The actual title of 'The Red Room' is significant to its genre. It immediately creates mystery and in a sense, suspense, as the reader does not find out what the Red Room is like until a way into the story. The title creates questions, as the reader does not know why the colour red is significant, only that it is usually associated with danger, and fear. This links directly to the Gothic genre, drawing attention to the supposedly haunted Red Room. The setting of 'The Red Room', 'Lorraine Castle', is extremely typical of the Gothic genre.
How does HG Wells create an atmosphere of fear and tension in “The Red Room” In the red room, HG Wells creates tension and fear through various mediums. The short story is about a young man going to stay the night in a supposedly haunted room in Lorraine castle. His motives are unknown however the reader can assume that the sole purpose of his doing so is to attempt to prove it is not haunted. HG Wells creates fear through usage of Characters, Setting and imagery, which I will explore in this essay. Tension is a requisite of any story, as it is what makes it interesting and keeps the reader wondering what will happen next, it is often essential to the plot as well as it is created by a problem or an unknown factor, which makes the reader want to read on to the end.
This sense of obscurity created through the introduction is effective towards the reader because it provides suspense because the audience wants to know why Dorian Gray is so significant and important to the book and also why he is so focused on by Basil and Lord Henry. Additionally, Wilde uses obscurity to emphasise Dorian's absence to the world:- "One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world." The use of 'One' in this quotation generalises the opinion that Dorian has been absent from the rest of the world. the quotation as a whole makes him seem like more of a mysterious and unpredictable character because it is as if no one has ever seen anyone/thing like him before and therefore does not know what to expect from him. Following this, Oscar Wilde uses vivid images to describe Dorian Gray's appearance.
In “The Fall of House Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe uses different aspects of narrative to generate different moods and feelings in the story. One of the most essential on influencing aspects of narrative is the setting, specifically, House Usher. he actual location of the house is never revealed in the story, along with the time period in which the story takes place. This is probably because the mood of the story would be much harder to maintain if the story had given such precise facts, as it would ruin some of the tension created by this mysterious location. The area surrounding the mansion is the initial setting of the story and is one of the first spooky and theatrical settings Poe renders in his tale.
Both the movie and the novel follow this basic plot, but of course the novel was more detailed. For the most part the movie was close to the book. New Moon is narrated in first person by Bella and has an obvious parallel with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet because even Bella recognizes that she is in danger of playing out history’s greatest romantic tragedy. Keeping Romeo and Juliet in the forefront of the readers mind actually helps the author build the tension for the climax of the story because we can all see the tragedy that is waiting to happen. There wasn’t much narration on what Bella was feeling internally.
H.G Wells and Henry Sleasar use similar techniques to create tension in ‘The Red Room’ and ‘Examination Day. However they use these techniques very differently, to create two very contrasting yet equally brilliant stories. For example, they both use sentence structure for effect, use language brilliantly to emphasize the suspense the reader feels and tailor text to fashion significant moments. Despite their differences both stories are built on tension, the twists and turns that leave the reader on the edge of there seat. ‘The Read Room’ follows the story an assured, yet in the end confounded man who seeks out to prove that the ‘red rood’ in … castle isn’t haunted – yet he is met by .
Why is this moment in the novel so haunting and mysterious? This extract is set very early within the play, the night after Enfield tells Utterson about the incident of Hyde and the littler girl. The fact that the mere description of Hyde enthrals Utterson to such a degree that an incredible powerful dream was induced shows the strength and power that Hyde has over people. The fact that Utterson had a nightmare over a simple tale is highly significant, taking into for Utterson’s apathetic nature. Stevenson used this juxtaposition to subtly show the audience the undeniable mystery and haunting nature of Hyde that can plague even the most unremarkable and apathetic of beings, Utterson.
The primary objective of Gothic novelists is to rouse the reader into eliciting emotional responses such as shock or fear (Hume 284). In keeping with this theory, Walpole both begins and ends Otranto with unexpected deaths that are violent in nature, and designed to shock the reader. It begins with the death of the primary antagonists son, Conrad, who is “dashed to pieces” beneath the weight of an enormous helmet directly before he is to be married (Walpole 28). The shock arises not only from the unexpectedness of the incident, seeing as it happens so early in the novel, but also from the violence and the apparently supernatural element of it. He finishes the novel with the unintentional filicide of
J.R.R. Tolkien writes, “The fairy-story is a foretaste of a life that does not consist on ‘endless serial living’ but nourishes ‘the oldest and deepest desire: the Great Escape’- from death itself (dlibrary.acu.edu).” These books are a great way for the mind to take a brief breather from all the problems and stress that are created in the world around us. When you read Harry Potter it frees you from the cling that one has on the world as it is or the idea of the boring disenchanting real world. Harry Potter being a fantasy story gives us the opportunity to let our mind make sense of something that is not in our realm of reality. These kinds of stories let our imagination grab hold of us and take us to a world that only the brain can conjure up.
There is a serious fire but fortunately everyone eventually gets out safely. It is a fictional extract and very unusually, it is written in the first person but with an omniscient view point. This allows the author to tell the story through Ruby’s eyes, but still fill in the rest of the picture and tie all the characters together which would be difficult if written solely in the first person, because obviously Ruby would not be in a position to know what was going on downstairs while she was in bed for example. There are a variety of sentence structures used including simple, compound and complex and the mixture of these keeps the reader alert. There is an informal tone to the whole piece created partly by the complex sentences.