If you’re at all familiar with color psychology, you know that different colors conjure different emotions within us. Some of those emotions stem from the cultural associations we’ve made with each color, some come from personal associations, and some even arise from physiological reactions (did you know that looking at red can elevate your heart rate and speed up your metabolism?).
Of all the colors, red just might stir the most powerful emotions: it’s connected to love, lust, anger, and energy. With this many associations, it’s no wonder red is often used symbolically in just about every genre of literature. Today, we’ll be exploring the symbolism of red in poetry and prose.
Red Symbolism in Poetry
Red is a color that captures some of the most intense human emotions — love, lust, rage, and even fear. Poetry is an art that does the same, so it’s no wonder red has been used symbolically in poetry for centuries.
Some poems only have the barest hint of red symbolism. Others seem to be built around the color red itself. Either way, red can add a whole new dimension to poetry. Here are four examples of poems that use this color as a symbol.
“The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes (1906)
This classic poem might sound familiar, even if you’re only a very casual reader of poetry. It’s a tale of the unnamed highwayman and Bess, the landlord’s daughter — a pair you might call “star-crossed lovers” like Romeo and Juliet.
Before we dive into the symbolism, it’s important to know what a highwayman is. In the mid-to-late 1800s (and some of the years after), a highwayman was a mounted robber targeting travelers. While they were still criminals, highwaymen were held in higher social regard than “footpads,” or robbers who traveled on foot.
When it comes to red color symbolism, “The Highwayman” is especially notable because we see multiple meanings of red over the course of its 17 stanzas: courage, love, desire, danger, and rage. In the beginning, we’re introduced to the highwayman, who wears “a coat of the claret velvet.” The image hints at the highwayman’s courage. You might (correctly) think robbing strangers is wrong, but living a life of crime does take a kind of ignoble courage.
Shortly after, we see the love between Bess and the highwayman symbolized by the “dark red love-knot” Bess plaits into her hair. We learn that Tim the ostler (someone who cares for travelers’ horses at an inn) loves Bess from afar. She’s characterized here as “the landlord’s red-lipped daughter.” That simple description establishes Bess as not only the lover of the highwayman, but as the object of desire for at least one other man.
In the poem’s second part, we see soldiers — their red coats symbolic of danger — descend upon the inn. In a cruel turn of events, the redcoats bind and gag Bess. They place a musket in such a way that Bess can only warn the highwayman by shooting herself.
She does, and the highwayman heeds her warning. His rage is apparent: he curses at the sky, brandishes his sword, and spurs his horse like a madman. That rage is underscored by two red images together in a single line: “Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat.”
At the poem’s end, the speaker revisits the opening stanzas. This time, Bess and the highwayman are ghostly presences. Red appears in the poem’s final image (the “dark red love-knot”), implying that the love between Bess and the highwayman is eternal.
“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams (1923)
“The Red Wheelbarrow” might be William Carlos Williams’s most famous poem. You also might think a poem this brief would be simple and straightforward, but this one is anything but.
Despite the fact that “The Red Wheelbarrow” was written more than 100 years ago, critics don’t seem to be able to reach a consensus on its meaning or subtext. Is the wheelbarrow meant to symbolize the working class? Mundane and underappreciated things in general? Hard work? Marxism? Or is it meant to be taken and enjoyed just as it is — an idle wheelbarrow, glossy with rain?
There’s no singular, correct answer to that question — you could probably make an argument for any one of the ideas listed above and make it believable. So what about the color? In a poem this brief, every single word matters, so we know that Williams didn’t just absently mention the color of the wheelbarrow. Red is a color whose meaning is tied to strength and energy (among other things). So you could make an argument that the wheelbarrow’s color symbolizes the strength of the ordinary things (and/or people) upon which so many things depend.
Williams himself never offered an explanation of the poem’s meaning. However, he generally resisted the over-abstraction of poetry. He famously said (or rather, wrote in a poem) “no ideas but in things.” It’s not that he’s against the use of subtext — it’s that he believes every idea in a poem needs to be rooted in a tangible thing. What idea is rooted in the mysterious red wheelbarrow? Williams leaves it up to you.
