<P> Prospero holds a masquerade ball one night to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey . Each of the first six rooms is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet . The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light, "a deep blood color" cast from its stained glass windows . Because of this chilling pairing of colors, very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room . A large ebony clock stands in this room and ominously chimes each hour, upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing . Once the chiming stops, everyone immediately resumes the masquerade . </P> <P> At the chiming of midnight, the revelers and Prospero notice a figure in a dark, blood - splattered robe resembling a funeral shroud . The figure's mask resembles the rigid face of a corpse and exhibits the traits of the Red Death . Gravely insulted, Prospero demands to know the identity of the mysterious guest so they can hang him . The guests, too afraid to approach the figure, instead let him pass through the six chambers . The Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger and corners the guest in the seventh room . When the figure turns to face him, the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead . The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe, only to find to their horror that there is nothing underneath . Only then do they realize the figure is the Red Death itself, and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease . The final line of the story sums up, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all". </P> <P> Directly influenced by the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, in "The Masque of the Red Death", Poe adopts many conventions of traditional Gothic fiction, including the castle setting . The multiple single - toned rooms may be representative of the human mind, showing different personality types . The imagery of blood and time throughout also indicates corporeality . The plague may, in fact, represent typical attributes of human life and mortality, which would imply the entire story is an allegory about man's futile attempts to stave off death (a commonly accepted interpretation). However, there is much dispute over how to interpret "The Masque of the Red Death"; some suggest it is not allegorical, especially due to Poe's admission of a distaste for didacticism in literature . If the story really does have a moral, Poe does not explicitly state that moral in the text . </P> <P> Blood, emphasized throughout the tale, along with the color red, serves as a dual symbol, representing both death and life . This is emphasized by the masked figure--never explicitly stated to be the Red Death, but only a reveler in a costume of the Red Death--making his initial appearance in the easternmost room, which is colored blue, a color most often associated with birth . </P>

Moral of the story the masque of the red death