“He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him pressing him to soon with a repetition of my idle question.”
This makes us weary of both characters that build up the tension. When they meet the tension decreases because they seem to be normal.
‘The man from the South’ uses more characters than any other story that I am discussing. However, one character seems to create the suspense more than any other.
“A small, oddish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncy strides…
…he had on a large creamy panama hat.”
He does this because his appearance surprises the reader. In a hot sunny country, it is odd to wear a white suit. The way he walks also adds to the irregularity of the character. When he proposes to have a bet on someone’s little finger and his Cadillac. This completely shocks the reader.
“’I don’t get it. How d’you mean take the finger.’
‘I chop it off!’”
The suspense is built by not knowing if he will go through with it and cut off his finger.
The sailor who bets his finger also creates suspense by agreeing with the ridiculous bet. Most people would say no, but he finds the car too tempting. This shocks the reader with his act of irresponsibility.
“’Yes,’ he said sharply ’I’ll bet you.’”
After this point the reader is hooked by the suspense of what will happen.
The book ‘Farthing House’ doesn’t have characters that create suspense like the other stories but the ghost does because we don’t know why she is there until the end of the story. She stays in the niece’s room so both the niece and the reader are worried of what she may do.
The plot in the ‘Red Room’ creates suspense at the very beginning of the story when the man meets all the old people. This is because they do not appear normal. The story is about ghosts so it naturally creates tension and suspense because of the presence of strange beings.
The plot in ‘The Signalman’ is alike to that in the ‘Red Room’ because the suspense is built up at the start of the story. The visitor just goes to the signalman for no reason. This creates suspense because we don’t know why or what he is going to do there. Like in the red room, it is based on supernatural happenings so it creates the suspense throughout the story.
The suspense is created entirely differently in the man from the south because it isn’t based around the supernatural. It is more the surprise of the man's idea. The tension is kept until the very end of the story but is very strong throughout the counting as he lights the lighter.
“’Three!
Four!
Five!
Six!
Seven!’”
The reader is in suspense as to what will happen next and if it doesn’t light, what would happen to man’s little finger.
Like the signalman and the red room, farthing house is also a ghost story. But unlike the other, the storyteller actually saw a ghost and could describe it.
“She was young, with a flowing, embodied night gown, high necked and long sleeved. Her hair was long too, and as pale as her face.”
The description helps the reader to imagine seeing her, and feel the suspense of what she might do like the niece did.
The suspense is created in the red room by the mentioning of ghosts because we do not know if the ghost is evil or not, or even if it exists. It is set in an old castle where there is a lot of darkness so suspense is created because we don’t know what could be lurking behind a corner. When the candles go out, they go out without smoke as if someone or something had put it out with their fingers.
“I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that two candles on the little table by the fireplace had been extinguished.”
At first seemed to be a coincidence but as more and more went out the tension started to build. It built up until the man was in a frenzy of lighting the candles and then he fell and knocked himself out. When it is morning the tension went because it was light.
In a similar way to the red room the signalman creates suspense at the mention of ghosts. It makes the reader tense because a ghost could be a sentence away. This makes the story have suspense throughout. Another way in which the writer creates tension is when the signalman receives the signals of danger from the ghost.
“turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, open the door of the hut, and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel.”
This makes the reader curious of whether the signals are real or just a figment of the signalman’s imagination. This creates a sense of uncertainty in the man when so much is relied upon him.
In the man from the man south the suspense is created from when the strange man suggests the bet until the end of the story. We want to know whether Carlos is being serious and will chop the finger off if it doesn’t light.
In farthing house suspense is created when she sees the ghost. Ghosts are what the story is based on and what creates the suspense. After that we want to know who the ghost is and why it is there. We don’t get the full story of why she is there, but it makes you think about it. There could be a few possible explanations.
In the ending to the red room the readers are left wondering whether there really was a ghost or if it was like man said fear. This creates suspense because we are left at the edge of our seats with no explanation.
“’The worst of all the things to haunt a mortal man is fear’ said I ‘ and that is, in all its nakedness, fear!’”
We do not know if the man is lying to prove himself right or if it was just the fear that made him so paranoid.
In a similar way to the red room the signalman is left open ended. So we don’t have a full explanation for the story. Suspense is created because we don’t know what happened at the end, why it happened and how it happened. It leaves us in the suspense of the story.
The man from the south ends differently to the other stories because it shocks you at the end and leaves a picture in your mind.
“I can see it now, that hand of hers, it had only one finger and a thumb.”
It also shows that Carlos would have done it if the lighter didn’t work. This leaves a sense of tension at the end of the book.
Farthing House ends open ended like all the other stories but we don’t really know what happens. All we know is that the woman ghost was reunited with her baby. These endings leave tension in our minds.
The timing is essential for the red room to work successfully because the man uses candles. Now we use electricity so it wouldn’t have the same effect. Also people were more superstitious then so they would believe in ghosts more.
In the same way the signalman wouldn’t work because the trains now use computers to control the line and not depend on one person to control their bit of rail. It was also more acceptable to people about the supernatural, whereas now we would need hard evidence of the supernatural before we could believe.
The man from the south is set in a time where he expects to survive if his finger is cut off and a time when cars were being made. But it had to be before pens because there was an ink well and some blotting paper on a table.
All of the stories successfully created tension and suspense, but in different ways. Most characters were strange in the stories because this starts the suspense straight away. But if the character appears normal it is unexpected that something strange will happen, so when it does it will be more of a shock. The plot style varied in the stories, some had the main event at the beginning and some had it at the end. Both ways worked successfully in the way that they were presented. In most stories the suspense is created throughout the story so the reader is hooked all the way through. I think that style worked the best because it didn’t get boring. All the endings were open ended, or cliffhangers, this keeps the reader in the suspense even when the story is over. The timings were essential to different stories and how they work, some stories need newer inventions like cars to work whereas some need the old fashioned way to make sense.