The Colors of the Red Death (Abby Embree)
As much as people try to deny it, death is inevitable. Yet people fear it alongside aging, evident by the mountains of de-aging serums, creams, and other absurd products advertised to the world daily. It also appears in media like Get Out by Jordan Peele where the brains of black characters are removed to be replaced by elderly white people in an effort to prolong their lives or in Twilight where Bella wants to become a vampire so she can live with Edward for eternity. In both of these films, their motivations to live forever, or to at least prolong their lives, are because they fear what happens to them and their loved ones after death.
However, this fear is by no means a modern fear, appearing again and again in media and myth. This fear often appears alongside immortality and items that grant it like the fountain of youth that can reverse aging and prevent death, Nicholas Flamel’s philosopher’s stone that promises immortality, and in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”. Within “Masque of the Red Death”, the item that is used is the rooms and the clock that resides in the last room and how it relates to color. This theme is also represented by both Prospero’s fear of the masked intruder and the way that color is used within the short story as a representation of life and the speed at which life can pass one by when preoccupied by fear.
This edition of “Masque of the Red Death” will be exploring Poe’s aesthetics within the story, especially surrounding color and how it relates to life and fear. The commentary of this story will be examining the descriptions of each of the rooms within the story, the fear of the final room, and the overarching narrative of the story as a whole to explain this connection between life, fear, death, and color.
Specifically, it will explore the purpose behind the specific order of room color from two different perspectives alongside how they represent Prospero and his life. Since Masque of the Red Death is also a story about fear, it will explore how the rooms represent his fear of death as well. Along with this exploration of color, the commentary will explore why only the last room of the seven rooms has two colors while the rest of the rooms only have one.
Secondary Sources
du Plessis, Eric H. “Deliberate Chaos: Poe’s Use of Colors in ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism, vol. 34, no. 1/2, 2001, pp. 40–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45297362. Accessed 7 Dec. 2023.
Zimmerman, Brett. “The Puzzle of the Color Symbolism in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’: Solved at Last?” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 2009, pp. 60–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41506370. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023.
Primary Source
Edgar Allan Poe, “Masque of the Red Death”. 1845, The Broadway Journal. pg 17-18. https://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/masqueb.htm