Poe's purpose in these descriptions, particularly the black room, has no relation to reality. In reality, no such place as the black room would be used as a part of a ballroom. But Poe wants to achieve an effect — a total, unified effect — in order to show the close proximity of the revelry of life and the masquerade to the inevitability of death itself.
As noted above, therefore, regardless of whether or not the first six rooms have any symbolic function, the significance of the seventh room cannot escape the reader's attention. Black usually symbolizes death, and it is usually used in connection with death. Moreover, in describing the black decor of the room, the narrator says that it is shrouded in velvet, shrouded being a word always referring to death. Likewise, the window panes are "scarlet — a deep blood color." This is an obvious reference to the "Red Death." When the masked "Red Death" makes his appearance, he moves rapidly from the Eastern room (symbolic of the beginning of life) to the Western room (symbolic of the end of life). In conjunction with man's quick and brief journey through life is the rapid passing of time, represented by the black clock; every time the clock strikes the hour, the musicians quit playing and all of the revelers momentarily cease their celebrating. It is as though each hour is "to be stricken" upon their brief and fleeting lives. To emphasize the brevity of life, the fleeting of life and time, and the nearness of death, Poe reminds the reader that between the striking of each hour, there elapses "three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies."
