Yashley Pagan Pagan 1
Mr. Kautz
Honors American Literature
27 October 2014
Pagan 2
Masque of the Red Death
In the "Masque of the Red Death," Poe uses the setting, characterization, and metaphor to show that death can be unexpected and unavoidable.
The author, Edgar Allen Poe, uses setting to represent death and show that it is unexpected. In the passage, he uses different colors to represent each room in the castle. The first room is a light blue color but when the author gets to the last room he describes it with being a deep blood color. I can infer that the author wanted the reader to see how death represents evil be he specifically used a deep red and deep red can represent darkness, evil, blood, horror, etc. Poe describes the seventh room:
"But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations.
Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of ...
Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley, 1894–1895
English: Edgar Allen Poe, poet and writer, commemo...The panes here were scarlet- a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp within the suite of chambers. But in the rooms that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window⦠bearing a brazier of fire that protected its ray through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room." (Poe 2).
Poe emphasizes that the room was lite up by a lamp and that the other rooms didn't have a lamp to brighten up the room, however the last room was described as having a deep blood color to it which was very specific compared to a plain blue or orange room. This shows that Edgar wanted to show...