As the man moves towards the door H.G Wells describes the man with the shade, moving closer to the others. Maybe there is something horrifying in this house if three people who seemingly hate each other are cowering together in front of a fire, or maybe they were plotting something.
As the young man walked down the corridor, HG Wells describes the atmosphere to us. This 'chilly, echoing passage' is common in a ghost story for it is dark, damp, cold and dusty. It is dimly lit, any sound can be heard and any movement made casts 'monstrous' shadows onto the surrounding walls. When walking through the passage you would probably not be able to see to the other end, which means that anything could be lurking there. The passage has a great effect on both the reader and the young man. It creates fear and suspense and is a good tension builder. The young man thought about the oddness of the three old pensioners. HG Wells then goes on to describe the furniture. He used words to build up the atmosphere like ‘spiritual, witches, ghostly, omens, and haunted’ to describe the surroundings. It shows a slight fear in the young man when all the rest of the time, he has been acting so calm.
As he carries on down the passage it comments on the surroundings; example- 'The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly,' this builds up more tension as we get closer to the 'haunted' room. He then comes to a ‘spiral staircase’. Spiral staircases are spooky. As he proceeds up the spiral staircase to The Red Room. His imagination continues still to race with him himself doubting what he hears and sees when he claims 'a shadow came sweeping up after me’ and ‘I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling I fancied I heard’ This line shows that he is hearing things in his head as a result of tension created through his surroundings. You can tell at this point that the man is nervous.
A good piece of imagery sets atmosphere. An example in this section is, 'the moonlight coming in by the great window on the grand staircase picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination.' This gives you a clear mental image. It comes across as ghostly, which is how the story is meant to be. As the narrator is walking he sees shadows and ornaments, which make him more on edge. He sees a group of statues in a corner and he gripped his revolver. The fact that he had a revolver with him shows that he is not as calm as he first seemed.
Then as he approaches the door to the red room, the tension builds and he enters very quickly closing the door behind him. He finds himself in a huge red walled room. The fact that he locked the door behind him in the room shows that he is nervous, like he was aware of a presence following him. It is only at this point in the story that we are told about the mystery of the red room as we are told it is ‘The great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died’ The question is raised as to whether he just fell down the stairs or was he pushed? We are informed that there are ‘other stories that clung to the room’. Could it be that the past people that died in the room stayed there to haunt it? The young man was having doubts about this. HG Wells describes the darkness as ‘germinating darkness’. Here, he is using metaphors by associating darkness with a plant as it ‘sprouted in its black corners’, almost like the darkness is growing.
He described his candle as ‘a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light’ once again the author is trying to create a spooky atmosphere. He exploits characterization to show fear. Wells is starting to create mystery in the room by making the young man speak of the room being like an 'ocean of mystery' and beyond his 'circle of light' lays suggestion.
The author then lit a fire and re-arranged the room to his satisfaction, yet there was ‘a shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude.’ Here, suspense is raised again. He felt the need to ‘reassure himself’ so he walked over to the alcove to find that there was ‘nothing tangible there’. Here he refers back to the first line about tangible ghosts.
More tension is built as the man begins to talk to himself. He listens to the eerie echoes and becomes more frightened than before. In the Red Room the tension is building all the time, the man is getting more nervous and putting more candles out to try to reassure himself. The man is getting more anxious and jokes about how he should warn any ghost about tripping aver a candle on the floor.
Light is describes as being a great comfort. The candle in the alcove went out as the clock reached midnight. It is here that panic sets in, when the narrator reacts badly to the candles being extinguished. Again, there is the use of light and dark. It is written ‘I did not see the candle go out, I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there as one might see the unexpected presence of a stranger’. Personification is used in this story to give the reader the impression that the narrator is not alone in the Red Room although he thinks he is. He does not notice that the candles had gone out he 'simply turned and saw that darkness was there', almost as if darkness was someone who had come silently into the room. Here he is referring to the darkness as a person which raises suspicion as to whether the shadows in the room are alive or not. He continues to talk aloud, just to reassure himself.
