‘The Necklace’ and ‘The Red Room’ Comparative Essay

This brings me to 'The Red Room' where a man does not trust what others say. 'I can assure you, said I, that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten Me.' this tells the reader that he is a very brave, courageous and bold. But others think he is to brave and courageous,' It is your own choosing,' said the man'. This phrase is repeated many times. I think the old people in the room with this man think he is over confident.

The main character is 'Eight-and-twenty years' thinks he can conquer anything scary. The main character has come far just to conquer 'The Red Room'. 'The Red Room' has a very misty history, not much has been said about the room. The old people try to stop the man from going into the room but he does not listen and goes onto complete the mission that I think he has set himself, to find out what, if anything ghostly or scary is in the room.

The author H.G.Wells has chosen to describe the characters in 'The Red Room' in detail. I say this because of the following,' second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first', 'his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth'. He describes them to symbolise the ghostly theme.

Both authors use many linguistic devices, including repetition and personification. In 'The Red Room' the linguistic device repetition is used many times. As I said before 'your own choosing' is repeated by each character on the first page of the story, this suggests to the reader that the writer is deliberately creating suspense and also to make the reader speculate about whether there is something in the room or not. H.G.Wells uses repetition again on another page, 'they seemed to belong to another age, an older age, and age when things spiritual were different from this of ours', I think the man implies that the old people are unnatural and not human, some other type of creature unknown to man. I think H.G.Wells uses repetition to make the reader read on because the reader would want to know what is in the room and to create a sense of anticipation by describing what the 'older age' people look like. Guy de Maupassant also uses repetition to amplify Madame Loisels unhappiness, 'Her unhappiness, unhappy'. Both authors make use of personified verbs to create suspense. It is also used on page 47, 'The black shadow sprang back to its place there', and this suggests to me that the shadow is real. I think he uses this to make the reader think about what could be lurking inside the room. It is used again while he is in the room, 'One of the mirrors wink' this also suggests that the mirror is real. It seems to the reader that there is something like a spirit or ghost in the 'Red Room'.

In 'The Necklace' the author uses personified verbs, 'Grim poverty' which stood 'Ready to pounce', this suggests to the reader, again that poverty was waiting to create Madame Loisels appalling downfall.

The capitalisation of fear is used in both stories. In 'The Red Room' it is used in conjunction with repetition, 'There is fear in that room of hers - black fear, and there will be - so long as this house of sins endures'. This emphasises the final message that he has committed a sin to allow his fear to take over him.

I think the moral message of the 'The Necklace is that we often place in due value on material possessions, which in the end we discover are worthless, to be envious to lie and deceive others is sinful and leaves one morally bankrupt and reflects Victorian values and that they should be punished for there sins. Where as 'The Red Room' reflects on Victorian values in the sense that superstition was frowned upon. The fact that the man actively seeks to investigate the supernatural and then allows he to lose all sense of rationality suggests he is responsible for his own downfall. To allow pride such power is a sin, which can be both damaging literally and metamorphically.