When the old woman says ominously, ‘This night of all nights’, it adds to the air of menace and suspense already created by the ‘uncomfortable… gaunt silences’ and ‘unfriendliness’ the three of them had previously created. Also the fact that the narrator is going alone on this ‘brooding vigil’ emphasises the suspicion that something terrible is about to happen, but we have not yet been given a clear indication of what that is. The repetition of the word ‘night’ enhances the mood giving a further feeling of question.
Repetition is used throughout the story. Wells uses alliteration, words in which the sound ‘s’ is repeated by the narrator as he is walking towards the Red Room; ‘…the long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, ... The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed back the baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.’
By using the repetition of the ‘s’ sound, it makes each of the separate images created seem as though they are all connected, which gives the reader a general impression of overwhelming eeriness about the house.
Also, the repetition of the word more; ‘more bent, more wrinkled, more aged’, underlines the fact that the first man was all of these things and both men are slowly deteriorating.
Long corridors, passages, old mirrors, spiral staircases, ‘ornaments’, shadowy corners, germinating darkness’s, ‘blackness’, ‘dark oak panelling’ and wide chimney’s, we also culturally connect with the supernatural and Gothic elements.
Tension is built up by H.G. Wells using various clever writing techniques. The use of commas and careful punctuation speeds up the pace of the writing. ‘I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it.’ The many commas here have effectively sped up the pace, adding a powerful tension and energy to the piece of writing. Wells also uses punctuation to enhance the narrator’s feeling of confusion. He uses commas to break the action into segments, ‘I bruised myself on the thigh against a table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell …’.
Personification is used in this story to give the reader the impression that the narrator is not alone in the Red Room although he thinks he is. He does not notice that the candles had gone out he ‘simply turned and saw that darkness was there’, almost as if darkness was someone who had come silently into the room. The mantle ‘emerged’ from the darkness into the room as if it was able to move independently. The narrator describes the scene like a battle between himself and the shadows which he, ‘feared and fought against’, they ‘crept in upon’ him, ‘first a step gained on this side … and then on that’. Again and again, Wells uses personification, ‘…Darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision…’. It appears that something is after him, which increases the suffocating atmosphere. ‘…The shadows seemed to take another step towards me.’ This makes the reader feel almost claustrophobic and makes it seem as though there is nowhere for the narrator to run.
Wells uses similes and metaphors throughout the story; the darkness is ‘germinating’ like a seedling, growing stronger. The narrator describes his candle as a ‘…little tongue of light’ in ‘… an ocean of mystery and suggestion…’. He describes the darkness ‘like a ragged stormcloud sweeping out the stars’. It is easy to visualise a cloud being blown across the sky and blocking out the stars.
The title of the story is ‘The Red Room’. The colour red is associated with emotions like love and passion. It is also associated with danger, death and fear. The narrator admits that ‘The sombre blacks and reds of the room troubled …’ him. We know Wells is writing about danger, death and fear as the narrator mentions the word ‘ghost’ and ‘frighten’ all in the first sentence. This gives the reader the thought that the ‘Red Room’ is forbidden and that there is something paranormal about it. When words such as ‘shade’, ‘shadowy corners’, ‘germinating darkness’, ‘dark oak panelling’, ‘blackness’ and ‘black fear’ are used frequently in a short story like this, it reinforces the fact that there is something unnatural or supernatural about the entire house.
Talk of the ‘power of darkness’, ‘curses’, ‘black fear’, ‘sin’ and ‘spiritual terrors in their house’ create a sense of terror in the reader, which makes them feel apprehensive when the narrator enters the ‘Red Room’.
The ‘ghostly’ element is highlighted throughout the story as many ghostlike and abnormal happenings culturally and historically take place ‘after midnight’.
The Red Room was the place ‘in which the young duke had died’. This again makes the reader question the situation and contributes to the overall feeling of dread and horror as he had in fact died during a similar vigil. Another tale is briefly mentioned and as with all fear it is what we do not know that frightens us.
H.G. Wells uses many tried and tested writing techniques to convey a sensation of fear and horror to the reader. The purpose of the story is to illustrate that fear itself is the enemy as it will terrify a person more than a ghost, spirit or the supernatural. Fear has a presence that is powerful and ‘creeps along the corridor and follows you’. The story is very effective as it pulls the reader in and convinces us that we are reading a genuine ghost story only to realise that the narrator wasn’t being haunted by any of these, but by his own fear of the unknown.
