking every hour symbolizes the idea that the impending death is looming closer and closer with each clang. The location of the clock, the seventh room, also gives it an obvious connection to death. Hence, the clock symbolizes the inevitable ticking time bomb that is death. In “The Masque of Red Death”, Edgar Allen Poe uses literary devices to emphasize that as time runs out, the fear of the unknown causes one to try and escape the
unavoidable.