“Tulips” by Sylvia Plath (1962)
“Tulips” is a study in contrast. This poem’s palette is made almost entirely of two colors: the white of the hospital and the red of the tulips. The hospital’s monochromatic palette captures the deep sense of peace the speaker associates with sickness and eventual death. The bright red tulips are the antithesis. They’re vivacious (to the speaker, offensively so) and brimming with energy, calling the speaker back to the bustling land of the living.
From the outside looking in, “Tulips” doesn’t seem too exciting: the speaker lies in a hospital bed, staring at a bouquet of tulips that have been brought to her (presumably as a get-well gift). It’s a poem that captures the battle in the speaker’s mind.
To really understand the symbolic importance of red in “Tulips,” you first need to understand the importance of white. To our speaker, the white hospital surroundings are synonymous with peace, which is synonymous with the erasure of herself. We can see that in the first stanza: “Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in./I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly/As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands./I am nobody.”
To the speaker, the peace of the hospital is also associated with emptiness. She says she wants “To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.” Outside of the hospital, she is anything but empty — she characterizes herself as “a thirty-year-old cargo boat,” a hull overloaded with the baggage she desperately wants to escape. The speaker has found refuge in the hospital and in the idea of illness and death.
The tulips interrupt all of that. To the average person, the brightness of the tulips would be a welcome reminder of the world outside the hospital. But the speaker finds that reminder too painful. The tulips are “too excitable,” “vivid,” and “too red.” The speaker compares them to “red lead sinkers,” “a loud noise,” “an awful baby,” and “dangerous animals.” They range from annoying to threatening, but their effect on the speaker is unilaterally negative.
But in the last stanza, there’s a shift. The speaker has resisted the pull of the tulips until now, but their color has begun to remind her of her own vitality: “And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes/Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.” The image is an unusual one. On one hand, the tulips have made our speaker almost painfully aware of her own (physical) life-sustaining heart. On the other hand, you could interpret “heart” as a metaphor for friends, family, and all those the speaker holds dear.
Just as her physical heart reveals its metaphorical flowers to her out of love, the speaker’s loved ones have brought her the bouquet of red tulips. Ultimately, the tulips are what convinces her to choose her life over the sterile stillness of self-effacement and death.
“Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros” by Anne Carson (1998)
The title of this poem is a real mouthful! However, when you break it down, it’s a lot less esoteric than it sounds. “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros” is one of several found in poet Anne Carson’s book Autobiography of Red. The poems in the book are based on her translations of the writing of Stesichoros. Stesichoros was an ancient Greek poet who wrote a familiar story — the myth of Heracles (better known as Hercules).
In the myth, one of Hercules’s labors is stealing the red cattle that belong to Geryon, a red monster who has three bodies and one human face. Carson’s book humanizes Geryon, imagining him as an ordinary boy navigating the difficulties of childhood and young adulthood.
The beginning of the poem introduces Geryon to us, and it’s clear that his defining characteristic is his redness:
Geryon was a monster everything about him was red Put his snout out of the covers in the morning it was red How stiff the red landscape where his cattle scraped against Their hobbles in the red wind Burrowed himself down in the red dawn jelly of Geryon's Dream
Why is Geryon red? Any time you see a word repeated in a poem, you can be sure that it’s important. But in this poem (just like many other poems), there’s no neat, simple answer.
Reading through the whole poem can give us a better idea of what red might be symbolizing. “Red Meat” is essentially an overview of Geryon’s life. It gives us a glimpse into his relationship with his parents (including an anecdote where they send him upstairs for wearing his mask at the dinner table), his beginning to discover his sexuality, the trauma of fighting in a war, the rage and grief of losing his cattle and his dog, and ultimately, his death.
Given all of that (plus the fact that Geryon is repeatedly described as being red), you could reasonably conclude that red symbolizes Geryon’s essence — his sense of self. Like an aura, red captures the full gamut of emotions and experiences that ultimately make Geryon who he is.
