Edgar Allan Poe was a writer who believed that every word contained meaning and, in his own words, expressed this idea with brevity, only he could : “…there should be no written word whose tendency, direct or indirect, is not in conformity with the one pre-established design. (Poe 244). To this end, Poe imbues his works with symbolism and allegory. Especially in the shorter works, Poe assigns meaning to the smallest object, explicitly deriving exurban meaning within concise descriptions. “The Masque of the Red Death” tells the story of a prince Prospero who, with his thousand friends, sought refuge from the plague that was ravaging their country. They lived together in the luxurious princely abbey with all the amenities and security imaginable. In the sixth month of isolation, the masquerade festival takes place. At the party, a tall, gaunt figure dressed in “grave clothes and a mask resembling a corpse” enters (Poe 241). Everyone is offended, but too scared to comprehend this number. When the "party people" find the courage to attack him, there is nothing tangible in the horrible cements. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, colors and numbers symbolically and metaphorically add depth to the story. The numbers, more precisely six and seven, appear in the short story, not for a specific purpose, but with an overall effect linked to the passage of time and the morality of the situation described. The number seven seems to have the most significance in the story, with the setting of the poem containing seven separate but connected apartments. Seven is a very mystical number with great significance, there are seven deadly sins, seven days of creation, seven days in the week, seven stages of life, and seven could also represent the spirit...... middle paper... ...Numbers like colors or objects can be used as symbolic references with a powerful effect on the prose as a whole. A number of possible meanings could be derived from the numbers appearing in "The Mask of the Red Death". This is not a simple allegorical reference suggesting that the seven coins represent the seven stages of life, from birth to death. Rather a unity or overall effect of the passage and inevitably of time and death that is achieved. Works Cited Kennedy, XJ and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry and drama. Fourth compact edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. Poe, Edgar Allen. “Mask of the Red Death.” 1842. Kennedy and Gioia 238-242. “I Thessalonians”. The Holy Bible. King James version. New York: Harper & BrothersPublishers, 1957.