Compare 'The Red Room' and 'Farthing House', looking particularly at how fear and tension are built Fear and Tension are built up quite differently in the stories 'The Red Room', and 'Farthing House'.
Compare 'The Red Room' and 'Farthing House', looking particularly at how fear and tension are built
Fear and Tension are built up quite differently in the stories 'The Red Room', and 'Farthing House'. Both stories build up feelings of fear and tension but the way the two do so differs. In 'The Red Room', this is achieved by repeatedly emphasising one idea throughout the story (the malevolence of the red room itself) whereas in 'Farthing House' there is no specific idea being repeated, and fear and tension are built up by the constantly high level of activity on the part of the ghost.
If we take 'The Red Room' by H.G. Wells first, we see how Wells builds up powerful levels of tension by describing events that could be the natural result of present circumstances (e.g. a draught). He does this by describing castle in which his main character is to stay in gloomy, and slightly unnerving terms, and how he comes, he says 'to the business with an open mind.' (page 3). In other words, despite the sinister, discomforting appearance of the castle (its darkness, its draughts, it shadows, for example) and 'the man with the withered arm' (who repeatedly warns the author that 'It's your own choosing.'), we begin this tale with the feeling that the narrator will be easily convinced that the castle is haunted.
To the reader it seems that the writer has set up the narrator for a big change of mind. The first thing that the narrator says is full of confidence, maybe even over-confidence:
'I can assure you,' said I 'it would take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.'
This is almost like a challenge to the 'grotesque custodians' of the castle to prove him wrong. From this starting point here, though, he seems to lose the confidence shown in the above quotation. Wells does this by focusing onto initially insignificant happenings (candles forever blowing out, shadows cast by the fire) that can then be interpreted in one of two ways: either they are natural occurrences with rational explanations, or they are the work of an unseen, other-worldly shade.
Wells skilfully shows his main character becoming more and more paranoid (eventually to the point of sheer terror) and becoming steadily less certain of his ideas of ghosts.
By this time i was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition.
The effect of this quotation shows that even the narrator is not sure of what is going on. This builds up tension because when the narrator doesn't know what is happening, we - the reader - get scared. He knows that he is nervous, ...
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Wells skilfully shows his main character becoming more and more paranoid (eventually to the point of sheer terror) and becoming steadily less certain of his ideas of ghosts.
By this time i was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition.
The effect of this quotation shows that even the narrator is not sure of what is going on. This builds up tension because when the narrator doesn't know what is happening, we - the reader - get scared. He knows that he is nervous, but thinking about the situation rationally, he can't figure out why. This tension and uncertainty inside him allows Wells to keep the reader guessing. Along with the narrator, we too feel there can't be any ghost or spirit, but we are perturbed what's happening to the man. This scares the reader just as much as it does the narrator, because of our natural fear of situations where we are not in control.
At the end of the story, the narrator, and 'the man in the shade' from the beginning of the book, describe the red room as harbouring 'black fear...that will not bear with reason, that deafens, darkens and overwhelms' i.e. this is not a ghost as originally thought, but odd happenings coupled with man's own paranoia. So Wells story builds tension and fear effectively because it is based around the idea of (arguably) the most powerful of human emotions, 'The worst of all things that haunt poor mortal man...fear' (page 14), and Wells shows this to us through the character of the narrator.
In 'Farthing House' by Susan Hill, the author builds fear and tension by the skilful use of time frames. In the text itself there are two - the event happening and some time later the narrator (and we can assume that we the reader are taking on the role of the child it is addressed to reading the story much, much later than the two shown in the text). This elaborate time-framing lets us assume that the incident has affected her so that it has taken time for her to recall it and work up the courage to, in a sense, tell someone and write it down, thus building tension by using the automatic assumption that it was an incredibly traumatic incident.
I began to be restless several weeks ago. I was burning the last of the leaves... and I let myself go back...watched it unfold again, remembered. So that it was all clear in my mind...a week later.(pages 16 and 17)
This quotation shows that the author is using time-framing in the story. The time reference 'several weeks ago' doesn't refer to when the incident occurred, but to when she last thought of 'that day'.
A difference between this story and the former is that, whereas the opposite is true for the short story by H.G. Wells, 'Farthing House' by Susan Hill has a narrator that is starts the story worried and becomes content as the plot progresses. The story being written in first person narrative (as in 'The Red Room'), the anxious start makes the uneasy, as the narrator is the only source of emotion available to the reader in the story.
All the same, I was worried, I wasn't sure. ...I couldn't see her in a home.(page 17)
Like 'The Red Room', the narrator's first impressions and opinions are merely her own - inaccurate -speculation. Unlike 'The Red Room', she has people reassuring her, rather than trying to confirm her worries and make her feel weary and insecure.
I do not feel that fear and tension is built up as effectively, or to the same extent, as in 'The Red Room'. Such feelings only go as far as insecurity and several nagging thoughts as to who or what the ghost really is, and as to the source of her temporary feelings of loss.
I was overcome by a curious sadness...a sense of loss, melancholy (page 20)
She didn't know where it came from, only that it was there, but she refuses, also on page 20, to believe that ghosts or spectres or spirits or shades had anything to do with them (the feelings of melancholy). This is an example of instances where the reader is made unsure of the safety of the narrator, although not necessarily scared for it.
The event itself is spread over several days (which, arguably, served to cause less fear than had it all occurred on one night). On the first day she hears a baby crying on her way to bed, and dreams about being in hospital just after being born, feeling content, at peace. But as she wakes she feels as if someone just left the room, and she feels a profound 'curious sadness'. At this point the reader's imagination could get the better of them, but only if they consciously think on the matter of her thinking that someone has just left the room. The next day possibly saw a dreamless sleep, however she awoke to the sound of a woman's crying, and saw who may have left her room that morning. It later turned to be Eliza Maria Dolly, a resident in Farthing House when it was a home for women carrying illegitimate children. She was buried in the local cemetery next to her infant daughter, who may have been the reason why Eliza's ghost left 'the Cedar room' crying.
As an added twist to the storyline, the narrator reveals to us that Farthing House was knocked down in later years to build a cul-de-sac. She also reveals that, after losing her own child, a woman stole another's baby, the child being found later, happy, well and well-looked after. The address of the woman in question was in Farthing House Close. This twist is there to make the reader tense by implying that, although never seen any more, the ghost of Eliza Maria Dolly is still very much active (the word is really 'alive', but ghosts can't really be alive, so I used 'active' instead). I have no doubt that the narrator thought that Eliza's ghost was responsible, as the woman claimed she wasn't of her own mind when the theft happened. I, although I cannot provide a suitable alternative explanation, am sceptical.
In closing, I think that both writers tried similar devices but in different ways. An example is repetition. H.G. Wells uses it to emphasise the malevolence of what haunts the red room, and how it drives the narrator almost completely paranoid. Susan Hill, however, uses repetition to keep the reader asking himself just what the ghost is. However there are more major differences, for example, the open ending of 'The Red Room', although more conventional, is far more cryptic, and dramatic, and not so neat as the also open ending to 'Farthing House'.
Seren Kuhanandan 11 N/FC GCSE English Wider Reading Coursework
05/02/02
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