Red Symbolism in Prose
Color symbolism isn’t just limited to poetry. Many people think of poetry when they imagine metaphors, similes, and symbolism in general. However, novels, short stories, and even non-fiction works often include just as much (if not more) symbolism. Here are four remarkable pieces of prose that use the color red as a symbol.
“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe (1842)
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best-known horror writers of all time. “The Masque of the Red Death” might not be his most famous work, but it’s still regularly alluded to in popular culture — Stephen King’s novel The Shining gives it a nod. More recently, the 2023 TV series The Fall of the House of Usher incorporated a modern adaptation.
The symbolism of red in “The Masque of the Red Death” is more straightforward than in many of the poems listed above. In Poe’s story, red clearly foreshadows danger and death.
If you have an interest in color theory, you might appreciate this story’s use of many different shades. The story centers on a group of wealthy nobles who are staying in Prince Prospero’s abbey. They’re staying to avoid catching a plague called the Red Death. This appropriately named illness causes intense pain, dizziness, and bleeding from the pores before the victims drop dead.
The nobles find it dull to be trapped in the abbey, so they decide to have a masquerade ball. Here’s where the color comes in: the party is held in seven rooms of the abbey, and each room is a single color. The first six rooms are blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet.
The party guests enjoy these six rooms, but most of them are afraid to go into the seventh. This one is decorated in black, and it’s illuminated with blood-red light coming from the red-tinted windows.
It also has an imposing ebony clock that chimes every hour. The chiming makes the guests even more uneasy, and for good reason. As soon as the clock strikes midnight, they see a mysterious figure wearing a bloody robe and a mask like the face of someone afflicted with the Red Death.
The host of the party confronts the mysterious guest and instantly drops dead. The other guests pull off the figure’s robe and mask, but they find nothing beneath: the visitor is the Red Death itself! The guests all contract the disease and die from it in short order.
As you can see, red pops up quite a bit in this short story. However, one of the most interesting instances is the red light illuminating the black room. Unlike paint on the walls, light touches every inch of a room. Plus, this light happens to be the same color as an extremely deadly disease.
It’s telling us (or at least suggesting) that by the end of the story, the Red Death will have touched every guest. Despite the extraordinary measures the guests have taken to avoid catching the plague, they can’t escape the inevitability of death.
“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
Picking out color symbolism in a short story is one thing. But when it comes time to uncover the symbolism in a novel (and especially a novel as long as “Gone With the Wind”), it takes a careful eye. In longer works of fiction, there’s ample room for symbolic elements. They may appear only briefly, so make sure you look for them!
In Gone With the Wind, red plays a critical role. Most obviously, the heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, is named after a shade of red. Red often symbolizes strength and tenacity, and throughout the book, Scarlett reveals herself to be an especially strong and tenacious person. However, red has another symbolic meaning that features prominently throughout Gone With the Wind — its connection to wealth and status.
One of the most notable instances of this is the description of Tara, the family estate. Tara is on red clay soil, so it’s described as being “a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains.” Scarlett has a deep love for (and connection to) Tara, so her name is a fitting one.
But just as Scarlett is connected to her family’s land, she also has a love for material things. Symbolically speaking, red is sometimes connected to power. In Gone With the Wind, it often symbolizes the power and status that come with great wealth.
That means it’s especially fitting that when Scarlett dreams about regaining her wealth and social status, the material items she wants are red. Scarlett talks about one day having “red wallpaper and red velvet portieres over all the folding doors.”
Red isn’t the only color used symbolically in the book. Gone With the Wind is full of color symbolism to look for as you read it.
“The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Red is a color capable of a huge range of symbolic meanings, and “The Scarlet Letter” shows off many of them. This classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne follows the story of Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. Hester has violated one of the most important rules of Puritanical society — she has given birth to a child out of wedlock. As part of her punishment for the crime, Hester must wear a bright red “A” on her clothing for the rest of her life.
The scarlet “A” is the most important signal in the novel. The book is even named after it! The symbolic meaning of the A is easy enough to decipher. It stands for “adultery.” But what about the color? Red is often used to symbolize lust and passion — two of the emotions that led to Hester’s sin.
