knowing and not knowing humour and irony in H.G Wells' short stories
Knowing, not knowing, humour and irony
in H.G Wells' short stories
By Zoe Harris 10E
In this essay I will be writing about knowing and not knowing humor and irony in each of the stories I have chosen. Of all the H.G. Wells short stories I have read I have chosen to write about The Red Room, The stolen Bacillus and The Inexperienced Ghost. H.G Wells was a typical Victorian rich man. You can tell by the language he uses, as only people who were rich or from the middle and upper classes in those days could afford an education.
The Red Room was written quite early in H.G Wells' career as a writer, so he was unaccustomed to writing stories at the time, you can tell this because of the simple structure of the story.
In The Red Room the pattern of tension is a simple straight line and is never broken. Ghost stories were very popular in the Victorian times and they loved anything with a ghostly theme, so this made up for the lack of tension.
The simplicity of the tension also makes the story very foreseeable and predictable, so it is easy for the reader to know where the story is going, to make up for this H.G Wells entertains the reader with something that people would never have thought would be in a ghost story; humor and irony, which gives it a totally different dimension compared to other ghost stories. It also entertains and grips the reader much more.
The story is in the first person. The narrator talks as if he was there when it happened. The main character in this story is very snobbish and pompous, and because of this he talks down to the people in the hotel as he believes they are beneath him, he is a a typical upper class Victorian of his age. The character is much like modern T.V or film characters like Agatha Christie's Inspector Poirot etc.
He investigates the supernatural, even though he does not believe in such things as ghosts. This is because when Victorian boys were little they were taught by their dad's that men were not allowed to express or admit their fear, as this will show weakness. Even though he is not allowed to show this, it is important that the narrator conveys the characters feelings, as this sets the scene and makes the reader feel his fear too.
An example of where he shows that he does not believe in the supernatural is when he said to the ...
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He investigates the supernatural, even though he does not believe in such things as ghosts. This is because when Victorian boys were little they were taught by their dad's that men were not allowed to express or admit their fear, as this will show weakness. Even though he is not allowed to show this, it is important that the narrator conveys the characters feelings, as this sets the scene and makes the reader feel his fear too.
An example of where he shows that he does not believe in the supernatural is when he said to the people in the hotel "You will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there." He is very sarcastic and it's like he does not care that there is a possibility of it being haunted, this shows some of Wells' irony.
Wells choice of narrator creates a problem for him as a ghost story writer, he does not make it easy for himself to bring across to the reader how the narrator feels so Wells lets the reader know how frightened the narrator is by describing his actions instead, "I stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I advanced." This is very humorous because the reader knows he is petrified, but he wont admit that he is.
Later on in the story when he is in the room, yet again he tries to hide the fact that he is scared when the candles are going out. He starts singing nursery rhymes and talking to himself, which is not the sort of thing a person does, unless they are scared witless, this also shows humor. But even though you know he is terrified the narrator still tries to persuade the reader that he is calm "Did I do that in a flash of absentmindedness?" He acts like everything is normal. The language he uses is verbose and sounds affected, like he is just putting it on to hide his fear.
The impression the narrator thinks he is making on the reader is much different then the impression he is actually having on the reader. The narrator assumes the reader is thinking he is a very well educated man and is afraid of nothing, but the reader thinks the total opposite, that he is very foolish and thinks very highly of himself.
The Stolen Bacillus was written four years after the Red Room so the structure of the story is a little bit more complex by comparison. H.G Wells uses the third person narrator in this story.
There is no tension at the beginning of The Stolen Bacillus, but then it goes up and down like a roller coaster. It is very unpredictable compared with The Red Room which has a very steady pattern of tension. The tension goes highest at the point when the terrorist gets away and drinks the liquid.
The visitor is presented as a stereotypical terrorist. He is a very sly shifty character, "Pale man"...... "Limp white hands"......."Lank black hair and deep grey eyes." The scientist can't tell what the stranger is thinking but the reader can, this adds humour throughout the story.
Wells misleads the reader right at the beginning of this story by making the Bacteriologist pretend that he doesn't know the man is a terrorist. Wells makes us believe that we know more than the Bacteriologist, but the trick is we don't. He fools the reader and the terrorist by making them think it's cholera in the test tube, so when he tells us this we believe it. So all the humour and irony turns on the reader and the terrorist, "The bacterium I was telling you of ....and I think cause, the blue patches on various monkeys....And now he has swallowed it."
The terrorist steals the tube thinking it is cholera and he drinks it, but instead of getting the disease he turns bright blue, this is very ironic and humorous.
The Inexperienced Ghost was was written very late in H.G Wells' writing career. He had to make it much more sophisticated and modern to make the people of that time more interested, as they were much more demanding. It shows in this story as the structure is much more complex and unpredictable. The pattern of tension is not what you would expect of a ghost story as it is not scary, and it looses it's tension throughout.
This story is written in the first person. There are two narrators as there is a story within a story. H.G Wells teases and confuses the reader about Clayton, by conveying to the reader that he is a liar and the reader subconsciously believes this. It starts very unusually, "When Clayton began to tell one, we naturally supposed he was lying." Normally in a story you have to be made to believe that it is true, but in this case you are told that the whole thing is a lie, normally you are put off from the story before you have even started reading it and think it is not worth reading, so this is very ironic. But Clayton still has a skill of being able to make you believe the story.
But when Clayton starts the story he tells it as if it is a normal thing, "With a matter-of-fact anecdote", meeting a Ghost, so the reader naturally believes he is telling the truth. He doesn't try to make the story sound like an everyday ghost story by sounding dramatic, it is definitely what you wouldn't expect it to be. Then as soon as Clayton has the reader believing him, you start to doubt him because he starts to forget he is telling a ghost story and starts to make it humorous. For example when he is saying how much he'd had to drink just before he met the ghost, "I'd had a bottle of champagne, and being all alone, perhaps two or three--perhaps even four or five--whiskies." This is humorous because after drinking that anyone would be very drunk, so then you start thinking that he was just hallucinating.
H.G Wells plays with the readers head by making them believe, then making them doubt the story again and again. When Wells has the reader believing it is true, he puts this into the story, " He turned.........spread his hands in approved ghost fashion............emitted a faint, drowned out, "Boo." So he adds humour into a ghost story so you think that he is lying again. This makes the reader never sure of the truth.
Wells shows Clayton's confidence because it makes the character more amusing, "I'm not joking. I mean what I say". He has no doubts, he keeps on smiling this makes the reader think he knows what is going to happen, even in the end he is still smiling which adds a sick ironic humor to the story.
Clayton was totally oblivious that he would drop down dead, this makes it ironically humorous because you don't know how its going to end until you read the very last sentence.
H.G Wells makes his stories different and more exciting by injecting humour and irony into them, not many writers do this, that is why when you read his stories you get interested and hooked and want to read more.
