as Icarus).  

The imagery relating to blood in "The Masque of the Red Death" is either literal or symbolic in the form of metaphor. The earliest presence of imagery is "blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood." This image mixes metaphor "was its Avatar and seal" with literal "redness and the horror of blood". Poe is describing through imagery the aspect of the red death plague.

The second instance of imagery is "scarlet stains upon the body...." This instance is a metaphor. Poe has established what happens when the disease strikes, now he metaphorically calls the symptom of bleeding pores a "scarlet stain." The third instance is another metaphor. Poe says that at the sealed off abbey "there was Beauty, and there was wine." Wine was frequently used a a metaphor for blood: They are both red and they are both said to course through the body. This metaphor severs as foreshadowing, a clue to his surprise ending.

The fourth instance is a little more complicated metaphor. Poe says that outside the corridor window of each of the seven rooms there stood a tripod (three-armed) brazier (holder of coal or other fuel for heat and light) that projected it rays through the tinted glass of the windows. In this instance, Poe is using "brazier of fire" as a metaphor for blood. Again, both are red and, as blood transfuses the body, the light of the fire transfuses the rooms.

There are many more, "fire-light" on "countenances" (i.e., bleeding pore metaphor), "bold and fiery;" and now that you are started, I'm sure you can find your way to others.

In "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe uses vivid imagery to contrast the luxury of the castle guests with their sense of impending doom.

For example, as the story opens, Poe uses imagery to help readers both feel and see how the Red Death kills people: "Sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution [death]."

Visual imagery also shows us what the rooms of the castle look like. We learn there are seven rooms, each of which is decorated in a different, vivid color scheme. Rooms are decorated in blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet, each with stained glass windows in matching shades. The final room is frightening, decorated with "black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls." The stained glass windows of this room are red, "a deep blood color."

Adding to eeriness of this rich, opulent environment, the rooms don't run in a straight line but turn at angles, blocking the view from one room to the next:

There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite.

Poe also uses auditory or sound imagery to creepy effect. In the final, black room is a "a gigantic clock of ebony." Every hour it tolls in a way that is so "loud and deep" that the orchestra must stop playing, and everyone freezes in place with the reminder of the passage of time and the possibility of death as the clock chimes. Returning to visual imagery, the narrator describes how "the giddiest [guest] grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows."

All of the imagery builds an effect of horror, foreshadowing the entrance of the Red Death itself: the castle dwellers might have pleasure and luxury, but they are clearly not safe.