He three stories were written between the 1800’s and the 1900’s. The Ostler and Confessions found in a prison were written in the early 1800’s whereas the red room was written in the mid 1890’s. We can see the difference when reading them because the red room is more similar to more modern horror fills and books like Frankenstein because it uses castles, bats and grimier, gloomy places. The other two stories we can tell were written in another time because they are less contemporary and they don’t have bats, ghosts and castles.
The three writers don’t use names of the characters (accept in the Ostler) so they can build up a mental image instead of you knowing someone else with the same name and making you think of them instead of the character. For example in the confessions found in a prison the writer doesn’t give a name of the murderer so you can build up a mental, scarier image of her.
The climaxes in the three stories are normally at the end to give it a chance to build up to a big finish, for example in the Ostler you hear about the attempted murder at the beginning and so from there on every time its near his birthday the reader will start to get worried. In the red room the climax is shown when the man goes into the red room and the candles start going out.
“Red Room” and fear, Fear is danger and danger is harm. Fear can be envisioned through the colour red, a symbol for danger. By using the word 'red' in the title the author, H G Wells, shows some sort of danger or fear in the story. Red is usually associated with fear and danger. He shows fear by showing the narrator to be a very cocky and confident person, but as the story progresses his mood changes to a much less confident man.
“Confessions found in a prison” is used as the title and warns the reader of impending doom because of the word “confessions”, and because confessions means the act of admitting to something we can see the main character has done something wrong which makes us eager to find out what he’s done.
“The Ostler” is used as the name of this tale because “ostler” means a person who is employed to tend horses, especially at an inn, and the story is about a man who stays at an in who nearly gets murdered.
Foreshadowing is used throughout the three stories as a means of scaring the reader for example in the ostler we foreshadow the murders return every time it’s near his birthday. An example of this in the red room is when the narrator is over concordant and he ends up being scared. There are examples of foreshadowing also found in confessions found in a prison just after he murders his brother’s child. After the murder we, as readers, can predict bad things because of the title and the use of the words “confessions” and “prison”.
The language used in the three stories contains a lot of metaphors, similes and oxymoron’s. For example in the red room the mysterious man says he needs a “tangible ghost to scare me”. This is a sign of his over confidence to which we assume will lead to him being non-confident. Another example of this is a metaphor in confessions found in a prison, “my name is written in the black book of death” he says this at the beginning and from this we can foreshadow him doing something bad and getting sent to where he is now, prison.
Personification is also used in the red room, “the shadows chased him down the hall”. He has used this to scare – the shadows seem like ghosts going to the room before him. Personification is also used in the Ostler, “grizzled hair telling its own story”. The writer uses this to intrigue, we want to know why the hair is so troubled, and his story is so bad even his hair is troubled.
In conclusion I think that the Otler is the most effective because it has a little bit of superstition around his birthday, and because it keeps recurring and slowly creeps up on him. Compared to more modern books like Frankenstein it has less of a more normal approach, it has less bats and gremlins.
