H.G. Wells’ ‘The Red Room’ and Penelope Lively’s ‘The Darkness Out There’

Another similarity is that although 'The Darkness Out There' is written in 3rd person narrative and 'The Red Room' is written in 1st person narrative, both stories are written from the main characters point of view and start with personal pronoun. 'The Darkness Out There' is written from the view of a young girl called Sandra, and 'The Red Room' is written from the view of a young man whose name we don't know.

Another similarity between the two stories is that characters are not who they appear to be. In 'The Red Room' the main characters sees the older people as 'grotesque custodians' and gives the three old people an image of 'inhumanity'. The man has only based this whole image on what he has seen, has not spoke to these people, he does not have any knowledge on these people, no background, he has never met these people in his life but because of what they look like he "pre-judges" them. This is similar to Sandra in 'The Darkness Out There' she judges Kerry Stevens just by his 'black licked-down hair' and his 'slitty eyes', she sees him as someone 'you only have to look at to know they're not up to much'. Sandra also meets Mrs.Rutter who as in 'The Red Room' is an old aged character; the only difference is that Sandra perceives Mrs. Rutter as a kind, simple, stereotypical old woman. She sees this in the way Mrs. Rutter looks and the way she lives. Mrs. Rutters home is decorated as most people would expect an old woman's home to be ' filled with china ornaments: big-eyed flop-eared rabbits and beribboned kittens and flowery milkmaids'. Sandra also sees Mrs. Rutter as a 'typical old woman' because of what she looks like with her 'creamy smiling pool of a face' and 'cottage loaf' shape.

A twist in the tail is a similarity in both stories. In 'The Darkness Out There' Sandra sees Mrs.Rutter as a gentle old woman but after listening to her story she realised that Mrs. Rutter is not the person she thought she was. Mrs.Rutter turns out to be a heartless old woman with an unspeakable past.

Before Mrs. Rutter tells Sandra and Kerry about her experiences with the soldiers, Sandra doesn't see the world as it really is, she sees it by its appearance and judges by what something looks like.

This is similar to 'The Red Room' the young man thinks that he would not fear anything in the red room and that the old people speak nonsense when they talk about a spirit and 'tonight of all nights' as being a bad idea to go to the red room. He has an ignorance about the old people like Sandra did about the old Mrs. Rutter, he saw the old people as scary 'pale', 'decaying', 'inhuman' and thought that they were trying to enhance spiritual terrors, he did not think much of them at all because of what they looked like, with 'half-averted lips' and 'withered arms'. He did not expect them to do what they did when he had been knocked out in 'the red room', when they helped him and bandaged him the young man realised that he had been wrong about them and that they were not as bad as there appearance makes them look, He realised that they are no longer 'as one who greet an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend'.

Sandra also realised that the gentle little old Mrs. Rutter was more of an evil conniving person who left suffering human beings to die because of racial differences. Both of the young characters learnt the lesson 'never judge by appearances' Sandra realises that Mrs. Rutter judged the German soldiers and thought because they were German they were all the same and all were evil, Sandra realises from this that judging before you know what they are like, the young man from 'The Red Room' realises that he was wrong about how the old people were actually very kind and gentle people who wanted to help him and they thought he was extremely brave because he went into 'the red room' at night so they kind of respect him for what he has done instead of treating him coldly which they appeared to do at the beginning .

This is the main common theme in the two stories which both characters learn in a similar way, the only difference is that the way the old characters turn out is the opposite ways in each story, Mrs. Rutter goes from Nice and gentle appearance to an racist evil person and in 'The Red Room' the old people seem 'grotesque' and 'ugly' but become friendly warm helpful people.

The structure of the two stories are different, 'The Red Room' builds up tension in the actions the young man takes whilst he is going in to 'the red room', whilst 'The Darkness Out There' builds up tension as Mrs. Rutter tells her story about how she left the Germans to die. 'RR' does not feature as much dialogue as 'DOT' which has a change on the atmosphere of the story, it becomes more hostile and isolated as the man proceeds alone unlike in 'DOT' where the characters are made to feel welcome and there is a lot more contact between all of the characters although in the end in 'DOT' the people are made to feel more scared, when in 'RR' the younger person was made to feel more at ease and comfortable which corresponds to earlier mention of the 'twist in the tail'

Conclusion

The two stories have many similarities and many contrasts in various areas including the types of characters and how the characters think about image over everything else and judging by appearances, both stories have similar themes 'don't judge by appearances'.

The plots of the stories though are almost opposite to each other as in the 'RR' the characters in question go from 'grotesque' and ugly people who because of their appearance are judged to be not very nice people but turn out to be kind and gentle people who respect the young man and help him after his ordeal. But in 'DOT' the character (Mrs. Rutter) appears to be a typical old woman with her little ornaments and stereotypical 'old woman décor' then turns out to have an evil past with another case of prejudice but this time because of the persons race. The style of writing Penelope Lively used in her story 'The darkness out there' is as un-orthodox style of writing, the way she uses a 1st person perspective from a 3rd person narrative is a rare way of writing but its effect as a piece of writing is clever and works well, H.G wells uses a more usual way of writing but his story still creates tension and suspence.