When the narrator makes references to his “predecessors” and to “older stories that clung to the room” tension starts to increase and the readers’ expectations are higher.
I do not think that the characters are important in “The Red Room” as there is very little that the reader is told about them. The fact that you don’t know the name of the main character adds to the mystery. This I believe also adds to the mysteriousness of each character and in turn the story. The only character who is developed and that we know relatively more about is the person who is telling the story in a first person narrative. He is the author’s vehicle in the story and guides us through the story. We find out how old he is when he says “Eight and twenty years”. He says it like that because the book was written at the Victorian era and it was common for people to talk like that. The narrator seems extremely confident at the beginning of the story saying “Well, I said with… … an open mind” meaning he is not afraid of what the people at the inn are scared of. However at the end he is a bit more appreciative of the fact that “The Red Room” is actually scary. I know this because he says “The worst of all … … in all its nakedness - fear!” The Red Room had an extremely weak plot but I think that the sentence structure and language used by the author managed to compensate for that.
The mystery is solved at the end because throughout the story the reader is led to believe that the room is haunted but at the end the narrator reveals that there is nothing in the room to fear but fear itself. This twist further adds to the mystery.
“The Speckled Band” is different to “The Red Room” in many sense the most obvious that it is much more descriptive and plot driven. I think that it is important to understand that “The Speckled Band” follows the same formula which is used by Arthur Conan Doyle in all of his Sherlock Holmes stories; a crime takes place, a person comes to Sherlock Holmes looking for help, Sherlock Holmes investigates and solves the mystery and then explains how he figured things out. I think one of the characters in The Speckled Band is perhaps the most important, Watson. He represents the reader in the story as he asks questions that the reader would want answers to. This makes it easier for the reader to understand the story and enables him/her to get the proper feeling of the tension and suspense that the characters would feel in the story. I noticed one more difference between The Speckled Band and the two other stories. This is that women are only shown as the main characters in The Speckled Band however Helen Stoner is on the receiving end of the bad actions and she goes looking for Sherlock Holmes to help suggesting she is not capable of taking care of herself. It is not surprising that she is given a passive role because it is typical Victorian stereotyping. This can perhaps be explained by the time the story was written.
Once again the sentence structure is similar to that in “The Red Room”. It helps build up suspense. Words such as fantastic have different meanings to what I would understand them to be e.g. “fantastic” means strange. Although at the time that the story was written the readers would have understood the meanings, for me it added to the mysteriousness. The plot of The Speckled Band is very strong and this is important for the story serve its purpose. I think there is one thing in the story that is unable to add to the mystery due to the time difference between when the story was written and now. At the time when the story was written “Indian Animal“, when mentioned would instantly attract interest and therefore add to the mystery as there was not much known about them. This is because India was difficult to travel to and seemed exotic. Setting again is very important because it allows the author to mislead the reader by using a “Red Herring” such as the gypsies. He could not have done this if he did not set the home of Helen Stoner in a Mansion with Acres of space around it.
I think “The Signalman” is both like “The Red Room” and less than “The Speckled Band”. It has a fairly strong plot and there is not much character development. Only a little bit of description of the Signalman. H seems to be leading a solitary life and appears to have time on his hand. I can see this because we are constantly told he spends a lot of time on his own when comments on his “lonely post to occupy” are made. He however, throughout the story seems to be an interesting character. Firstly he appears to be a bit rude when he does not reply to the narrator character but he seems to be well mannered as he later refers to the narrator as “sir”. He looks at the “little bell when it did not ring” which adds to the mystery and made me ask why he was doing this.
The fact that trains were the fastest means of transport at the time and that they were most frequently used made it possible for the reader to relate to the situation more.
The setting is very well chosen. It is set in a signal box which adds to the oppressive atmosphere of the story and makes the reader more aware of the isolation of the signalman himself. I think is the most effective in creating suspense as it is a dark isolated place. This shows the place to be cut off from the rest of the world and the phrase “cutting was extremely deep” justifies my opinion. I think that the story is very misleading up until it is revealed that the Signalman foresaw his death. Another thing that is different in “The Signalman” is that the person on the receiving end of the mysterious happenings is less in control of the situation than in the other two stories. This I thought helped make the story more mysterious. It has a similarity to the other two stories in the sense that the writing style is similar with the usage of long sentences helping to build suspense.
The mystery is solved as the narrator tells us that the ghost in fact was the train driver warning the signalman off the track. In a sense the signalman foresaw his death; this makes the story more mysterious.
I believe that a good mystery story does need a strong plot but character development is not as important because the characters in the above stories do not develop; yet the stories are full of mystery. I think the main thing is the description of the setting and the use of imagery. The vocabulary plays a major part in this, rather than giving a simple sentence; the author uses a complex structure and therefore creates a much clearer accurate picture. This is proof of the authors’ good writing skills. I found “The Speckled Band” the most mysterious as it had a complex plot, Sherlock Holmes threw in the red herring about the gypsies and we as the readers got to find out a lot about the characters. The description of the settings was also helpful. All the factors mentioned above are evident in the three stories which I believe to be very good mystery stories.
Shazib Bin Zaman 11K
