Red Room
I am writing about the story 'The Red Room' by H.G Wells. I'll be answering the question 'How does Wells create fear and suspense in the story'. The story is in the Gothic genre which explores human fear and the power of imagination and uses techniques like anti-climaxes and tension to excite the reader.
The title "The Red Room" immediately attracts your attention; it makes you ask. "What is the red room?" "Why is it red?" We associate red with fear and danger. Is this room dangerous? This makes you want to read on and find the answers.
The main character and narrator in 'The Red room' is a young, confident and arrogant man who thinks that ghosts are just a myth and that
"Will take a very tangible ghost"
To scare him, but during the story his views will change. As it is written in first person you get an insight to his feeling and you put yourself in his shoes.
English: H.G. Wells Book War Of The Worlds
A mural devoted to the author H.G. Wells, located ...
Picture taken by Frederick Hollyer IMAGELIBRARY/12...The other characters in the story are eerie and mysterious, quotes like
"This night of all nights!"
create tension as you never know quite what they mean and you want to know why that particular night might be worse than others.
As the narrator makes his way up to The Red Room Wells uses a lot of description. The quotes:
"For the moonlight, coming in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination."
"The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver."
Sets the scene as an old haunted castle and the reader starts to build up a picture in their mind of a long, dark corridor. You can imagine the long dark...