Story 2
Story two is about three old people who live in a castle. They think it is haunted but it is not. The three people who live there are the man with the withered arm, the old women and the man with the shade. A man comes to the house and he wants to stay in the house. All of the old people think that the house is haunted but the young man does not believe them. The man said to the old people if I saw this haunted room I will be more comfortable with myself. The old women said ‘tonight out all nights you go to the Red Room alone’. The man said fine I will go by myself which way is it. The man with the withered arm gave him directions. He looked at the table as he left the room, to see what the old people are doing after he left.
He left the room, lit the candle and walked down a chilly passage. He said to himself that three old pensioners in one big old-fashioned house with old furniture scared him a bit. He thinks that the old people belong to another age, an age of old witches and omens. He went off down the chilly passage where the echoes rang up and down the staircase. He was getting a little scared now because he was all alone in a dark chilly passage. He told himself to get all the scary ideas out of his own head. He was talking to himself. He finally got to the Red Room. He found a person dead there. It was a person who wanted to go to the Red Room as well but did not make it. He entered the Red Room. He was cleaning the room up as he went through it, tucking in the valance sheets, opening the curtains. He found more candles on the mantelpiece. He lit one after the other. Then he found out that as he lit the candle the previous one lit out. He kept doing it to see if it was not his imagination but it kept happening. He got very nervous then, thinking it was a ghost blowing the candles out but it was not. There was a cold draft coming through the door. It was in his head that the ghosts were blowing the candles out. Then the next thing you know he wakes up with a bandage on his head with the man with the withered arm looking over him. He could not remember what happened when he went to the Red Room. He says to the three old people that they were right that the Red Room is haunted. Then the old lady said that it was you who was feared. There was no ghost in the room but you thought it was because you were scared; it was, all in the mind. She said that if you were not scared then none of this would not have happened. The old women said ‘there is fear in that room of black fear, and there will be-so long as this house of sin endures.
In Story 1 there are three main characters: Sandra, Kerry and Mrs. Rutter.
Sandra is a girl who thinks she is more superior then everyone else. She thinks that she is better then everyone else. She cares about her looks. Sandra seems like a sweet girl but she is not. Sandra thinks that she is superior to Kerry because he wants to become a mechanic and she wants to become a secretary. She says this with great emphasis as if it is the only job that is the best unlike being a mechanic. She was surprised when she found out that Kerry Stevens was in the good Neighbour’s club. ‘Didn’t know you were in the good Neighbours club!’ She only thought that people who want to become sectaries or people like that were in the club. She thinks that the people who are like her (people who want to become secretaries) belong in the club. In story one Sandra always seems to be criticizing Kerry and sometimes she seems not to care. In Story 1 I think Sandra’s character is a person who thinks they are superior and does not care about anybody else except for himself or herself. At the end of story it turns out that Kerry is morally superior that Sandra because she does not understand it that Mrs. Rutter is a murderer but Kerry maintains his dignity by rejecting Mrs. Rutter and her activities.
In Story 1 Kerry Steven’s character is not thought as the same character as Sandra. He wants to become a mechanic. He is thought to be less superior just because he wants to become a mechanic but when Mrs. Rutter tells the story he is first to realize what she had done. In the story Mrs. Rutter always gave him the work and always complimented Sandra. He always had to do all the work. In the story you think that Sandra is more superior to Kerry but at the end you find out that it is the other way around when Kerry first realizes that Mrs. Rutter was a murderer.
When you first read about Mrs. Rutter you think she is a sweet old women. She acts like one at the start of Story 1 but then she starts telling Sandra and Kerry all about the plane that crashed in Packer’s End. Then we find out that she is not a sweet old women but a murderer. She did not help the man because one; he was German and two; no one helped her husband when he was in pain. ‘Nobody did anything for my Bill did they!’ at the start of Story 1 we are lead to believe that Mrs. Rutter is a nice old women. ‘She’s a dear old thing that Mrs. Rutter.’ The people in the club really cared about her because they did not know what she had done. ‘We try and keep an eye on her.’ where as the real truth is that she is ruthless and sadistic.
There are three main characters in Story 2 as well. They are the young man (28 year old), the man with the withered arm and the man with the shade.
