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The Ebony Clock
Prospero’s guests are frightened of the black room because the dark velvet interior and the blood-red stained-glass windows create an ominous and demonic atmosphere. The guests also avoid the black room because they are afraid of the large ebony clock that resides in the space. If a person is brave enough to enter the black room, they are met with a solemn note that distresses the listener. The clock also rings every hour, and the chimes are so loud and so disarming that it permeates through every room in the estate, silencing everyone until the chimes cease. People stop talking, the orchestra stops playing, and the dancers stop waltzing as if in a “confused revery or meditation.” The partygoers tell each other after each hour is sounded that they will not be startled when the chimes go off again in sixty minutes, but they always are.
“The Masque of the Red Death” is an exploration of mortality and the inevitability of death. The clock in the black room plays a significant role in said exploration; it represents death’s final judgment. The hourly ringing of the bells is a reminder of the passing of time, inexorable and ultimately personal. It is fitting, then, that Prospero and his companions all perish in the black room in front of the clock. Then, and only then, does the clock stop chiming. It no longer needs to because the countdown to Prospero's demise, and that of his nobles, has ended.
The Seven Rooms
Prospero decorates the seven rooms of his eccentric estate in monochrome colors for his masquerade ball. The easternmost room is decorated with ornaments and tapestries entirely in blue complete with large blue stained-glass Gothic windows. The rooms continue westward, according to this design, in the following color arrangement: purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The final room is decorated in all black but instead of matching black windows, this room has windows in a deep blood-red.
The palace’s colored rooms symbolize the stages of life. Poe pointedly arranges the rooms running from east to west. This progression is symbolically significant because it represents the life cycle of a single day—the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the context of this story, morning symbolizes birth and night symbolizes death. Poe also likely intentionally made the rooms travel from blue to black. The easternmost room is blue because the color blue is typically used in literature to symbolize birth. Black, on the other hand, is a funereal color so the final room, decorated with black velvet, symbolizes death. The guests enjoy the first six rooms but are afraid of the black room which represents the inherent fear of death. Poe solidifies that the architectural progression symbolizes the human journey from birth to death at the end of the story when Prospero and the masked figure make their way from the blue room to the black room, a journey that culminates in Prospero’s death.
