Prince Prospero seems to believe his elevated status and large fortune can provide some protection to him and his friends from the Red Death. He moves into an isolated abbey, behind a tall wall, and the courtiers he brings with him weld the iron gates shut.
They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy within. . . With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion.
In other words, they believe themselves to be safe. As if to showcase his mastery of death, Prospero has constructed a series of rooms that seems symbolic of a human life—beginning in the east and ending in the west, as the sun rises (symbolic of birth) and sets (symbolic of death)—ending in a room decorated in shades of black (often symbolic and indicative of death) and "blood red" (very much symbolic of death in this story because it is the "Avatar and. . . seal" of the disease). In this room that symbolizes death, there is an "ebony clock," a symbol of mortality, whose chimes unnerve the masqueraders each hour, as though they remain aware of death despite their attempt to escape it. Everyone avoids this room as though, by putting their mortality out of mind, they might actually fend off death. Obviously, neither their money nor their resources can shield them from death because it is the one inevitability in life.
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