Examine the techniques used to create tension and suspence in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Red Room’
The stories of, The Tell-Tale heart and The Red Room are both set in the 18th century where gothic mystery stories dominated in English Literature. Tension and suspence is created using narrative techniques like plot development, characterisation and the settings of the stories. Here I will examine these points.
In Tell-Tale Heart, the writer has used a stereotypical setting for a horror story, night time. For seven nights the man would peek though the old mans door. ‘And this I did for seven long nights –every night at midnight,’ the writer makes the reader immediately know that this story is not a happy story or a funny story just by presentation that its dark and midnight. The whole story is located at the home of the old man. The old man had his shutters closed because of fear of robbers and the room was pitch black at the time, ‘His room was black as pitch with the rich darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers).’ This made it easier for the man to open the door because he knew that the old man would not be able to see, ‘So I knew that he could not see the opening of the door.’ Throughout the story there are constant references to it being night time, ‘as I have done, night after night,’ ‘many a night, just at midnight,’ etc. This conveys some symbolism, where, usually, dark represents evil and light represents good, in this case the whole story is set in darkness and at night and so it brings out more of the mans evilness. There is also a suggestion that it’s windy outside, ‘It is nothing but the wind in the chimney.’ These sorts of weather conditions suggest more about the obscurity of the location. The normal setting for a murder or horror story is often in darkness, the way that Edgar-Alan Poe has made this even more tense is by including a pitch black home where no one but an old man is living where the wind is flowing through the chimney and no one but a madman is overlooking him. This creates a sudden air of tension, if the story is acted out, immediately the audience will be uneasy and nervous.
Similarly the setting of the red room takes place in a castle that has been left to be looked after by three old people. The use of candles in the story gives the man a sense of well being and safety because in pitch black they are given some limited light by the candle, ‘A pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks.’ The reader experiences tension because they feel the narrators fear vicariously. Because the story is set at night, not much light is felt which is why the genre is more gothic, ‘I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and … walked out into the moonlight carrying a candle.’ The lack of light raises the level of suspense and makes the narrator vulnerable as he cannot see clearly. The use of pathetic fallacy is used, ‘By Jove that draughts’ a strong one!’ The weather contributes to the narrator feeling uncomfortable, the way that the wind and the darkness together mix can almost have human characteristics and makes the reader think about if the narrator will escapee the darkness. During the story and whilst the man enters the room, there is a sort of war between darkness and light, ‘As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipse.’ This shows how powerful the darkness can be which can frighten the reader because they feel the fright of the narrator vicariously. There is a lot of tension built up by the theme of evil and darkness, ‘And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand,’ ‘I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling.’ The darkness and evil theme overpowers the good, light theme which builds up suspense because the reader knows that there is more to come.
