In the Masque of the Red Death, Edger Allan Poe presents his readers with a story that has quite an ironic theme and characters with ironic names. For example the main character who’s name is Prince Prospero (which sounds a lot like prosperous), makes this story even more uniquely ironic. How does this name make this story even more uniquely ironic you ask. Well in the Masque of the Red Death, prosperous Prince Prospero finds himself in a not so prosperous event.

            In this story it started out with a typical day in a typical castle with typical events. However don’t be so fooled by this series of typical events because, unfortunately, for our prosperous prince, these events change. Prince Prospero was a very foolish man that right outside of his castle walls was a surrounding town of people that were sick and dying of a horrible disease. Prince Prospero on the other hand, locked himself and those of others that he thought were “prosperous” like himself, inside of his castle thinking that he could keep out the horrible disease that was killing everybody around him. Inside the walls of Prince Prospero’s castle, he had seven rooms that had many very ironic meanings. The seven rooms represented the seven deadly sins, and the colors of the seven rooms represented the rising and setting of the sun as the colors of the rooms went from dark to light and then back to dark. However the last room of the seven rooms was all black with blood red tinted windows. The even more ironic part about this room its self is that the black walls and floor of this room were lined with velvet, kind of like a coffin.

            So if Prince Prospero is trying to keep death out, then why is there a room like a coffin in his castle?