As he re-lights the candle, two more candles went out behind him. He compared this to ‘Something blinking on the wall before him.’ It suggests to us that there is a presence in the room with him as he describes the objects with human actions like ‘blink’ and ‘wink’. The tension is being built up by making us think that there is some-one else there with him. All around the room, the candles continue to go out. The author is still trying to keep calm and continues to talk aloud humoring what is going on, saying things to the darkness like ‘What’s up?’ and ‘Steady on! These candles are wanted!’
Meanwhile the darkness was beginning to creep up on him. The candles are passively being put out like the darkness is active.
The ending of the story is a slight twist. You would expect a more conventional ghost but what is found in the room is fear itself. However, it is suspected from the very start that there is going to be something in the room. Just from the first sentence there is an immediate cause for concern. Throughout the story, suspense has been built up well. I think that the ending worked well, as it was fear of the darkness that drove him to fall down the stairs. He went into the room as a confident man, but with spending time in there, fear took hold of him. He began to run about frantically trying to get out of the room banging into things, and then he fell down the stairs, just like the duke once did. Maybe it was his own continence that drove him to fall. It seems to me like if you know the legend of the red room, you take fear in but otherwise, you wont be scared.
In the end, the old people don’t seem strange or weird anymore. It’s like daylight changes things. He said ‘I opened my eyes in daylight’. Daylight is used as a form of safety in the story. It was the darkness that drove him mad and made things seem worse than they actually were.
HG Wells began the story by building up the tension using the old people as a device. He has ended the story by informing us that they were normal people after all and that it was the darkness that made them seem scary in the first place. He has used the contrast between light and dark to create tension and suspense. I think that this technique worked very well and was effective in the story.
My next story is The black cottage by Wilkie Collins. The black cottage used some of the same techniques to build up the suspense in the story. In the beginning, The author addresses the reader. We are introduced to the story with ‘I must take you back to the time after my mothers death, when my only brother had gone to sea, when my sister was out at service and when I lived alone with my father, in the midst of a moor in the west of England.’ She is giving us a basic outline of how things were. By being told directly, we want to read on as we are being requested to listen to what she has to say.
The story continues to describe the house they lived in, and its surroundings. The author seems to go into great detail on how the cottage is situated alone, as it is quoted ‘The nearest habitation to ours was situated about a mile and a half off’. We are told about the security of the house. This information makes the reader ask ‘why’ the author has gone into such detail on the house alone as an introduction to the story.
Creating the right place for the setting of a story is usually one of the most important features in creating a successful story. The setting can influence the reader's emotions and views on the story and also create an atmosphere for the storyline ahead. This is very important in spooky or chilling stories like "The red room" and "the black cottage" as the setting usually gives the reader a sense of foreboding. This is true in both stories with one being set in an old, haunted castle and the other being set in a lonely cottage being cut off from the outside world.
We are told that the young girl ‘Bessie’ will be left alone the black cottage as her father had to go away due to his work. The fact that a young girl was left alone in a cottage in the middle of no-where is the perfect opportunity for something to happen whilst her father is away.
The story is made interesting when Bessie is trusted to look after some money that her land-owners left her with as a result of them having ‘Money matters’. So now, she was alone, in a dingy cottage with valuable belongings, this is just a recipe for something to happen and when your reading the story you can definitely feel something coming on.
At this point, the reader is not sure of what is about to happen. Bessie was unsure about looking after the pocket book full of money as it says ‘The very sight of the pocket book behind the glass door of the bookcase began to worry me’. It continues to say ‘I puzzled my brains about finding a place to lock it up in, where it would not be exposed to the view of any chance passer-by , who might stray into the black cottage’. By raising this issue, the reader automatically thinks that the pocket book will come into the story. Almost immediately after, two men strayed into the kitchen.
