As the title bears the importance of enticing the reader, the entrance has the importance of taking the readers mind to a different world, a world of fiction, bringing the reader to feel himself apart of this story, a silent observer to this adventure. It is therefore the mark of a good writer to bring this fulfilment to the readers mind immediately however in all me examples below I found this to have not been true, opening in different ways. Maybe this punchy introduction is a modern day literacy characteristic, something which wasn’t needed in the 19th century with limited entertainment.
In The Man with the Twisted Lip, Conan Doyle has done this with a difference I have never encountered before – he has opened with a Red Herring. If you didn’t have enough questions unanswered with the title, you mind goes into overdrive to attempt to place the opening event with the rest of the story.
In The Adventures of the Speckled Band it doesn’t offer this immediate junction, he introduces the story as we are used to with the literature of Conan Doyle, a recount by Dr. Watson.
The placing of a red herring at the opening of the twisted lip I think was an experiment by Conan Doyle, I might go so far as to say he was making a point. It was around this time that Conan Doyle had attempted to write Sherlock Holmes out of his series, thus ending his illustrious career. However his popularity was such that by Royal Decree of Her Majesty Queen Victoria Sherlock Holmes was set to return.
This Red Herring could be a testimony to telling the reader just who was in charge of Sherlock Holmes, coincidence perhaps but maybe a reason for Conan Doyle’s straying from the norm.
The creation of this red herring is not something a find adds to the book, I feel its just a page of dull waffle, it does nothing to interest me the reader, for if it weren’t for Conan Doyle’s acclaim and previous works, I am sure I would have not continued to read the book.
The entrance to the Red Room is quite abrupt, using prose as the opening sentence; “I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me,” you can also see how Wells immediately begins his theme, in comparison to the slightly more leisurely starts of Conan Doyle. This I feel is not common among literature however it serves Wells story well for I think he intended to throw you into the deep end if you like, trying to prevent the reader time to reflect, draw conclusions as to why Wells is writing this story, spoiling the shock he wanted at the end.
As Conan Doyle begins to move his story, we usually see the tell tale signal of a client Holmes conference, in which Doyle takes the opportunity to express the knowledge of Holmes to his reader and begin his tale. In the Adventures of the Speckled band there is no exception;
Sherlock Holmes “You have come in by train this morning I see.
Client: “You know me then?
Holmes: “No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads before you reached your station.”
This formula used by Conan Doyle is a common structure throughout most of his tales. It has a simple purpose of generating the aura that surrounds Holmes, the unbeatable crime fighter. In the Man with the Twisted Lip there is a similar meeting between Sherlock Holmes and his new client, Mrs St Clair:
Sherlock Holmes: “I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go and enquire as to the address.”
Mrs St. Clair: “How can you tell that?”
Holmes: “The name, you see, is perfectly black ink, which has dried itself. The rest is of the greyish colour, which shows that blotting paper ahs been used.”
How do the authors keep the story in suspense?
The methods of both Conan Doyle and HG Wells are similar as the use plenty of descriptive passages, packed full of sinister adjectives. They make good use of thermal and sound imaging, adding to the increasingly tense atmosphere.
In HG Wells’ Red Room, the descriptive passages are large, never sparse but thick with a different level of English. For example, Well’s wouldn’t say ‘the bookcase was scary’, the book case would be ‘ominous shrouded in a foreboding illumination’:
“I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags…and the door creaked on its hinges.”
This highlights my above points but also how Well’s has taken your stereotypical haunted house commodities – cold stone floors, creaky doors – and placed them with the added intensity of adjectives, adverbs to aid the growing fear. This language is reflected not just in the description but the choice of nouns:
“There were candles in the sockets of the sconces.” Nowadays I don’t think anybody uses ‘sconces’ but rather candle sticks but for a modern reader looking at this tale, this uncommon noun will add to the menacing mood, for the simple fact that it is not a normal, everyday word.
In Sherlock Holmes the descriptive passages are just as important to building the tension however they don’t come in solid paragraphs, rather placed in and around to create the effect. I think this is due to the complexity of Holmes is mystery, Conan Doyle is offering you, red herrings, misleading information whereas Wells is telling you like it is:
“A flickering oil lamp”
“The clink of horse’s hooves”
“An endless succession of sombre and deserted streets”
These are a few examples of the more simple nature of Conan Doyle’s description. However I feel that the two writers are building to different levels. HG Wells is quite simply trying to build fear, looking to create a spooky, eerie atmosphere, whereas Conan Doyle is not looking for fear rather suspense. You could argue that they are the same thing but I see the Red Room as plain fear, one straight path to conclusion, whereas Conan Doyle offers you many paths with no obvious sign post. Of course there must be some fear, as Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes creep through Dr Roylott’s garden (past foreign beats) or through the slums of London looking for Neville St Clair’s assassin, but Conan Doyle also wants in trepidation, who is the murder?, kind of attitude.