It also can symbolize danger (or something you should stay away from). In this sense, the red A serves as a kind of warning label to the other villagers. In their belief system, Hester has been tainted by her sin, so they should avoid her.
Because the letter is established as a prominent symbol early on, it’s a great vehicle for showing Hester’s evolution over the course of the book. The A is intended as a punishment, but Hester eventually starts to embrace it: she embellishes the bright red letter with a glistening golden thread.
The meaning of the scarlet A doesn’t just change for Hester — it changes for the people in the village, too. Hester eventually re-integrates herself into the village, comforting sick and dying people in their homes and giving back to the poor however she can. Members of the community take notice, and the A begins to take on a new meaning even for them:
“The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her — so much power to do and power to sympathize — that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.”
In this context, the red of the A no longer stands for sin. It becomes a symbol of Hester’s love for her community and their love for her.
“Red Dress—1946” by Alice Munro
This short story might only be about eight pages long, but it packs plenty of meaning into those pages. Much like The Scarlet Letter, “Red Dress—1946” has a central, clear red symbol. That symbol is a red velvet dress the narrator’s mother makes for her, and throughout the story, it symbolizes standing out or being different from others (and the narrator’s discomfort with it). We get a sense of its symbolic meaning early on:
“I had always thought secretly that Lonnie could not be pretty because she had crooked teeth, but now I saw that crooked teeth or not, her stylish dress and smooth hair made me look a little like a golliwog, stuffed into red velvet, wide-eyed, wild-haired, with a suggestion of delirium.”
Red is a fitting symbol of social difference. It’s unapologetically bold, and it certainly stands out. It creates a stark contrast to blue, a color that’s used in the story to represent conformity.
Even before she makes it to the dance, the narrator feels different — and painfully so. That feeling is only amplified as she stands by the wayside, waiting for a boy to ask her to dance. As songs continue to play and she stays to the side, a horribly painful realization comes over her:
“What I had been afraid of was true. I was going to be left. There was something mysterious the matter with me, something that could not be put right like bad breath or overlooked like pimples, and everybody knew it, and I knew it; I had known it all along. But I had not known it for sure, I had hoped to be mistaken. Certainty rose inside me like sickness.”
The narrator realizes that nobody is going to ask her to dance, so she leaves the dance floor in despair. She talks to Mary Fortune, a girl who embodies the narrator’s worst fear. Mary is a social outcast, but she takes pride in being one. The narrator seems relieved: “Here was someone who had suffered the same defeat as I had—I saw that—but she was full of energy and self-respect.”
At this point, you might think the story is about a young girl who fully embraces herself and her differences. The narrator will come to love the red dress and stop caring about the dance. You’d be forgiven for thinking that — the narrator agrees to leave the dance with Mary Fortune and heads toward the door.
However, we see that the narrator’s commitment to leading a counterculture life was short-lived (if it was even real at all). At one moment, our narrator seems resolute and committed to leaving the dance. But as soon as a boy asks her to dance — effectively welcoming her back to the “normal” world — that commitment vanishes.
The narrator abandons Mary Fortune to dance with the boy, even carefully adjusting her facial expression to mimic that of the older, cooler girls. She later refers to the boy as her “rescuer,” underscoring her desperate desire to fit in. There’s no more mention of the red dress or how awkward she feels in it.
Depending on your outlook on life, the ending of the story could be happy (the narrator has achieved a sense of belonging, which was her goal all along) or disappointing (the narrator has let social norms quash her fragile sense of individuality). Either way, this brief tale of a teenager going to a dance ultimately offers incisive social commentary.
Discover Red in the Stories You Love
If you have a favorite poem, book, or short story, you know that you discover something new each time you read it. Color might seem like a small detail, but as you’ve seen, it can underscore (and sometimes even introduce) important themes. Next time you revisit a literary favorite, keep an eye out for red and all it can symbolize!
Continue exploring and discover what all the other colors mean in literature.
