Angela
English 112
July 23, 2013

The Masque of the Red Death

Although the disease is running rampant through his country, Prince Prospero remains oddly happy and carefree and invites a thousand of his healthy noble friends to join him in hiding from the disease in his abbey, which he then locks away from the outside world. In each room features a different color, which matches the color of the window: the first room is blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth white, and the sixth violet. The seventh room, however, is slightly different in that although the dominant color is black, the windows are blood red.

The lights shining through the window from the corridors creates such a ghastly effect in this room that most of the guests avoid the room altogether. In this apartment is also a giant ebony clock, whose pendulum swings ominously and whose hourly ringing is so disturbing that it invariably disconcerts the musicians, dancers, and other revelers, causing everyone to pause until the chimes fade away, at which point everyone nervously resumes their actions. Other than the unnerving seventh room, the ball is boldly and wildly decorated in a way that hints at Prospero's potential madness. All the apartments are crowded except for the seventh, and the ball continues until the stroke of midnight. The entire masquerade ball can be read as an allegory for the ways in which humans attempt to distract themselves from thoughts of their own mortality by indulging in earthly pleasures.

Yet, the "masked figure'' who appears at the masquerade ball is the Red Death itself, which, despite all precautions, slips in like a thief in the night to claim the lives of everyone within, just as death eventually claims all mortals. The fact that the Red Death appears masked in the seventh room is of special significance beyond the fact that he is attending a masquerade. The mask shows the image of a corpse that has recently been stricken by the plague, but provides no hint of what lies under the mask.