W.W.Jacobs creates tension by using short, quick, sentences. “She cried struggling. Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming!” This device quickens the pace of the story, making it upbeat and creating tension and anxiety. Likewise, Guy de Maupassant also uses the same technique to create tension when the woman has lost the necklace. “That’s right. That’s probably it. Did you get his number? No. Did you happen to notice it? No!” This creates a rhythm of short sentences, and as the reader expects the same quick sentences next, Guy de Maupassant creates further suspense, by using long, complex sentences, which delays the crisis. Ironically he also uses short sentences when he writes about the woman and her husband getting out of debt. “She was determined to pay. They dismissed the maid. They lived like this for 10 years.” This is ironic as he uses short, quick, sentences to describe a period of years. You would expect long, complex sentences to build up tension and anxiety within the reader.
These two stories are aimed at older audiences and you can tell they were written around the 19th century. For example today, people expects horror books and films to be bloody and gory, a lot more explicit and deathly than a century ago. Also a lot of the vocabulary in these stories is not common today, words such as fusillade, furtively, candlestine and rubicund. These words date the story to when the English language was not spoken quickly and didn’t included abbreviations and short words. Also, in The Necklace, the currency used is Francs, which is not used at all today; “I could get by on 400 francs”.
Both the writers use literary devices to great effect in their stories. There is a sense of repetition in both the stories, “Wish. Wish!” and “My boy! My boy!” This is used to remind the reader of the word or even to annoy the reader. It could also be used to get the point across or emphasise something. The writers both use punctuation strongly, with commas, colons, semi-colons, ellipsis and dashes, used to slow the story down, make sentences longer or delay the suspense. Exclamation marks, question marks and full stops (repeated in a short space of time) are used to quicken the story and to make it upbeat and exciting. Personification gives inanimate objects human qualities, which brings them alive, to another character in the story. The Monkey’s Paw is a good example “the unwholesome thing in his hand.”
In both of the stories, the writer makes the reader feel sympathetic towards the greedy person’s other half. In The Monkey’s Paw, the wife is looked upon as helpless when her husband takes the cursed talisman and wishes greedily. Similarly, in The Necklace, the husband gets a once in a lifetime opportunity, yet the woman is still unhappy and refuses to go. She also demands money from him. “He turned slightly pale, for he had been setting aside just that amount to buy a gun and finance hunting trips.” He gives her everything she wants, just to make her happy but still she is not content. Guy de Maupassant does not make you feel any sympathy for the wife once she loses the necklace, after being so greedy and selfish. However, W.W.Jacobs makes you feel sympathetic for the man that was greedy and took the talisman even though he knew it was cursed. He wished everything to be back to normal and is overpowered with guilt. In the end he wishes his son away, because he does not want his wife to see her son in some a gruesome state after he died earlier.
W.W.Jacobs (William Wymark Jacobs, 1863-1943) was famous for his short, horror stories, however the majority of his writing was in a humorous tone. He was also known for his sea stories. His familiarity with the waves and the people who live upon them gave him material for these stories. He was also known for some of his short ghost tales and stories of mystery and the tension, such as the ‘The Monkey's Paw’.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a French author, who was considered the greatest French short story writer. Maupassant was originally a poet, and during the 1880’s he created around 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books and one volume of verse. His tone was often recognised by his highly controlled style, his objectivity and sometimes his sheer comedy. Mostly his tales were based on everyday life events, which revealed the hidden sides of people. Maupassants most moving horror story (Le Horla 1887) was based upon madness and suicide. Maupassant had suffered from syphilis from his 20’s and this later caused increasing mental disorder.
In 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide, but failed and was entered into a private asylum in Paris, where he died over a year later. His stories often portrayed his illness, with horror stories, including supernatural visions. Even in his first collection, (Le Maison Tellier) published when he was at the height of his health, the stories were ghastly and ones you would expect in a nightmare.
The effect of both the stories is meant to scare the reader. Neither of these stories are particularly scary, but are both classified as gothic horror. I found the use of short quick words to quicken the pace of the story, an effective way to interest me and after long, boring, complex sentences, creating ‘on-the-edge-of-your-seat’ intrigue into what is going to happen. Next, the use of irony in the stories really makes things more interesting and gives the story another point to look at it from. Both of these stories contain strong use of irony, ‘The Necklace’, using it at the end to leave the story as a cliff-hanger; “It couldn’t have been worth much more than five thousand francs!…” and ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, using it during the story, turning a warm night in for the family, a devastating life for the parents.
In conclusion, both of the stories use many literary devices to create tension and scare us. Neither of the stories are particularly scary but leave you anxious into what happens. Both of the stories are similar in being gothic horror stories and are set around the turn of the 19th century. On the other hand, they are quite different in how they use long and short sentences at different parts of the story, how they make the reader feel during the story and what affect their story has on the person reading it.