It mentions that one of the men may have been looking at the bookcase… ‘I distrusted him, and I managed to get between his leering eyes and the bookcase’; this suggests that the man may have clocked onto the pocket book behind the glass door.
Bessie's vulnerability is exposed to the villains almost immediately, as she stupidly told the intruders that she was on her own and that her father was away on business. We immediately think that the men are up to something because it says ‘Shifty dick and his companion looked at each other when I unwisely let out the truth’. By describing that as to unwisely let out the truth, it is giving us the impression that she should not have said that, and that the men may take advantage of the fact that she is alone.
After the men leave, tension is built up by the bad weather, a feature of Gothic Literature. The darkness and the 'rising mist' helps to build up an ominous atmosphere, and the 'heavy rain' support this idea. Bessie's anxiety is also brought out in the sentence structure because hyphens force the reader to pause, creating an anxious break, for example; 'but there was a vague distrust troubling me-a suspicion of the night-a dislike at being left by myself’.
Although this section shows Bessie's vulnerability, it also shows her bravery, and shows that she cannot be fooled by the men's manipulation. It is also ironic how Bessie is struggling to cope with the fear caused by two men and the weather with its 'fitful sobbing of the wind', but her cat 'basked luxuriously' on the hearth of the fire. This slight bit of humor added in to it breaks the tension for a moment, and gives the reader a pleasant thought, possibly in preparation for the upcoming drama of what is about to happen next. It was only when Bessie settled down and the atmosphere was calm to the reader that the tension was raised again as she was awaked with ‘a loud bang at the front door’. It is odd that a cottage in the middle of nowhere would have a visitor in the night which arouses suspicion. Bessie’s instant reaction to this is fear. Here, Collins uses colons and commas to break the sentence up to make it sharp and fast, example- ‘I started up, breathless and cold; waiting in the silence, I hardly knew for what; doubtful, at first, whether I had dreamed about the bang at the door, or whether the blow had really been struck on it.’ By using this sort of punctuation, it helps to raise tension as the reader is obliged to pause.
It was the two men that had dropped by earlier at the door. The characters of the men clash. Shifty dick was more demanding, whereas Jerry was a cunning kind of man. The characters here are overwhelming to the reader and Bessie, Jerry singing at his 'wicked work' and Shifty Dick swearing. They are both physically and mentally intimidating. In contrast to the villains, Bessie is mentally determined, but the fight against them is described as physically demanding to heighten the suspense.
The atmosphere between when Bessie was relaxing in front of the fire giving the reader a sense of calm, clashes in comparison to the sudden tension raised by ‘the loud bang on the door’ from the two men.
Jerry’s character in the story was cunning and clever. His attempt to get Bessie to let them into the black cottage was sly, as he put on a false tone of voice. I can imagine that Bessie would have felt quite intimidated by him. Jerry said things like- ‘You are alone in the house my pretty little dear. You may crack your sweet voice with screeching, and there is no body near to hear you.’. This patronizing false niceness clashes in comparison to Shifty Dick who is more direct and violent. Bessie refused to let the men in but they were persistent and refused to go away. Suspense is built up here as we are left wondering what they are going to do next. We are told that the men were there because they want ‘the very neat looking pocket book’ and her ‘mother’s four silver teaspoons.’ It is clear that they had clocked these valuables when they had paid a visit to the black cottage earlier that day.
As the story is written in first person (as it is also written in the red room) we can experience first hand on how Bessie is feeling and we almost begin to feel sorry for her.
The atmosphere changed when Bessie’s attitude towards the men changed. She comes across to be a strong character as she claimed ‘The threats of the two villains would have scared some women out of their senses, but the only result produced on me was violent indignation’- this proves to us that Bessie is determined to put up a fight. She does not want to give into the threats and hand over the valuables trusted to her. She cursed at the men saying things like ‘you cowardly villains’ and ‘you ragamuffin thieves, I defy you both!’. Her over exaggerated anger towards the men begins to build up more tension for the reader.
