How H. G. Wells creates atmosphere in "The Red Room" by referring to the way he describes location.

H. G. Wells uses the description of location to build atmosphere by splitting the locations into three significant sections, the housekeepers room, where he starts the story, the passages and staircases, the narrator travels through on his journey to the red room, and then the red room itself where the narrator drives himself crazy due to the unnatural silence, the creeping presence of darkness and the inexplicable presence of undiluted fear itself.

This splitting up of location gives the story a slightly disjointed aura as each location is different and is in contrast to the next, yet at the same time almost exactly the same.

The first location that you experience is the housekeeper's room which mirrors the personalities of the custodians themselves. There is a fire at the centre of the room whose flames created dancing, pulsating almost living shadows of the three housekeepers.

The journey that Wells makes the narrator embark upon to reach the red room is extremely Dantesque, and is like Dante's descent into Hell.

Well

-Get Well Wishes for a Precious Friend-Glenda More...

Red room at Versailles

With the "downwardly winding spiral staircases" and "subterranean passages". Wells uses the typically Gothic technique of having a layer of dust on everything, but unlike most Gothic writers he uses a thin layer which can be seen through but slightly distorts and obscures the image of what is around you. Wells also uses the dislocation of the narrator from the relatively homely housekeeper's room to the isolation in a subterranean hellish environment. In the same way Dickens used the dislocation of his narrator from the sunny afternoon to the isolation of the railway cutting which also felt as if the narrator had left the natural world and descended into hell.

Wells also uses personification of shadows in all his locations, but especially on the journey, with the way they "cower" and...