Answer: The primary theme of the narrative revolves around the futility of evading death, with the clock symbolizing the certainty of death and representing the flow of time.
Explanation:
"The Masque of the Red Death" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, where a thousand individuals, including Prince Prospero, seclude themselves in an abbey to escape the lethal plague (Red Death).
In this narrative, The Seven Rooms in the abbey symbolize various life stages. In the Seventh Room, "against the western wall," stands "a gigantic ebony clock." The Ebony Clock serves as a symbol of death and its inevitability, while the pendulum represents the passage of time. When the hour strikes, the clock tolls, and all present know that an hour has passed – a reminder that their lives are diminishing and that death is drawing nearer. Just as they cannot halt the clock’s pendulum, so too are they unable to avoid death.
