Personification is used greatly in both the texts, to build tension and atmosphere, and to get the reader more involved with engaging in the texts.
In the earlier quote ‘stirring’ is especially emotive, suggestive of an awakening as if the man has awakened some mysterious evil, which keeps the reader gripped. These shadows, which keep appearing in the story, are constantly personified to build up tension.
Repetition is used in various ways in both texts. In ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, the word ‘ugly’ is often used to describe ‘Warings’, to keep the writer informed. This is to emphasise how ugly it is and can be seen when Susan Hill says, ‘It was an ordinary house, he thought, an ugly house’ and ‘Wrings was ugly. It was entirely graceless, rather tall and badly angled, built of dark red brick’.
In ‘The Red Room’, ideas of dark and light are repeatedly used to stress the battle between light and dark to the reader. Wells states: ‘the effect was scarcely what I expected for the coming in by the great windows. On the grand staircase picked out everything in vivid black shadows or silvery illuminations’. In ‘The Red Room’ Wells uses light and dark against each other. This battle is demonstrated when candles are lit to try and dispel darkness. ‘All these I lit one after another. The fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper – and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver’. The fight continues and metaphor is introduced when the narrator states, ‘My candle was 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’. The two metaphors ‘Tongue of light’ and ‘Island of light’ develop the idea of a battle, creating a very sinister atmosphere. This idea is apparent in ‘I’m the King of the Castle’ when the darkness is used to create a disturbing atmosphere. ‘It was very dark inside the red room. Beyond the windows, the sky was steely grey’.
Ideas of darkness are used frequently in the description of Warings, especially when the writer describes the plants in the grounds. She writes about the bushes of rhododendron, which are used to describe the barriers surrounding Warings. The writer describes the plants as dark and overbearing, suggesting a malicious area. Yew trees are used in similar circumstances with their ‘Dark green leathery leaves’, further suggestive of closing in. The trees are tall to conjure up the overpowering characteristics of Warings.
Not only outside Warings, but also inside the idea of darkness prevails, wood is dark, dark red brick. All of these ideas are combined to contribute to a feeling of evil and an eerie atmosphere of Warings. This atmosphere is crucial to ‘I’m the King of the castle’, because it emphasises the tension and evil in Warings, which reflects on Edmund and Kingshaw.
The darkness of Warings extends to the red room within the house. It is a dark, unwelcoming room, ‘It was very dark inside. Beyond the windows, the sky was steely grey, the rain teemed down. The branches of the yew trees were bent against them’.
Kingshaw went only a little way into the room, and then stopped. He had known that it would be like this, that he would not like it. ‘There was a dead smell’, This latter introduces another theme running throughout both texts – age and death, a theme which supports the feeling of tension.
Death is prevalent in ‘I’m the King of the Castle, when Hooper takes Kingshaw to see the dead moths in the red room. The ‘dead’ smell unsettled Kingshaw. The physical appearance of the moths echoes the idea of death for e.g.
‘Whimpering, pattering wings, or these moths, flattenend and pinned and dead’, and it continues to foretell death. Death is a recurrent theme, which appears in ‘I’m the King of the Castle’
In ‘The Red Room’ death is used to build up more atmosphere. The description of old shambling characters create an atmosphere of impending doom. The castle is also old, and the second old main’s appearance suggests death and decay. Wells says ‘his lower lip with yellow teeth’, which creates an atmosphere of decay and evil, and rotting things.
The three characters in, ‘The Red Room’ are senile, unpleasant and unattractive who un-nerve the visitor. These ghostly characters reflect the presence of old man Hooper. At the beginning of ‘I’m the king of the castle’, granddad Hooper creates an eerie atmosphere, and an unsettling introduction to the novel, as does the house. The descriptions of his death in ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, create an unsettling introduction to the novel, as do the house keepers in ‘The Red Room’, both texts cooperate to build up a climax. In ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, Hooper’s letter to Kingshaw, when Hooper writes, ‘Something will happen to you Kingshaw’, suggests an immediate climax to the story. Similar techniques are used in ‘The Red Room’, but tend to be less subtle, as can be seen in the old women’s frequent, repetition of ‘This night of all nights’.
Variation in pace heightens the build up of tension. As the candles are blown out. ‘The Red Room’, sentences are shorter. This quickening of pace is also seen when the visitors fear grows as all of the candles are extinguished.
The author of ‘The Red Room’ also uses emotive language associated with desperation to describe the man’s actions. He becomes desperate, panic stricken and fear filled. The language becomes suggestive of hysteria, for e.g. ‘I flung out my arms’. His screaming symbolises a loss of rationality. From this point on the story moves quickly.
In ‘I’m the King of the Castle’; Susan Hill also uses change of pace to heighten tension, especially when Kingshaw’s last journey into ‘Hang Wood’ is described. There are many short sentences, ‘Kingshaw had found the clearing now’, and ‘He didn’t stop to look’. These suggest that Kingshaw is reacting to some sense of urgency. This moves the story quickly to a climax and the suicide of Kingshaw. Both ‘I’m the King of the Castle’ and ‘The Red Room’, use ideas of anticipation and expectation to create a build up of tension and atmosphere. On the whole, ‘The Red Room’, is a greater story of suspense than, ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, because ‘The red room’, uses: - personification, light and dark, repetition, language, pace and finally death to build tension and atmosphere.
In ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, Hill uses setting and atmosphere well, so that it did in fact create tension and atmosphere. She described the grounds and the house very well, it was very convincing. She also used an awful lot of personification to build up the tension and atmosphere in the novel. H.G Wells also uses personification to build tension and atmosphere in ‘The Red Room’, but I don’t think he did it quite as well as Susan Hill, but it still worked well. I personally prefer ‘The Red Room’, because it is a short ghost story, and it is easy to read, and also it is more interesting than ‘I’m the King of the Castle’.
