How Does H.G Wells convey the experience of fear in ‘The Red Room’?

English Coursework By Michael Horwood

H.G wells creates the sense of fear by creating an eerie situation that creates an overwhelming sense of darkness in the mind of the narrator. Consequently this causes him to be very fearful himself. He also uses a first person narrator, which makes the turn of events more immediate. He personifies objects and keeps the atmosphere of the story very tense by often using very short and simple sentences. Another essential way of conveying the fear is the delayed release of certain information. Throughout the story, many questions are raised in the thoughts of the reader, which are not answered until a few paragraphs or even pages later. However, some questions are not answered at all.

Wells uses the title ‘The Red Room’, which is quite a mysterious title: it makes the reader wonder, “What is the red room?” and “what relevance does it have to the story?” The Red Room has connotations of blood, which then makes one think that something such as a murder could happen. Red is also the colour of danger and fear.

The opening line is a statement by the narrator:

“I can assure you’, said I, ‘that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’”

The author uses adumbration: the reader suspects that the narrator will encounter some kind of ghost. We also learn that the narrator is a very arrogant, non-superstitious individual. This builds up a lot of fear because, when the narrator becomes scared, it shows that it must have taken a great deal of dread to frighten him.

We then meet the only other characters in the story. They are all old and irregular, and we are reminded of this throughout the encounter:

“The old women sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open…”

The ‘old’ women seems to be in a daze, as if the fire is the only thing she cares for. Her ‘pale’ eyes, suggest she is very old and almost dead, since ‘pale’ colour skin has no blood flowing through it. The fire is also important, as it shows familiar light, and dispels any darkness, which later fuels the narrator’s fear. Darkness symbolises the unknown: as we cannot know what is there we expect the worst, which consequently creates fear. The reader is then introduced to a man with another physical defect:

‘Its you’re own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm once more.

This is repeated once more, which creates a build up of tension and fear for the reader, as it makes one wonder why does he keep warning him. In spite of that, we see the confidence and arrogance of the narrator again, when he does not heed the warning. We suspect that the narrator does not really understand these people, who are in stark contrast to him:

‘I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians.’

The narrator does not really feel at ease with these people at first, mainly because when he arrives, there is a strange hatred between them:

‘The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.’

It appears that there is some kind of dispute between the old people. This creates an atmosphere of fear, yet again, it never explains why. This is a vital part of creating fear, and also keeps the reader interested. By slowly revealing more of the storyline, and answering some, but not all, the questions that are asked, the reader is kept involved in the story. He seems to dislike them mainly because of their age, which consequently makes them not stand straight, and also the silence between them. Silence often means that there is thought going on, and this creates fear because it makes the reader wonder what the older people are thinking about. . The old women also says:

‘This night of all nights’

This tells us at the time of the day the story is set: It is some time during the evening, approaching the night, when the castle is at its darkest. The reader may wonder, what is wrong with this night? Nevertheless, this is another statement that is explained much later into the story. One last time before the narrator leaves the room, the man with the withered arm repeats, for the fourth time ‘its your own choosing’. This reminds the reader about the horrors that may come later in the story.

The ...

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‘This night of all nights’

The narrator explains that they are both from ‘different ages’:

‘They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, …

An age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying.’

He explains that they grew up in a time when the supernatural was accepted. The younger narrator was born in a time when Darwin brought some doubt about the absolute truth in the bible.

In the mid nineteenth century, Industrialization begun to affect the way British Scientists thought. Individuals, like Darwin challenged the Protestant Church, which had once influenced the minds of many people into believing in supernatural forces, like the Devil, witches and evil spirits. Darwin’s theory was a major blow against the continuing argument- Science verses the Supernatural. His theory of human evolution directly opposed the Christian idea of God creating man and the universe directly. After this supposition, an overwhelming amount of evidence weighed on the argument. As a result, many people, like the narrator, were brought up learning about science, and not the bibles teaching, like the elder generations. Throughout the story, the narrator tries to give rational explanations to what is happening around him, but to show fear later on, he switches to irrational thoughts.

