Search This Blog

Friday, October 21, 2011

Red.... the color

Red is used as a symbol of guilt, sin, passion and anger, often as connected with blood or sex. A Biblical example is found in Isaiah: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." Also, The Scarlet Letter, an 1850 American novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, features a woman in a Puritan New England community who is punished for adultery with ostracism, her sin represented by a red letter 'A' sewn into her clothes. This all comes from a general Hebrew view inherited by Christianity which associates red with the blood of murder, as well as with guilt in general. Often, things will be in red to scare. Another popular example of this is in the phrase "caught red-handed", meaning either caught in an act of crime or caught with the blood of murder still on one's hands. At one point, red was associated with prostitutes, or now, with brothels (red-light districts). In Roman Catholicism, red represents wrath, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. In Christianity, Satan is usually depicted as colored red and/or wearing a red costume in both iconography and popular culture. Statistics have shown that red cars are more likely to be involved in accidents.

No comments:

Post a Comment