Masque of the Red Death & Color Symbolism

Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" and color symbolism.

1. Masque of the Red Death

2. Task Take out your journals. 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

3. 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?

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

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

6. Symbolism Symbols are people, places, events, or things that stand for ideas larger than themselves.

7. 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.

8. Colors as symbols Yellow is the color of sunshine. It often represents joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. 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.

9. 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. 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.

10. Colors as symbols White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, and purity. It is often thought of as the color of perfection. Black often symbolizes power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. The s e v e n 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

14. Task With a partner, use what you have learned about symbolism and allegory to complete the chart about the possible meanings of different elements of the story. Think about denotative meanings first, and then connotative meanings. Think about why Prince Prospero acts as he does. Think about why Poe ordered things the way he did . Why seven rooms…?