Exposition: Poe uses the beginning of the story to offer important background information; Prospero's kingdom is under attack from the Red Death, and Prospero locks his friends and himself into his castle to escape the plague.

Inciting Incident: Prospero's decision to hold a masquerade ball starts the main conflict between he and the Red Death in motion.

Rising Action: The description of the rooms, the chiming of the clocks, and details of the party increase the tone of anxiety and fear in the story. The conflict intensifies when the mummer (mummy) dressed as the Red Death appears and angers Prospero. Prospero's decision to chase him when the other knights in the castle back away from the unexpected guest in fear leads to the climax.

Climax: Prospero has reached the point of no return when he falls dead while attempting to kill the mummy.

Falling Action: The knights must react to Prospero's death in the climax of of the story and they pull the sheet off the mummy only to find nothing there. They all fall dead.

Resolution: With all the knights and Prince Prospero dead, the conflict is resolved as the Red Death takes complete control of the kingdom.

The ebony clock: The clock symbolizes the passage of time, the onset of death, and the life of the party goers (revellers). Poe builds the symbol by giving details on how the party stops and the partiers get nervous every time they hear the clock chime, and he finishes the meaning of the symbol when he states "And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay." The clock stops when life stops.

Prospero-means that he is very prosperous and lucky, he usually get what he wants, he locked himself inside abbey with other people to try to stop death.

Right to Left-the order of the rooms go from right to left, or east to west. This sybolisis the day and how the sun rises and sets and becomes night. In the east is where people are born and west, where the sun sets, is where peoples lives end.

The rooms colors-this symbolizes the seven deadly sins, it goes from blue the least of the sins to the black room the worst of the sins. The black means pride, the worst sin. Prospero commited this when he thought he could stop death. Doing this ment he was pretty much calling himself God. 

Prospero: Prospero's name is an obvious allusion to the word Prosperity or Prosperous: the condition of being successful or thriving; especially : economic well-being. While Prospero is thriving at the beginning of the story, Poe creates irony when the Red Death is able to sneak into the party and kill the "most prosperous" man in the kingdom. Although Prospero thinks he is wealthy enough to escape death, he isn't.

The narrator described Prospero as happy and dauntless and sagacious in the beginning but at the end when he sees death he is scared and wrathful. He was so mad that he said he would hang the Death. He chased Death and tried to stab it but he was killed.