We are told that there was a ‘dead silence for a minute of two’ before the men attacked the door. In that silence, Bessie will have been nervous and filled with anxiety over what the men were going to do next. As the men attacked the door, Bessie ‘seized a poker’ as a weapon of self defense. She then lighted all the candles she could find: for she felt she could keep her courage up better if she had plenty of light. Like ‘the red room’, light is used as a form of safety/comfort.
The ‘poor pussy’ is used in the story, as a device to build a different kind of atmosphere in the black cottage. It was described as being ‘crouched up, panic stricken, in a corner.’ Again, this mood clashes with the shouting and violence going on at the same time. The author took time to refer back to the cat to show variety in the atmosphere.
Bessie put her mothers ‘four silver spoons’ and Mr. and Mrs., Knifton’s ‘unlucky book with the bank notes’ into her dress to protect them. By referring to the pocket book as unlucky, it is suggesting that it was the pocket book that brought all this bad luck to the black cottage in the first place.
Bessie was doing her best to protect the cottage. She fought her best against all the attempts the men made to enter the black cottage, but as yet another silence occurred; it was only then that Bessie began to get nervous. Wilkie Collins has used rhetorical questions in the story. These are effective for building up suspense as the reader is not informed on what is going to happen next, but instead, is left asking questions; example- ‘I listened eagerly and caught these words: “lets try the other way.” Nothing more was said, but I heard footsteps retreating from the door. Were they going to besiege the back door now?’.
Suspense is raised here when Bessie does hear ‘their voices at the other side of the house.’ My automatic reaction to when I read this was that Bessie had no chance of fighting these men off, but we are reassured again as she re-gained her confidence. This is shown in the story as we are told again about the security and strength of the cottage- E.g. ‘The back door was smaller than the front; but it had this advantage in the way of strength’ and ‘they must have the whole cottage down before they can break in at that door’.
The mood in the story changed as Bessie went into the kitchen and drank a drop of rum. She quoted- ‘Never before have I put anything down my throat that did me half so much good as that precious mouthful of rum.’ At this moment, the mood is calm again. The author does this to make the mood more effective when tension is raised again.
Wilkie Collins effectively uses rhetorical questions again to show Bessie's thoughts and belief in herself. Jerry and Shifty Dick decided to attack from the roof next. Instant tension is raised as a voice from the roof shouted ‘Let us in you she devil’ and then another shout ‘let us in or we’ll burn the place down over your head’. This makes the reader think again that Bessie has been defeated as they started 2 throw stones down the chimney causing live embers to scatter all over the room; but she keeps surprising us with new ideas. Bessie miraculously remembered that there was a large can of water in her bedroom. She then put the fire out so that no more damage could be done. Again, the tension is then calm and we are left feeling puzzled as to what we are going to be surprised with next.
The stones had stopped being thrown down the chimney but just as we begin to feel calm again, more tension is raised as the men began to cut through the roof with a knife. The author used the knife as a device to build up more tension. This is done by the way Wilkie Collins describes the knife and the way it was used- example: ‘slowly and wickedly the knife wriggled its way through the dry inside thatch between the rafters’. The choice of text used to describe the knife gives the wicked impression that Shifty dick himself gives to the reader. We also get the impression that Bessie is in real danger from the knife as it says ‘The murderous hand was still tapping with the knife’. By saying that the hand is murderous, it is saying that Shifty Dick could be dangerous with the knife. As the tension is raised again, we are reassured that the men were not able to get in through the roof as is was sturdy and strong, and that the rafters were stable and ‘nothing lighter than a hatchet would have sufficed to remove any part of them’. All these attempts to get in to the house remind me of the story of ‘the three little pigs’. So far in the story, the black cottage compares to the sturdy brick house that the third little pig had built. Despite all attempts, the big bad wolf (hence- Shifty Dick and Jerry) was not able to get into the house.
