Like in ‘The Club Footed grocer,’ the writer of the ‘Red room’ has set most of the story is set in darkness to give a terrifying feeling, but unlike ‘The Club Footed Grocer’ candles are used in the ‘Red Room’. This also really adds to the fear and builds up to the main fright, these quotes show the way that the candles do this.
P47 ‘It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back in its place there.’
P47 ‘The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black.’ The candles are used in many ways but mainly to give the feel of the presence getting closer.
Overall, the two settings are quite similar; they are both set in darkness and in unknown isolated places. The authors have chosen these settings so the reader immediately has a feel of being frightened and anxious. The authors have also emphasized the anxiety by making the main characters of the stories have to travel in darkness and isolation so this ‘builds up the fear.’ Another similarity in the setting of these stories is the way the main characters are visited towards the end by what they fear.
Although the two stories have similarities in the way they have been set, there are also differences as there are different types of fear created in the stories. In ‘The Club Footed Grocer’ the setting is more realistic, whereas in the ‘ Red Room’ everything is described as being eerie, even the people and ornaments:
P44 ‘The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly.’ This is because ‘The Red Room’ is a typical ghost story so to set the scene for a presence or ghost to be present, everything needs to build up the intensity of fear. The setting of the ‘Club Footed Grocer’ is more lifelike and realistic, the writer does not need to create a ghostly presence as the fear is of unknown people.
Another difference in the setting’ is the use of light, the writer of the ‘Red Room’ has used candles because they can have an eerie, spooky feel to them. The writer of the ‘Club Footed Grocer’ has not emphasized the use of light because the atmosphere it creates is not needed.
In both the stories, the fear has affected the main characters in different ways. In the ‘Club Footed Grocer’ the nephew is a brave, inquisitive young boy who is quite unaware of the violence and terror he faces when he goes to help his uncle. Although the Nephew was undoubtedly scared of what he saw and experienced as he saw his uncle being killed and nearly lost his own life. But he does not describe much emotion or seam effected by what happened, his actions could make the reader realise the terror he is experiencing. This is seen from the way he was weary of all his surroundings and was desperate to escape from the seamen who were endangering his life.
In ‘The Red Room’ the way the narrator is effected by fear is more obvious. As at the beginning of the story, the narrator seams to be a very brave, cynical, inquisitive young man who is very determined to visit the ‘Red Room’ to see what the three old people believe is in there. These qualities of the narrator vanish after he is visited by the presence, he becomes very weak and venerable, as he was proved wrong and there was a presence in the room.
All the other characters in both the stories help to intensify the fear created. In the ’Club Footed Grocer’ there are a number of different characters. There is the Uncle (Mr Stephen Maple) who is the main victim of the fear, his lifestyle in isolation from danger and the wounds the sailors had given him before seam to strike the nephew and makes him realise the danger he is in. Then there is the uncle’s helper, ‘Enoch’ who is very frightened and ‘on edge,’ and his terror and uneasiness clearly shown to the nephew is what firstly alarms him to the danger he is in. Another person, who alarms the nephew to the danger on the journey, is Farmer Purcell and his family who make clear that they are not fond of his uncle.
There is also the nephew’s mother who is used at the beginning of the story to set the scene and explain the situation. Then the sailors, who are the reason the fear is created, they are very disruptive and boisterous, they are almost give the same fear as a ghost as they have the same sort of presence, vigorous, powerful and alarming.
In the ‘Red Room’ there are fewer characters, there are only the three old people who the narrator meets when he enters the castle. The narrator describes these old people as being like ghosts which intensifies the fear,
P43 ‘I have suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence.’ They seam ancient, unfriendly and inhuman, the narrator describes this on
P44 ‘Something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic:’ he also mentions ‘The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, there bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness.’
The writer has used these types of characters to set the scene for a ghost story and make the narrator seem determined, as he is not frightened enough by them, to decide not to go into the Red Room.
Overall, all the characters in both the stories help to intensify the fear, but the main characters seam to be effected by fear in different ways, in the ‘Red room’ the fear is obvious as he describes it clearly. Whereas in the ‘Club Footed Grocer’ the nephew does not show his feelings but his actions prove that he was afraid.
The stories are similar in plot in the way the Authors seem to create the whole story around creating fear, they both make the main characters travel to the place were they meet what they fear most and everything on the journeys intensifies the terror. They also differ because they are different types of stories, a ghost story and a sensation fiction story. So they are scared of different things in different ways, the nephew is scared for his life, and the narrator is scared of the unknown (scared of his own fear).
The language the writers have used in these stories is the main feature of what intensifies the fear. They have used explicit language to describe the terror and dread of the coming danger or unknown. The writer of ‘The Club Footed Grocer,’ Sir Arthur Doyle, has used language of dread and anxiety, which is seen in most of the characters behaviour. On the Nephews journey, when he first experiences fear, he briefly describes his dread, ’The vague, inexplicable sense of danger in the midst of the loneliness...’
In the ‘Red Room’ the language is more ghostly and spiritual as he uses words to describe the fear and peril he is experiencing of seeing a ghost or presence.
The imagery also exaggerates the sense of fear especially in ‘The Red Room,’ when the candles are miraculously being blown out. As mentioned before, the narrator describes all objects in Lorraine Castle to be ‘ghostly.’ even the people are seen to be inhuman which is obviously going to great fear for the reader. The imagery in ‘The Club Footed Grocer,’ is of being watched and followed by the sailors while travelling to Greta house, so the imagery creates terror especially when the seamen barge into the house.
The writer of the ‘The Red Room’ seems to use the most repetition, when the narrator meets the owners of the Castle, the old lady repeats, “This night of all nights!” By repeating in three times it gets the message across and emphasises it, it also creates irony, as she seems like a ghost.
The narrator also repeats words that he uses to describe the atmosphere in the ‘chilly’ passage and the candle ‘flaring’ in the draft.
In general, I think the author of the ‘Red Room’ uses the language the most to create fear. The two authors only use similar techniques in their use of imagery but otherwise the writer of ‘The Club Footed Grocer’ does not use as much vocabulary and repetition to intensify the fear.
Overall, the author of ‘The Red Room,’ creates the fear in his story as being something that is created in your mind from things that we do not understand or experience very often. The author of ‘The Club Footed Grocer,’ perceives fear as being of the same things but not really created in your mind but from real events. So the authors see fear in different ways but not created from different things. If the two authors were to swap over the type of stories and rewrite them themselves e.g. the writer of ‘The Red Room,’ to write a sensation fiction story, the stories would be completely different in structure and language.
On the whole there are about as many differences as similarities in the setting, characterisation, plot and language. They may be very similar in setting and the use of characters but as they are different types of stories there use language differs, as the stories require different writing techniques to make them such individual, interesting stories.