The title, "The Red Room" is instantly linked with the idea of danger and warning as red signifies blood, anger and evilness. This brings the room alive and gives it more intimidation and more purpose, it also gives the idea that the room is possessed by a strange and un-welcomed being. The colours used in this story all help to personify evil. Red and black are constantly used throughout the story which underpin the mystery and is symbolic through light to dark. "Glance of his red eyes" "Red light" This shows that even light, which could symbolise holiness and the idea of God's light helping to exercise the evilness but we get the sense that the room is greatly troubled and cannot be saved. The colour black is linked with the idea of death, the plague and darkness this gives us an un-earthy feeling combined with warning and evilness that the colour red brings which gives off how disturbed it is.
The setting of "The Signalman" is described intricately though the reader is left baffled. We know that something strange is going to happen, since words like "Steep, trench, angry, violent, pulsation, rapid and clammy" warn us that we have "left the natural world". We learn from when the Signalman looks "down the line" instead of towards the sound that something peculiar is going on. All these elements contribute to the suspense of the story.
In "The Red Room" there is a verbal motif which is repeated throughout the whole story. "This night of all nights' said the old woman" Also, "The Signalman" has its own verbal motif; both motifs help build constant tension and are structured to plot. "Halloa! Below there!" In "The Signalman" this is used as the opening line which frightens the Signalman and reappears in the story. Both stories are full of pejorative language and visual sense images which create mystery and suspense as the story grows.
"Descends into darkness" When we hear this, we immediately link it with hell imagery. There is a continuous use of pathetic fallacy which underpins both stories. Such as in "The Signalman" there is a reference in the beginning."In the glow of an angry sunset" unsets are usually linked with calmness and happiness but here we see Charles Dickens use "angry" to express the horror of the story. By using angry this immediately alerts us that something is not quite right and is quite off putting.
H.G Wells expresses how un-pleasant, grotesque and intimidating the old people are as he uses several horrible images which scare the reader and make them question what actually happened to them. The old people reassure the narrator about "The Red Room" by saying how safe it is at the beginning.."I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen yet" owever, because of their distorted physical appearance this hints that something will happen as the readers will sense something is not quite right and odd. The author has chosen to make the old people anonymous which build on the tension as the readers would constantly question who are they?
In "The Signalman" we learn about the signalman's past. The story is written in the first person therefore we get a lot of personal opinions and indirect speech. As there are a lot of the anonymous narrator's personal opinions we therefore get the story in his own words and how he viewed the situation..
"Terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel" We can see that H.G Wells uses the idea of the symbolic colours. This also helps grow the idea of descending into hell. The black tunnel makes us think of the narrator entering hell therefore we fear of what will happen, it is also perceived as a metaphoric journey from good to evil.
From the first scene one imagines a large dark room with an open fire as the only illumination with the corners of the room being dark and the walls of the room dimly lit by the fire: "At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight". The man walks away from the housekeeper's room and he walks down a dark passage: "and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver", then he walks up a spiral staircase: "and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead". He then pushes open a baize-covered door and stood in a corridor illuminated by the moon: "the effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight coming in by the great window on the grand staircase picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination" .
The door of the house shows the age in which the story is set but also shows the age of the castle: "deep toned old fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room", "the ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly - the thoughts of vanished men which still haunted rather than participated in the world of today". There are baize-covered doors that are not found today and also "two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles".There are noises in the castle that set the scene and also reflect the style the story is written in: "the echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase", "listening to a rustling I fancied I heard", "the echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire".
An atmosphere is created in several different ways but all of a gothic horror style: "the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there". The story has a lot of description in great detail allowing the reader to imagine the situation and the atmosphere: "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. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me".
As we establish the fact that there was nothing haunting the room we wonder what happened to the old people and was it the room that had an effect on them. I think that Wells had deliberately made the people old as he knew it was easier to make old people look grotesque as the elderly are fragile and wrinkly looking, therefore he took the chance to make them have distorted features to fuel the suspense and tension of the story. Wells has done a good job by maintaining the emotions of all stereotypical ghost/gothic stories because he has used archaic language which would have been appropriate for the Victorian society and because of the excellent visual images which help readers to picture the terror quicker. Readers would enjoy being scared and might be relieved towards the end because the ending twists everything by revealing there was clearly nothing.
"The Signalman" it a very similar ending. Dickens uses the idea of fear being the fuel of the story. The signalman dies from fear which Dickens tells us it is "infection of the mind". Dickens maintains the ghost storylines as he decides to kill the anonymous eponymous hero at the end and in most typical stories they include ghostly deaths.
'A Christmas Carol' is a different kind of ghost story. It's not very scary or mysterious, it's not about a murder or disappearance that needs to be solved, but it is about warning someone of their fate.
'A Christmas carol's' opening is typical of a ghost story in that it immediately hints to the reader that Marley's ghost is going to appear; it explains that Marley was defiantly dead but only at the start: "old Marley was as dead as a doornail" and "Marley was dead, to begin with. There Is no doubt about that" The opening drops the reader straight into the story and gets going very quickly, which is typical of a ghost story opening. However, it has humour in it, which is an aspect you do not expect to find in a ghost story. It says, "What there is particularly dead about a doornail." and "I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade." Other features of the opening that are typical of a ghost story is the character description and the fact that the opening doesn't give away any of the story.
There are very good character descriptions that draw you into the story. Scrooge is described as a "Squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" and as being "Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."
The settings in 'A Christmas carol' change a lot, which is an unusual feature of ghost stories. They change to match the transformation of Scrooge. At the start, the settings that appear when Scrooge is around are typically dark and dismal, to reflect his character. Scrooges house is described as "a gloomy suit of rooms" and "The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house." The house is described in such a way to make it sound eerie to match scrooges present character. Scrooge is the only person to live in the house as the rest is rented out as offices. It is described as being out of place, it says it was "in a lowering pile of building up a yard' where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again." and "it seemed as if the Genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold." This sort of description is something you would expect to find in a typical ghost story.
The atmosphere in the story changes a lot, very much like the settings. Again, it changes to reflect scrooges transformation. This is not a typical aspect of a ghost story; usually the atmosphere stays the same throughout, but in 'A Christmas Carol' the atmosphere is always changing. To being with Scrooge is portrayed as a sinister character who is unhappy so the atmosphere surrounding him reflects this. It is cold and eerie and the weather changes when he goes past and it gets darker and gloomier. "The fog pours in every chink and keyhole and it was so dense the houses opposite were mere phantoms." However, the atmosphere tends to change when a more pleasant and happier character enters the story. When the second spirit, the ghost of Christmas present, enters the story the atmosphere changes to suit his personality. The ghost of Christmas present is "a gentleman of the free and easy sort" and he is a jolly character. So the atmosphere changes from being dark and eerie to being bright and jolly, "from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney"
'A Christmas Carol' is a moral fable because it teaches a lesson. The lesson is, if you have a lot of something that you don't need all of, then you should share what you have with others that need it more than you do. If you a choose to be selfish and not share what you have it will come back on you and even though you have it all you will still be miserable and not be accepted. Scrooge had a lot of money but he would not share a penny with those who were less fortunate than him.