Bessie has kept up a strong character making the reader almost forget that she is just a young woman. This changes towards the end of the story. The cowardly villains had another plan that Bessie could not fight against. They had found some beams of wood in the garden shed. It is at this point in the story where the suspense is at its peak. Bessie thought intensively about what was in the shed that could be any use to the two men. During this moment of thinking, she heard them ‘dragging something out the shed’. At that moment, it dawned on her. The author wrote ‘at that same instance when the noise caught my ear, the remembrance flashed across me like lightening of some beams of wood which had lain in the shed for years past.’ We are left wondering what the men are going to do with the wood and if Bessie will be able to defend herself this time.
It was only when the men started to ram against the front door that Bessie accepted she could not protect the house any longer as it is written- ‘‘I can do more than keep the house against them,’ I said to myself with the tears at last beginning to wet my cheeks. I trust to the light and the thick darkness, and save my life by running for it, while there is yet time’. At this point in the story, we now feel sorry for the young woman. By reminding us that she is feminine, this gives the reader more sympathy towards her.
As the door came down, Bessie ‘fled out into the night’. She made it to the farmhouse so be greeted by the farmer’s eldest son. Just as we think that the story has come to an end, it takes other unexpected twists. The additional information at the end is a bit like a ‘and she lived happily ever after scenario’. Wilkie Collins had a different technique in comparison to ‘The Red Room’ in creating suspense. Throughout the story of ‘The Black Cottage’, the author would build up suspense, and then take the tension off what suspense was built up by Bessie’s positive and determined attitude towards situation. By doing this, The ending was more effective as eventually, Bessie could not defend the cottage and the suspense continued to grow.
Charles Dickens novel ‘Sikes and Nancy’ is another example of how a Victorian story creates good tension and suspense.
In the passage where Bill attacks Nancy, there is a strong atmosphere built up. There is lots of dialogue in the passage. We can tell immediately that something is wrong, because of the punctuation used in the speech at the beginning. Bill shouted at Nancy to ‘Get up!!!’ Immediately, this shows urgency as the exclamation marks symbolize raised voices and shouting.
Unlike ‘The red room’ and ‘The black cottage’, which gradually build the tension up for the reader; ‘Sikes and Nancy’ already have that tension from the beginning of the text.
Dickens set the atmosphere and scene. Like the other authors, he included a ‘candle burning’. A candle is very pre 20th century and is typical to Victorian times.
In the text, Nancy goes to ‘undraw the curtain’ as Bill had hurled the candle under the grate. This shows the reader that he is quite violent. Bill then told Nancy to ‘let it be, there’s enough light for what I’ve got to do.’ Immediately, more tension is raised as the reader is wondering what he is going to do.
Nancy said ‘Bill, why do you look at me like that?’. He was described to be looking at her with ‘dilated nostrils and heaving breast’. We can now tell that he is angry at Nancy as he began to act violent towards her- example- he ‘Grasped her by the head and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.’ There is a very strong use of emotive language here to describe the extent of his anger. He also produced his anger in words by calling her a ‘she devil’ and told her that ‘every word you said was heard’. We are now left wondering what she had said.
In a contrast to Bill’s anger, Nancy pleaded with him. She was very OTT and sentimental in what she said to him as she pleaded for her life saying things like ‘stop before you spill my blood!!! I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have!!!’. This showed Nancy’s desperate attempt to plead Bill to spare her life.
Bill grabbed the gun and ‘beat it twice across the upturned face that almost touched his own’. This action creates more tension between the man and the woman. Nancy fell to the ground saying one last prayer ‘for mercy to her maker’ and those were her last words before bill ‘seized a heavy club, and struck her down!!!’. In this passage, Violent Bill clashed with Nancy’s innocence. Dickens added a lot of direct speech and action to build up tension and suspense in the passage.
Hannah Aspin