After he leaves the room with light and warmth from the fire and the presence of three other beings, he departs for the red room. It takes a whole page to describe this move, showing he is a long way away from the old people, and therefore is almost isolated: so no one can help him if he is attacked. He clearly does not enjoy the corridor to the red room:

‘The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver’

He describes the passage as if he were describing hell, with adjectives such as ‘subterranean’. The old people do not come to this area much, as it has not been cleaned “dusty”. This shows the fear that the older people have of this area, thus building up the fear for the reader. The reader also sees the narrator begin to show fear, as the fact that the shadows are ‘cowering and quivering’ is actually him having goose bumps. Wells personifies the shadows, as if they were alive. At this point, fear has made him stop in his tracks:

‘I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly.

The use of a comma and then a full stop shows the growing fear in him, as instead of walking normally, he stops so he can clearly hear, or see anything around him. This is then reflected on the next line when he becomes paranoid:

‘…and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me.’

After getting a fright from a shadow made by a statue, he believes it is someone crouching waiting to attack him. Thus, he is paranoid which is a key reaction to fear. After this, he manages to get to the red room:

‘…and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half-turned to the pallid silence of the landing. I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within…’

After quickly entering the red room, he firstly makes sure no one has followed him. Then he quickly closes the door and locks it. These are all actions that show panic and fear. The words ‘hastily’ and ‘at once’ move the pace of the sentence very quickly, like a fast beating heart after someone has been suddenly shocked. It is here that we are given a little bit more information:

‘…the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying’

The ‘great’ red room suggests that the room has a notorious reputation, yet we do not know what for. A castle is an unoriginal location for ghost stories. Its relevance is the fact that many castles are large, and also haunted. One may begin to guess that the ghost, as suggested at various points throughout the story is this duke. It is a common belief, even today that innocent, young people who die or murdered may come back to where they were killed. This certainly builds tension and creates a fear of things to come. He explains that there are even more stories:

‘And there were other and older stories that clung to the room’

The word ‘clung’ is a very strong verb to use. It is as if the stories will never be banished from the room, or perhaps will never be dispelled from the narrator’s mind because he is so frightened. The narrator here becomes more superstitious, by letting his imagination dwell on irrational thoughts.

The red room itself is described to be very big:

‘My candle was a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light’

The narrator uses figurative speech here by making a metaphor out of the candle. The room is so large that the light from the candle cannot reach the opposite side. This effect shows the vast darkness surrounding the narrator in the room. Another simile is used, comparing it to an island with an ocean surrounding it. This comparison also shows the darkness massive, as an ocean is the largest amount of water on Earth. It also shows light means safety for the narrator, as a small island is secure, but a large ocean symbolises the darkness and unknown, which reflects he is very isolated from the other people. After this, he show he perhaps has calmed down now he is in the room, as he begins to use rational explanation:

‘I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold on me’

He uses mathematical words that show he is becoming more rational “(systematic examination)”. He tries to ‘dispel’ his irrational thoughts and tries to dispel fear itself. However, he returns to being paranoid:

‘I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand.’

This shows he still has a lot of fear in him, and creates tension for the reader, as the narrator seems to be ‘preparing’ for something. The description of a ‘barricade’ makes the reader think that something very big and powerful may come, and it will need a ‘barricade’ to stop it. He admits a few lines down that he is in a state of ‘considerable nervous tension’, meaning he is very, jumpy. He tries to keep himself calm:

‘I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some rhymes together. …I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting’

It is at this point that he is very nervous. When at a very high peak of fear, he tries to calm himself down, by making poems, singing or trying to persuade himself that the thing scaring him does not exist. The fact he is debating whether ghosts exist, or not shows his uncertainty, which creates tension and fear for the reader, as one expects something to happen.

