'Compare and contrast the ways in which the writers of the 'The Red Room' and 'The Signalman' capture and sustain their audiences imagination.'

Authors Avatar

Lucinda Batchelor D11

English Coursework

‘Compare and contrast the ways in which the writers of the ‘The Red Room’ and ‘The Signalman’ capture and sustain their audiences imagination.’

                 The Red Room is a story by HG wells and is about a man who goes to an ancient castle to ghosthunt. This proves to be successful after a near fatal encounter with candles during his vigil. The Signalman by Dickens is about a man who is being haunted by ghostly figures that precede death.  This soon leads to his own death.

         These two stories are both written in the Victorian period, The Red room in 1894 and the signal man in 1866. Because of this, and the nature of these stories, they belong to the gothic genre of writing. This is odd because the Victorian era are known for their huge advancements in technology and science. This doesn’t account for their fascination with the supernatural and superstition. These stories were popular because of their suspense and twist in their tales involving ghosts, supernatural beings and the unexplainable.

          This paper will focus on how the two stories compare against each other and how the two successfully capture the fear and imagination of their readers and keep it.

           

           The setting described in ‘The Red Room’ is dark and ancient; an example of this is the idea of the labyrinthine corridors and passageways the narrator must walk through in order to get to ‘the Red Room’. ‘ You go along the passage for a bit, until you come to a door and through that is a spiral staircase and halfway up…Go through that and down the long corridor to end and the red room is on your left up the steps.’ This shows that it is an endless and long journey to get to the final destination. It is also impossible for him to make a quick escape if something goes wrong and he has to return. If he does try to return he could easily get himself lost and get him into more danger than he was before.  The recurring theme of darkness versus light in this story also has an effect in the corridors. The only thing that gives a direction in the dark is a solitary candle, which he keeps with him. He is not able to see around corners and alcoves that he may come to pass along his journey and because of this, everything seems more threatening and dangerous. And example of this could be when he is about to find the red room and is confronted my a statue of a ‘ Ganymede and Eagle’ this startles him and stands for what he describes as thirty seconds with his hand and on a gun before he relaxes. This is because he is unable to see its true nature in the darkness and assumes the worst possible scenario ‘…impression of someone crouching to waylay me…’

               The setting in ‘the Signalman is similar to that of  ‘The Red Room’ but unusually for gothic horror stories it takes place in the day and is set in a modern place which makes it all the more intriguing and thought provoking for the reader. It is set on a railway line signal box in the middle of a cutting. This has been referred as ‘The unnatural valley’ to show its roughness and enforces the point of modern technology ploughing through natural beauty and destroying it. The cutting itself was dark and dank. It was uninhabitable and had a certain untouchable quality about it ‘ clammy stone it became oozier and wetter as I went down…’

Join now!

The setting also includes an ominous looking tunnel in which two of the three fatalities occur. The tunnel is described as ‘barbarous’ this suggests that it feels deadly and uncouth and has a certain barbaric power about it. The tunnel has also been personified to have some sort of animal like qualities that make it all the more threatening and disturbing. This allows us to feel like the tunnel is an unwelcome guest in this story and this is also where most of the tragedies occur.

Another reason the scene seems to the reader to be ...

This is a preview of the whole essay