The young man thinks he is not scared of anything. He says that he has not once saw a ghost in his life. The man wants to prove the old people wrong that there is no ghost living in the house. The man in the story is twenty-eight years of age. He thinks he knows everything.
The man with the withered arm is a very mysterious character. He kept saying at the beginning of the story to the young man ‘it is of your own choosing’. I think he is referring to the Red Room. He thinks it is haunted. I think the man with the withered arm dislikes the young man. ‘The man with the withered arm gave this newcomer a short glance of positive dislike.’ The young man asked all the people where the room was but no one answered him. He said it a bit louder and the man with the withered arm answered him meaning that he has tried to go to the Red Room before but did not succeed. He knows the way to the room quite well. The only thing that the man with the withered arm kept saying was ‘it is of your own choosing.’
The man with the shade in Story 2 is known as the second old man. He was more bent and wrinkly than the man with the withered arm. The man with the shade supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He sat on the opposite table to everyone else and when he sat down he started to cough. The man with the shade did not realize that the young man was in the room. He is quite a slow man.
In Story 1 Mrs. Rutter’s cottage is placed in Packer’s End. There were a lot of bad stories that went around Packer’s End. When all the children were young and they heard about what went on down Packer’s End they were scared and now they are all grown up they don’t believe any of the stories. Mrs. Rutter lived in a small cottage. The house was a bit old because Mrs. Rutter said to Sandra and Kerry ‘just give it a push. It sticks see.’ That means that the house is so old that the doors have begun to stick.
In Story 2 the Red Room is set in a haunted castle. Everyone that lives in the haunted house thinks it is haunted. The only story that is true about this room is that the duke died in the room after falling down the stairs that lead up to the Red Room. People think it was a ghost who pushed him but no body really knows what happened.
Some of the language used in Story 1 is modern colloquial language. Like the word ‘chocky’ the author use these words to give atmosphere to the old women. Story 1 opens with a description of the outside. The author has written in non Standard English.
The language used in Story 2 is very descriptive. It gives you large detail of each character. The language used in this story is archaic language. It is written in pre 20th century language. Story 2 opens with a conversation. It immediately gets to the point. Using archaic language in the story the author I think has made it sound interesting and using the language it does. In Story 2 when someone asks a question the reply is always short. In the whole of Story 2 the author has not used modern English in it once. During the middle of the story the language is slowed down to make it sound more dramatic.
Story 1 and Story 2 are both different from each other. Story 1 is about, an old woman called Mrs. Rutter who once saw a German plane crash down in Packer’s End. She could have helped one of the German aircrew survive but did not. She left him there to die because her husband got killed in the war and no body helped him survive so she didn’t help the man. Story 2 is about a man who wants to go up to a room that is called ‘Red Room’ but no one in the house which the Red Room is situated in wants to go up there with him because they think it is haunted. They tell him the way and he goes up there by himself. When he is in front of the Red Room he gets a bit scared because of what the old people said and at the end he does not get to the Red Room in the end because he bangs his head trying to get out of the room. He wakes up in the morning in the living room with three old people looking at him. He tells all of them that it is true that the room is haunted but they tell him that the room is not haunted but it was all in the mind. The two stories are a little bit similar because in both stories darkness is mentioned and people are scared of it. The darkness in Story 1 is Packer’s End. Everybody is scared to go down it at night because of all the stories they heard about it and the darkness in Story 2 is the Red Room. People think it is haunted and start to imagine that ghosts exist and all sorts of things are happening but really it is happening in the mind. The fear of darkness will never go away as long as people still keep the fear in their hearts. When it is in the heart at night it automatically goes into your mind and you start to get scared of nothing really. The story I enjoyed most was Story 2 because it was more realistic than Story 1 because Story 2 kept you in more suspicion than Story 1. It gave you more description of the characters and I understood it more. When I read Story 1 I did not realize that Mrs. Rutter left the German man to die. When I read Story 2 once I understood it straight away that people are only scared about things they hear about because darkness is involved and that there were no ghosts really it was in the head and that it was a not a ghost who was blowing the candles out, it was the cold breeze coming from the door. Story 1 is a good Story 2 but I think that Story 2 is better.
By Pavinder Heer
