Therefore the two stories are both about fear - one the fear of something supernatural, the other with the fear of the dark. But the author’s styles of writing are very different.
For instance, the language used in each story is different. Although both stories have complex language, ‘ The Red Room ‘ uses old words which are not often used by modern writers such as ‘ sconces ‘ ‘ apoplexy ‘ and ‘ pallid ‘.
Whereas ‘ The End of the Party ‘ uses modern yet still complex words such as ‘ ostentation ‘ and ‘ evasion ‘.
In addition the authors use different sentence structure. In ‘ The Red Room ‘ the sentence structure used by Wells is extremely complex. He uses many subordinate clauses . For example; ‘ I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with my candle held aloft, surveying the scene of me vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died.’
In comparison, Greene uses much simpler sentence structure in ‘The End of the Party’, with usually only two clauses. Few complex sentences were in the story, this was the most complex ; ‘ If he stayed in bed they would come up and tap his chest and put a thermometer in his mouth and they would discover he was malingering.’ .
Description in the two stories is also different. In ‘ The Red Room ‘ much description is used with adjectives to describe nouns. For example ‘ tangible ghost ‘ ‘goldsby fashion’ and ‘brightly illuminated ‘.
However Greene’s ‘ End of the Party ‘ has nearly no description in except similes such as ‘ Darkness came over like the wings of a bat ‘ or ‘ slunk like cats on padded claws ‘ and the occasional use of metaphors.
Therefore Wells’ writing shows the style of 18th century writing was to use much description and Greene’s writing shows modern writers use little descriptive text.
The characterisation in the two stories is also completely different. Wells does not describe or build up his characters very much. He keeps them mysterious like the rest of the story. The whole story is in first person but the furthest description of characters is ‘ the man with the withered arm ‘ and ‘ the man with the shade ‘.
‘The End of the Party’ however has much character description; ‘ The two lay facing each other, the same green eyes, the same nose tilting at the tip, the same premature modelling of the chin’.
Therefore whilst Greene chose to describe the characters in great detail, Wells wrote keeping the characters mysterious.
I found the story ‘The Red Room’ more effective because I liked the way Wells kept the whole story, including the characters, mysterious. I found ‘ The End of the Party ‘ was more predictable as you knew what was going on and what the characters were like from very early on in the story. Because ‘ The Red Room ‘ didn’t make these things obvious, it made me want to read on further , so I could find out.
