Masque Analysis Answers
Plot
Exposition: Poe uses the beginning of the story to offer important background information; Prospero's kingdom is under attack from the Red Death, and Prospero locks his friends and himself into his castle to escape the plague.
Inciting Incident: Prospero's decision to hold a masquerade ball starts the main conflict between he and the Red Death in motion.
Rising Action: The description of the rooms, the chiming of the clocks, and details of the party increase the tone of anxiety and fear in the story. The conflict intensifies when the mummer (mummy) dressed as the Red Death appears and angers Prospero. Prospero's decision to chase him when the other knights in the castle back away from the unexpected guest in fear leads to the climax.
Climax: Prospero has reached the point of no return when he falls dead while attempting to kill the mummy.
Falling Action: The knights must react to Prospero's death in the climax of of the story and they pull the sheet off the mummy only to find nothing there. They all fall dead.
Resolution: With all the knights and Prince Prospero dead, the conflict is resolved as the Red Death takes complete control of the kingdom.
Symbols
The ebony clock: The clock symbolizes the passage of time, the onset of death, and the life of the party goers (revellers). Poe builds the symbol by giving details on how the party stops and the partiers get nervous every time they hear the clock chime, and he finishes the meaning of the symbol when he states "And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay." The clock stops when life stops.
Prospero: Prospero symbolizes his prosperity. He thinks he can escape his own fate which is death, but humans do not have any control over their own fate.
The room colors: The rooms symbolize the beginning of life to the end. Blue represents the birth or the daybreak. Purple shows the childhood or a person and the season of spring. Green is the youth and also it represents summer. Orange is the time of maturity, the season of fall, and also represents noon. White is the old age adulthood and it is in the winter. Violet show the twilight and the second childhood of a person. Black is the night time and the death or senility for a person.
The east and west: The east represents the birth or sunrise. The west shows death or sunset. This also gives the order of the rooms and their colors which lets us see the journey from birth to death.
The abbey: The abbey symbolizes the place where the monks lived. Monks lived a selfness life and they prayed for forgiveness of sins. Prospero commits his sins in this area.
Irony
Prospero: Prospero's name is an obvious allusion to the word Prosperity or Prosperous: the condition of being successful or thriving; especially : economic well-being. While Prospero is thriving at the beginning of the story, Poe creates irony when the Red Death is able to sneak into the party and kill the "most prosperous" man in the kingdom. Although Prospero thinks he is wealthy enough to escape death, he isn't.
Prospero locks himself in an abbey : Prospero locks himself in the abbey which is the place where monks prayed for sins to be forgiven. Prospero thinks he can escape the black death or his fate but instead he was killed.
The narrator's description of Prospero as "happy and dauntless and sagacious": The description the narrator gave prospero was that he was fearless and wise. He is the opposite in the way he acted in the story by being afraid of the black death and thinking that he could escape death by locking himself in an abbey.
Characterization
Prospero: greedy, lazy, selfish, envious, wrathful, lustful, proud, cowardly
Prospero's friends: freeloaders, squatters, users, arrogant, buffoons, beautiful, wealthy