The overall description of these beings is best summed up in the following quote:
‘I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people in sensibility day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, while their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.’
There seems to be some evident tension between the three inmates where when the third character enters into the narrative, ‘The man with the withered arm gave this newcomer a short glance of possible dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival.’ They are also described, to build a sense of fear in the following, ‘I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence.’ This quote symbolises, and reveals, to the reader of firstly their surroundings being somewhat frightening and also the fact that the old people were constantly wailing. This gives an eerie feeling, which in most cases involves the spirit or devils. This is also shown when the author writes, ‘The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me.’ This is also shown in the following quote:
‘They seem to belong to another age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours, less certain; and age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral, the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly-the thought of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of today.’
This quote also reveals the doubts in his mind about the existence of the spirits, which he blatantly refused to believe in in the first line of the story.
The narrative begins to reach its climax as the narrator finally makes his move to this mysterious ‘haunted room’. He is refused blankly to be escorted. Here, the use of repetition increases. ‘This nights of all nights’ is repeated by the old woman to show her desperation and that it also gives the reason behind the importance of this room in that long ago an incident had occurred in this very same room on that same day and that entering the room may bring with it severe consequences. The man with the withered arm again repeats 'It’s your own choosing' for the final time as the narrator exits and is about to enter a new scene in which his fear and bravery is to be tested and questioned, and in which the climax of the narrative is to begin.
The tension seems to rise as the narrator becomes more alert of his surroundings, ‘I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard’.
Before the narrator ‘opened the door of the red room’, he stood before it reflecting on his procedures death that give him ‘a sudden twinge of apprehension’ and trying to gather himself to undertake the task of spending the night in the haunted room.
He entered the ‘great red room of Lorraine Castle’ ‘making a systematic examination of the place at once.’ This portrays the fear that has built up inside him, by checking each article of the room. After lighting the fire he still finds the room dark and feels uncomfortable with ‘the echoing of the stair and crackling of the fire’. This shows just how agitated he is and then he himself admits how nervous he is in the following quote, ‘I was in a state of considerable nervous tension’.
Just in case something was to happen, as he now felt that the old people may have a case of the red room terrorizing its inhabitants with fear, ‘[he] had pulled up a chintz covered armchair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before [him], and on this lay [his] revolver ready to hand’. Even though his actions also proved his sense of fear he still tried to disagree and attack these thoughts that kept crawling into his mind and making him agitated. ‘I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen’. So in order to ‘pass the time’ in keeping his mind occupied he began to sing and think about ‘the three old and distorted people downstairs’.
‘The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim’ so therefore he had decided upon going and fetching the ones he had passed by in the corridor and came back with no more than ten. These he lit until ‘not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them.’ He now he felt more at ease.
‘It was after midnight that the candle at the alcove suddenly went out.’ This was the point of the story in which fear had really struck the narrator. Midnight is usually known for its time of the day in which terror and crime surface. It attacked by wiping out each candle slowly even though the narrator tried in vain to defend. He wasn’t sure what it was, ‘that draughts a strong one!’ and, ‘Did I do that myself in a flash of absentmindedness?’ Soon the darkness gained momentum to the desperation of the narrator who banged, stumbled and fell about the room. His ‘hands trembled so much that twice [he] missed the rough paper of the match box.’ As he dashed from one candle to the other, he ‘was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness’, he leapt panting and dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.’ And then suddenly they all go out except one. ‘A red light’ from the fire which was still burning still gave him a glimmer of hope and as he ran to thrust the candles between the bars ‘the flamed dwindled and vanished.’ He was left, alone, in complete darkness. Fear had seized him as he screamed ‘once, twice, thrice.’ It suddenly struck him of the exit, the door, and
struggled to find it’s location until he struck himself ‘against the corner of the bed.’ As he staggered backwards he recalls either something striking him or him striking ‘against some other furniture and then he fell to the ground.
He opened his eyes to find himself again with the company of ‘the old and distorted people’. However, they seemed to him different now. ‘The old woman, no longer abstracted’ and the man with the withered arm, ‘He spoke no longer as one who greets and intruder.’ The narrator had been through his ordeal and still alive seemed to benefit from it. He gained new impressions of the old people and now saw them for what they really are which shows that his ordeal against his own fear, made him afraid no more.
‘The worst of all things that haunt poor mortal man,’ said I; ‘and that is, in all it’s nakedness-Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms.’
H G Wells then leaves us his final message through the man with the shade, who in the beginning was described as being the most grotesque looking. He talks about ‘a power of darkness’, ‘You can feel it even in the daytime, even on a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn.’
H G Wells uses the main character in the narrative, the narrator, along with the three old people to express his means of fear. The experience of fear slowly and gradually builds up in the narrator and the reader by concealing the form of fear until the very end, leaving the reader, and the old inhabitants, in a state of shock as they were made to believe in the very beginning that it was ghosts that haunted ‘the great red room of Lorraine Castle’. Therefore it is an effective ending that would leave the reader in a state of fear from the final message left behind about the fear darkness that no one can escape from unless they are brave enough to fight against it.