This brings me onto my next point, how do the authors work with the feelings of the reader in creating these effects?
The Red Room, I feel would have had a better effect on a 19 century reader for the reader will belong to a religious generation, an era of great fear of the supernatural whereas today it is accepted that there are no such things as ghosts. I think Wells worked with this audience, building on beliefs that the reader already had, aiding his creation of his desired atmosphere.
Conan Doyle similarly was working with an audience gripped with fear of Jack the Ripper, a London of crime. So when Sherlock Holmes is walking through the East End of London, the reader will already experience fear in relation to Jack the Ripper, rather than any foreboding description. This is the case more so in The Man with the Twisted Lip, for the reader has more to reflect with, for practically everybody would have understood the squalor of East London but not the Mansion inhabited by Gypsies, wild animals and a passionately argumentative doctor.
Another way authors choose to increase dramatic potential of their tales is to use these descriptive passages in conjunction with characters, not just setting. HG Wells has done this to an extent; “I caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness in the queer old mirror”, “My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, their very existence spectral.”
Conan Doyle also chooses to embellish his story with these character references, but I feel that in comparison they go through up much more meaning. I think HG Wells barely cuts the surface of these characters but then again as a first person narrative; the association of the story with the three house workers is less meaningful to the drama. It is as though he sees the workers as objects, generating a greater spectral reference to their state, therefore creating greater fear for the reader. In comparison, Conan Doyle specifies with greater detail his characters. Dr Roylott, for instance, is a perfect example. He is an intriguing character; a original man of verve and zip, a practitioner working to cure mans ills, allows his mind to be overcome by temper. Conan Doyle builds this in to his tale, with two huge descriptive paragraphs, as told from his step daughter’s perspective: “But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time… He shut himself up in his house and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels.” Conan Doyle then follows this on by using action. Later on Sherlock Holmes encounters Dr. Roylott for the first time. A brash of words is swiftly followed by evidence – “He steppes swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.”
As a summary the authors have both made use of simple literary techniques in order to build suspense and fear. These melodramatic methods use the characters, the surrounding scenery and sounds to generate their trepidation. Having said this, they have used different strategies to work to this goal. This is not to say that Conan Doyle is rubbish, unskilled or vice se versa but the plot of the stories lays restraints on the author. For instance, I think that Wells was looking to produce a moral, an ethic which tells the reader ‘there are no such things as ghosts.’ Wells has then chosen to use an uncomplicated story to convey this – there is really only one character. He does not have the options of different settings or people in order to generate fear and instead to provide the suspense embellishes the story with his use of language by utilising descriptive passages throughout. On the other hand Conan Doyle is able to use the personalities of his various characters and the different situations with in the storyline to create and sustain suspense for the reader.
In conclusion my favourite tale was that of “The Adventures of the Speckled Band”.
The Red Room was me least favourite. The lack of characters, I think, meant that in order to create his suspense, Wells was forced to talk at length about the setting. These descriptive passages were written in a style, a vocabulary unused today. For me the need to read the story with the use of a dictionary breaks up any sort of hold the author might start to be taking on the reader, subsequently unable to generate the same effect the story might have done a hundred years ago. The conclusion that fear is the killer not ghosts, is an interesting twist but if were not for the need to read the story I would never have gone further than the first page.
The Sherlock Holmes tales are something I find easier to read. For some reason, although written about the same time the language used by Conan Doyle is more in keeping with the language in use today. I also feel that the books offer more than one basic forward moving plot. If you look at a tale as a road and that as the author creates ideas, so turnings appear on this road. The Sherlock Holmes are the spaghetti junction compared to Well’s Red Room. These red herrings make me as the reader enter more into the tale, trying to workout where this conclusion will come from.
My choice of “The Adventures of the Speckled Band” over “The Man with the Twisted Lip” is due to the diversity of the tale – run down mansions, gypsies, wild animals, Dr Roylott just add more interest (for me) than Hugh Boone the professional beggar. Although the likelihood of a snake making the journey described and then finding sufficient reason to murder a sleeping person is slightly unrealistic I felt that Sherlock Holmes arrived at this conclusion with more evidence (making it more likely) than that of “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
After having spent weeks analysing these stories I think Wells was trying to create more than a scary tale rather a scenario to persuade the reader, the public that there are no such things as ghosts.
Conan Doyle, I don’t think was really trying to build anything extra form his tales. I mentioned earlier the proclamation of Queen Victoria possible causing him to open with a red herring however other than that I can’t think as to why he wrote that tale, what sparked the imagination to generate those ideas.
