Examine the ways in which fear and tension are built up by the writers of 'The Red Room' and 'Examination Day'

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Examine the ways in which fear and tension are built up by the writers of 'The Red Room' and 'Examination Day'

Two short stories titled the Red Room by H G Wells and Examination Day by Henry Slesar, have used different techniques to build up a fear and tension in their stories. The Red Room was set in the 19th century and was aimed at Victorian readers who liked ghost and mystery stories. The Red Room has a Gothic genre and therefore uses the horror tradition to build up fear. It uses settings such as dark lonely castles, churches, and old houses in Desolate or exotic locations. The readers liked to be frightened as the story developed, but they preferred the ending to be explained, therefore much of the writing in the story is detailed and explicit in order to build up fear in the readers mind.

Examination day was written in the 20th century, and therefore its readers were more sophisticated. People were less frightened by Gothic detail and the supernatural, and more shocked by fear of what may happen in the future with the advancement of technology and controlling governments after world war two. This is a science fiction story and the style of writing is plain and impulsive, the fear is left to be built up in the reader's imagination.

'The Red Room' is a good example of Victorian writing which aims to scare the reader. In it a young man visits a castle to find out if ghosts really exist there, as there are many rumours about it and no one is sure of the truth. The man visits the red room and finds out that the rumours are true and that there is a ghost.

The narrator in 'The Red Room' is initially very arrogant and states that he needs to see a ghost to believe in the supernatural myths of the red room, "it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me". He shows his pretentiousness again by assuring the other characters that he has never seen a ghost before and he has been around 28 years.

The narrator is firstly disturbed by the description of the 3 people looking after the house. They are very stereotypical and have all of the bad features expected of old people. There is a man with a withered arm and an old woman with pale eyes. The third man which arrives is described as being "more bent, more wrinkled, more aged that the first". They have difficulty standing, "he supported himself by a single crutch". They have decaying teeth. Their movements are clumsy and shaky and they 'cough and splutter'. The writer describes them as 'grotesque custodians'. They are shown not to like each other very much which causes a bad atmosphere, "Unfriendly to me and to one another". The things they say are also strange. There is a lot of repetition of certain phrases, "Its your own choosing", this is said 4 times as a warning that it is his own choice to go to the red room. The woman also says twice, "This night of all nights!", leading the reader to believe that there was something special about that night. The style used in this sentence is very typical of a Gothic genre, as it has left mystery in the readers mind.
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'Examination Day' is a good example of how modern stories differ from Victorian ones. In it, a boy named Dickie reaches his twelfth birthday and is told that he has to take a government test. His parents have not mentioned this to him before and the household seems tense. Dickie is sent to a strange futuristic building where he undergoes some tests which are performed in a different manner to which most are carried out.

The characters described in 'Examination Day' are very different from those in 'The Red Room'. Dickie Jordan is a very curious ...

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