We started the class by discussing what a clock could mean in literature based on what we have read so far in “The Masque of the Red Death”. We came to the conclusion that usually it represents the passage of time, and then we were told to compare the lives of those that were inside the abbey to those that were outside with our respective groups. We then shared our ideas with the class and decided that the lives of the “outsiders” were full of despair, poverty, illness, and death, while the “insiders” had lives with happiness, health, wealth, and life. We then broke into our groups again and discussed the symbolic meaning of colors, which also pertained to “The Masque of the Red Death”, and found the following information: blue- hope, calm, trust, intelligence, and health, purple- royalty, prosperity, and power, green- health, life, and growth, orange- light, joy, and creativity, white- life, innocence, and purity, violet- wisdom, knowledge, mystery, and helpfulness, and black- despair and death.
We then read sections 5-8 of TMOTRD (The Masque of the Red Death) and annotated it accordingly. We then broke off into groups again and answered the following questions:
Describe Prince Prospero’s orders to how their masks
should be decorated.
Describe the mood of the masquerade ball.
Explain why none of the maskers enter the black room.
How could this have a symbolic significance?
What effect does the clock have on those who venture
into the black room; in comparison to those who
refuse to enter? Explain the significance of this event.
Describe what the maskers see at the stroke of
midnight? Explain their reaction to this sight.
We then shared and discussed the questions as a class and reached the following conclusions:
Prince Prospero seems to want grotesque masks for some reason, as if to add to the irony that these wealthy people are monsters for their behavior, the maskers fear the black room because they see it as symbolism for death, since all of the sound is gone and the light fades, those that did go into the black room could actually have remorse for what they did to the poor by leaving them to die outside the abbey and they enter the blackrrom to accept death, and finally, the maskers see a man with a disgusting, corpse-like costume, and they slowly become terrified as they realize he has the Red Death based on his bloody collar. We actually reached the end of the piece Ms. Peterson gave us and we speculated as to what the potential endings can be; some people thought the man would be killed, but the major consensus was that the rich would all die, with Prince Prospero trying to escape but eventually falling as well.
I deeply enjoyed this story with its vivid descriptions and its serious, yet ironic tone. I learned a lot from the discussions we had in class today as well as the story we finished. I learned what a powerful effect symbolism can have on a reader’s experience when reading while being extremely subtle at the same time. I also learned that fear can lead people to do very cruel things, especially when that fear has something to do with death. Even though the characters were slightly exaggerated to show their clearly flawed personalities, I was still able to recognize that people like this truly exist in the world, those who run from fear and death, even putting others in between, instead of just confronting the former and accepting the latter. The story, despite its age, says something about modern governments as well, and how behind them there are always people, and it is in our nature to look out for ourselves before others, which has led to some bad decisions in the past. One thing Poe makes clear in this story is that no matter what you do or say, death is inevitable; it is the only constant in life, whether you accept it or not.
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