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The Masque of the Red Death Symbolism

What does the large black clock in the western room symbolize? And what is the significance of it chiming every hour and everyone stopping what they are doing? And what does in mean when the clock chimes at midnight and everyone is aware of the prescence of the Red Death?

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Answer #1

“The room is also the location of a large ebony clock that ominously clangs at each hour. At the chiming of midnight, Prospero notices one figure in a blood-spattered, dark robe resembling a funeral shroud, with a skull-like mask depicting a victim of the Red Death, which all at the ball have been desperate to escape. “

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Answer #2

The timepiece represents the rapid passing of time in life. Every time the clock strikes the hour, the musicians quit playing and all of the revelers momentarily cease their celebrating. It is as though each hour is “to be stricken” upon their brief and fleeting lives. To emphasize the brevity of life, the fleeting of life and time, and the nearness of death, Poe reminds the reader that between the striking of each hour, there elapses “three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies.”

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