The Red Room

As the candles go out and the darkness takes over the Red Room, the narrator's own fear takes over. The dialogue at the end of the story establishes that the Red Room is a symbol for our human heart, in which there is an eternal struggle between darkness and light. In the morning, the narrator concludes that the room is haunted by no ghost, but by fear itself. The ambiguity of the narrators ending is the story's enduring legacy-is the room haunted by a supernatural force of pure fear, or did the narrator simply spook himself in the dark?