7 Stages of Life!

Just as a reminder, for anyone whose new or wants an easyyy reference back to the story

The colors of the room are:
      Blue, Purple, Green, Orange, White, Violet, Black and Red.


     There's a few references/things borrowed from William Shakespeare's works, such as the name Prospero for the main character. Shakespeare had a work called "The Tempest" which had a main character also named Prospero.
     The reference that has to do the most with the 7 rooms though, is when you match up Edgar Allan Poe's 7 rooms, with the 7 stages of life that William Shakespeare describes in his work "As You Like It".


The 7 stages in Shakespeare's story could be listed as,

     Birth, Beginning of Royalty, Growth, Strength, Purity, Knowledge, Death


To correlate the 7 stages with the 7 rooms, it's best to list them:
 [I'm a fan of list making, it makes it easier for me to understand things, so bare with me!]

• Blue- Birth
• Purple- Beginning of Royalty
• Green- Growth
• Orange- Strength
• White- Purity
• Violet- Knowledge
• Black- End of life.

The physical arrangement of the seven rooms also lends itself to this interpretation:

• -the first room lies furthest East, where the sun rises
• -the last room lies furthest West, where the sun sets
• -the rooms are arranged in such a manner "that vision embraced but little more than one at a time" in the same way life only provides short glimpse into the future.

     Throughout the party the guests progress through each room, starting in the Blue room, which represents birth, and finally ending up dying in the Black room, which stands for the end of life.


     This interpretation of the 7 rooms seem to be the most favored, and seems to make more sense. Edgar Allan Poe related his work to William Shakespeare's a few times with his other work as well, why would he not want to relate his 7 rooms to Shakespeare's 7 life stages? Exactly.

Work Cited for this Post:

"Tales: 1841-1842." Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Thomas Mabbot. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Pr. of Harvard Univ. Pr., 1978. 667. Print.  

Lorcher, Trent. "A Guide to Symbols in "The Masque of the Red Death": Rooms, Colors & More." Bright Hub Education. N.p., 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. 

Vera, Adam. "Interpreting Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"" HubPages. Hub Pages, 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 06 Nov. 2012. <http://adamvera.hubpages.com/hub/Interpreting-Poes-The-Masque-of-the-Red-Death>.

 

7 Deadly Sins!

"That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue -- and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange -- the fifth with white -- the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet -- a deep blood color." (Poe)

This is exactly how Edgar Allan Poe describes the 7 color filled rooms word for word.

      Blue, Purple, Green, Orange, White, Violet, Black and Red.

These are the 7 rooms that some people, and Myself, seem to associate with the 7 deadly sins.

The story states directly that Prince Prospero has a love of the strange and bizarre that could support the idea that he would match his rooms to the deadly sins. Another supporting factor is that Poe uses biblical language throughout the entire story, which is where the sins originate from. Edgar Allan Poe gives allusion to the Red Death as an ‘antichrist, an inverted Christ, and how it “comes like a thief in the night”.

If you've been living under a rock and have no idea what the 7 deadly sins are, here:

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Vanity

All 7 of these things are all taking place throughout these rooms during the ball.

What a small amount of people know though, is that on the opposite side of the 7 deadly sins, are the 7 holy virtues, things that counteract the sins. Things people are suppose to strive for, while avoiding the sins.

Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility

 You’ll notice after reading the whole short story, that Edgar Allan Poe makes it known that none of those are 7 virtues are happening inside the fortress.

To really understand how the deadly sins correspond to the 7 rooms, its best to break down each sin individually and relate it to the story... Lets do that!

1. Vanity - Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities, and setting one's heart on things of little value.
1. Prospero's belief that he is more powerful than death is a vivid demonstration of vanity.
2. Envy - The desire to have a quality, possession belonging to someone else.
1. It is unclear who the Prince might envy, but he sure is trying hard to impress someone.
3. Gluttony - Gluttony is the act of consuming more than is required.
1. Instead of using his means to protect more people, he lavishes his guests with "ample provisions" and "the appliances of pleasure."
4. Lust - Lust is an excessive craving for the pleasures of the body, usually associated with sex.
1. The era in which Poe wrote prohibited the explicit or implicit description of sex, but what do you think was going on at an anything goes party?
5. Anger - A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.
1. The Prince becomes angry with the uninvited guest and attacks it.
6. Greed - The intense and selfish desire for something, esp. wealth, power, or food.
1. Although it is apparent Prince Prospero shares his wealth with a thousand guests, he helps those who need it least and withholds his substance from those in need.
7. Sloth - Sloth is the absence of work.
1. The prince seems like a hard worker; his work, however, is on the physical realm not the spiritual realm.

 It's not really stated that specific rooms stand for specific sins, and personally I've tried to

  sit down and correlate them to eachother and it just becomes too hard to do. Green could go with Greed and Envy...so I don't feel as if Poe was assigning colors to sins at all.

This is my favorite reasoning for the 7 rooms, There's no real reason behind it, I just have a strong like for the 7 deadly sins and looking at how people indulge in the seven.

 Work Cited for this Post:

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Masque of the Red Death." The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales. New York: Penguin, 1998. 145-51. 

Zimmerman, Brett. "The Puzzle of the Color Symbolism in "The Masque of the Red Death": Solved at Last?" Edgar Allan Poe Review 10.3 (Winter 2009): 60. Print

Starting Out?

Not sure if the average high school student is introduced to Edgar Allan Poe's "Masque of the Red Death", and if they are, do they really understand the meaning behind the colors in it? I was asked to read this short story during my Junior year in high school and I barely payed attention to it. I remember being too busy thinking about homecoming, or when my friends and I were going to hangout next.

Something along those lines.

But now that I've got an Associates degree and working towards getting my Bachelors, I've learned to look into short stories, poems and other works of art a little closer. What has become clear to me now is that those 7 rooms, those 7 different colors, all have [debatable] meanings behind them; they weren't just random chosen by Poe. Now that I see that, I find that short story amazing.

Now the rooms and the colors can be, as I mentioned, debatable. There's two different theories that can be attached to them, and personally I find it hard to sit there and say one is right over the others. I favor one more than the other, but that's because of personal reasons, while the other seem to have more evidence that it might be "right".

Maybe breaking down each theory might help other people decide which they see as more believable.
Maybe.

Chalk Outline.

just a quick outline to keep my thoughts in order.

-Starting Out

-7 deadly sins
   -7 holy virtues

- 7 stages of Life
   -Shakespere

-End it on That

Check, One, Two.

just testing how things are going to look.