Dauntlessness Tested

            When half your people are dead from a deranged disease that makes you bleed through every one of your pores, what would you do? Take a thousand of your closest friends from the knights and dames of your court and keep them from the Red Death, or help your people by finding a cure? If you picked the first you are just as selfish and as dense as Prince Prospero. As a prince you are to be as loyal to your people as they are to you, even during times of tragic and unthinkable events leading to the downfall of your country. When you have a prince of dauntlessness, you would think all will be well and everyone will saved by the prince. “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allen Poe, shows how untrustworthy and dauntless one prince can be by using concealed symbolism leading to his own tragic ending.

            Prince Prospero’s guests need some entertainment to heighten their spirits while in the castle protected from the widening of the Red Death. Prince Prospero had known exactly what to do: throw a masquerade party. Everything was going fine at the party when the great Grandfather Clock struck for the next hour; the music and dancing stopped immediately. The clock symbolizes the hours counting down to the end of their lives because of self foolery by omitting the hard working town’s people now enduring the Red Death. In some way, the clock paralyzed them until the dings stopped; they knew something dreadful was going to happen to them soon.

           

Though the guests know something horrible is going to happen soon, it’s sooner than they expected. Having designed his castle, there were many rooms, one of which happened to be the Prince’s quarters. It contained seven rooms; the first five colors of blue, purple, then green, orange, and white all symbolize cheerfulness and purity. The other two rooms are deep violet and the last black with red draperies which symbolizes something of tragedy. These rooms help predict what is to happen next with the chase of the masked man, because when he is chasing him, he goes through his rooms from the happiest to creepiest of rooms within sprints. Telling the reader that something terrible is going to occur with the masked man and halfhearted Prince Prospero, once ending in the bloody and shadowy room.  

            Since the black room symbolizes tragedy, the guests are just about to figure out what it means after they realize Prince Prospero is not having fun with them at the party. They hunt for the prince throughout the castle and come to find him lying in a pool of blood within the black room of his quarters with the masked man. On instinct, for the death of their beloved Prince, they attack the masked man and pull off his mask to reveal that nothing is beneath it. It is supposed to show that everything is not what it seems and your life choices depend on that, and so the guests must pay for suffering and painstaking work of the people for the kingdom. 

            Tragic endings are caused by the everyday choices we make, no matter the excuse. The symbolism shows why being selfish and foolish can affect you in all areas of your life. The choices you make, in the end, represent who you are. The choices you make determine where you are headed for. The choices Prince Prospero made by having guests at his castle die for their choices, even when they don’t know whether they were awful or foolish, you must pay for it one way or another. This quote by William Shakespeare sums up how death can deceive people, “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.”