Masque of the Red Death

Task On the handout that I gave you: You are going to be shown seven slides. You will be allowed to look at each for fifteen seconds. As you view each slide, write down What you see What it brings to mind How it makes you feel

The Masque of Red Death

Putting order to the chaos In Poe’s Short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero has each room in his house decorated with a different color. From East to West, what order were the rooms in?

Order 1. Blue 2. purple 3. green 4. orange 5. white 6. violet. 7. black

Reflect Why might Poe have chosen to put the rooms in this specific order? West East

Colors as symbols Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. Orange is a mixture of red and yellow. It is associated with joy and sunshine. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. It also represents the summer and autumn of life

Colors as symbols Violet (a combination of purple and blue, or purple and grey) is a shadowy color, and represents darkness and death.  Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. However, dark green is also associated with money and greed. Green suggests the "spring" of life (youth).

Colors as symbols Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with tranquility. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, and truth, and beginnings. The color suggests the "unknown" from which a human being comes into the world.  Purple is a combination of red and blue. Purple is associated with royalty, so it is often associated with power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic. A combination of blue (birth) and red (associated with life, intensity) suggests the beginnings of growth.

Colors as symbols White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, and purity. It is often thought of as the color of perfection. It also suggests age – think white hair, and bones.  Black often symbolizes power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery.

Reflect Why might Poe have chosen to put the rooms in this specific order? West East

Allegory An allegory is a story that is both literal and symbolic. The plot is literal, but the events have an underlying meaning. . The characters and events represent abstract ideas or states of being, things like love or freedom, evil or goodness, hell or heaven.

Allegory On the surface, an allegory must hold our attention. The characters must seem believable so that we will identify with them. But the symbolic meaning or allegory must be something that the reader can perceive.

Symbolism Supposedly, the suite is an allegory of human life. Each room, in other words, corresponds to a different "stage" of human life, which its color suggests. The first clue that the suite is allegorical is that the rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with "beginnings," and birth, because the sun rises in the east; west (the direction of the sunset) is associated with endings, and death.

The seven rooms Blue- East, windows the same color Purple- windows the same color Green- windows the same color Orange- windows the same color White- windows the same color Violet- windows the same color Black- West, blood-red windows