The symbolic significance of the seventh chamber being in the west is that the chamber itself represents sundown and death. It represents the inevitable end of a day, the end of the apartment, the end of the party, and ultimately, the end of life itself. Aptly, it is in the seventh chamber that Prince Prospero falls "prostrate in death," followed by the unlucky party attendees.
To address the other part of your question, the chambers leading to the seventh chamber symbolize life: more specifically, each of the first six chambers can be understood to represent a decade in Prospero's life, and by extension, any man's life, according to H. H. Bell Jr., a literary critic.
Notice how I said that the chambers "can be understood to represent" something? That's because symbolism is often a matter of interpretation. Let's rely on the expert's interpretation here, because it's the one that's been published and accepted. You might have your own ideas about what the chambers symbolize, and that's fantastic! Just be sure to back up those ideas with logical and specific reasons, as well as with evidence from the text of the story.
Let's get more specific.
The first six chambers are each decorated in a certain color. From east to west, the chambers are blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. As readers, although we find it fun to simply envision those bizarre rooms and how they're laid out in a crooked and winding way, our reading experience becomes even more enjoyable when we consider that the rooms might be part of an allegory: that the crooked, winding layout might represent the lifespan of the bizarre Prince Prospero himself.
Here's how Bell Jr. explains it:
The first room . . . is located in the eastern end of the apartments, and it is colored blue . . . and the color blue may be related to the same beginnings and origins that 'East' stands for . . . it may reasonably be associated in this instance with the beginning of life.
We can continue matching colored rooms with decades of life, like this:
The second room, the purple one, symbolizes achievement, accomplishment, and maturity in life.
The third room, the green one, symbolizes liveliness and health: in the critic's words, "life and vigor," "the prime of [one's] years."
The fourth room, the orange one, symbolizes advanced years but not old age—"the autumn of life."
The fifth room, the white one, does symbolize old age: think of a person's hair turning from gray to white in their old age.
Finally, the sixth room, the violet one, symbolizes very advanced old age: "the gravity and the soberness of extreme old age," or in other words, the profound seriousness and reflection that we associate with people who are very old.
And of course, the seventh room, with its black decorations, symbolizes death.
It is significant that the seventh chamber is the westernmost room because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; and the course of a day is often symbolic of a human life span. This would make the seventh room symbolic of death. To further support this idea is the fact that the prince has had this seventh, westernmost room decorated in colors of black and red. Black is likewise associated with death, and the color red is associated with blood, which the narrator tells us is "the avatar and seal" of the terrible disease, the Red Death, now sweeping through the kingdom. Moreover, located in this room is an ebony clock, timepieces being yet another symbol of human mortality, and this one is black on top of that. Each time the clock chimes the hour, the masqueraders stop dancing and grow silent, apparently bothered by its reminder of their own mortality. Thus, the chambers leading to the seventh are representative of life, and the black and red westernmost chamber of the ebony clock is death.
No comments:
Post a Comment