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“It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side… Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers… He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero.”
In this passage, Prospero chases the mysterious guest through the seven colored rooms beginning in the blue room and culminating in the black room where he immediately drops dead. Their journey from the blue room to the black room symbolizes the cycle of life and the inevitability of death: blue is used in literature to symbolize birth and the color black has funeral associations. It is a fitting end for a man like Prospero who felt that the rules of death did not apply to him.
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
The masked reveler easily infiltrates the seemingly impenetrable fortress and claims the lives of Prospero and his entire court despite their expensive and impressive efforts to avoid such a fate. Here, the narrator reveals that the mysterious guest is not simply a specter but the personification or embodiment of the Red Death. Poe leaves his readers with this final sentence to drive home the point that humanity can not expect to hold dominion over death and disease.