Mysterious events begin to happen shortly after:

‘It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out and the black shadow sprang back into place’

From classical to modern day mythology, many people believe the time from twelve o’clock to one o’clock (or the thirteenth hour) is the height of supernatural activity. Wells incorporates this idea into the story, which then produces a supernatural atmosphere and creates fear. The sentence pace also speeds up, with the adverb ‘suddenly’. The narrator also personifies the shadow, as if it is a person. The narrator then begins to think something is watching him:

‘I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go out, and almost immediately its companion followed it.’

The verb ‘wink’ seems to suggest that the candle is watching him. The word ‘companion’ implies that the candles are conspiratorially working together. Since candles are inanimate objects, the fact they appear to be alive gives a spooky atmosphere, and thus, builds tension and fear. At this point the narrator begins to give irrational explanations:

‘The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking…’

Since there is no one else in the room, the narrator starts to suggest a ghostly physical presence, which earlier in the story he did not believed in. The fact he is thinking irrational ideas shows he is once again terrified with fear. At this point, the narrator really is petrified:

‘My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox’

The physical action of panic and trembling shows the narrator is full of fear. Moreover, we can see he is unnerved since he missed the side of the box twice. Once more, the narrator gives an irrational explanation to the cause of the circumstance:

‘…an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table’

He is again suggesting the emergence of a ghost into the room, as he believes the ‘invisible hand’ of the ghost swept out the candles. The word ‘swept’ shows the ghost can remove the flames of the candles with ease. After this point, the narrator breaks down into a terror frenzy, determined to relight all the candles, as these are his sense of security, as the light is dispelling his fear- the darkness.

He shows how useless he is against the ghost:

‘it was like a ragged storm cloud sweeping out the stars’

The narrator uses a cosmic image, by comparing the candle flames to the stars. Since the stars are the givers of light, he feels he is losing them to the darkness. The image of a ragged storm cloud is a dark image, associated with danger and the unknown. The fact that it ‘sweeps’ out the stars shows he is completely useless against the darkness, just like in real life (one cannot move clouds to reveal the stars). The narrator then starts to become so frightened that he unintentionally injures himself on the furniture in the room:

‘I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell…’

The reason why he wounds himself is because he is in a state of pure panic. With the combination of the darkness, and fear, he is running to and fro with no consideration what is between him and the candles. Eventually, after the fire mysteriously goes out, he suggests he was attacked:

‘I staggered back, turned and was either struck, or struck myself against some other bulky furniture’

The verb to “stagger” hints that he is seriously injured. We are given a clue that the ghost turns violent, as he cannot remember, but seems to think he was hit by something. This could just be because he was panicking and hit himself. Finally, the overwhelming fear causes him to dash for the door, however he trips and falls down the stairs. This situation is an example of parallelism, as according to the story explained earlier by the narrator, the young duke had experienced the same events. This still gives a mystical atmosphere, as it appears that history is repeating itself, and makes the reader wonder what actually happened in the red room- was there a ghost or not?

In conclusion, I think the main cause of fear during the play is the unknown. This, for the narrator is reflected in the darkness around him. However, for the reader, it is the delayed coming of the information that causes the fear throughout the story. However, some questions are never answered. For example, the narrator gives an explanation that it was fear responsible for scaring him. This may be true, but it does not explain what put out the candles. A small draft could have put the first few candles out, however when they go out in different areas of the room at the same time, there must be something supernatural happening. Even the fire goes out, which could not be extinguished by a simple draft. This certainly raises points and morals that Wells has suggested in the story. Firstly, he shows that even in the most scientific and rational society there are questions that cannot be answered. Secondly, fear will never be controlled, and in some situations inevitable, as reflected in the continuous swapping from rational (attempting to control fear) to irrational (succumbing to it). Lastly it shows that for all ghost stories, to be denied of information as a reader if far more powerful than to discover the truth.