‘I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle.’
He is confused about the strange ways that the old pensioners are acting about him going to sleep in the red room. He tries to believe that the pensioners were just brought up in a time when spirits were believed in. However, the views of the pensioners are getting through to him, making him scared of the situation he is in. The narrator is being superstitious about going to the red room as he thinks that there is something in the room, which might do something to him. The narrator is starting to think that as people have been in this room before and have seen the ghost do bad things, it will happen to him as well. The reason why he is not rational is because there is no reason why a ghost should appear on the day that he stays in the red room. It could happen on any day in the year. However, I do not think that the narrator thinks in this way.
The effect of the first person narrator telling the story is that it makes the reader feel that he is in the shoes of the narrator. It gives the reader the feelings of being afraid for the narrator as they are imagining themselves going through the experience. An example of this is,
‘I shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.’
This quotation makes the reader feel that s/he is walking down the passage and it makes you feel that there is no turning back to the pensioners now, so you feel scared, as the narrator does. The mood of fear is established when the narrator shuts the door of the room the pensioners are in. The fear becomes more apparent when the narrator is by himself because it creates a feeling of there being no turning back for help. Also, with the passage, which he walks through to the red room, being dark, it creates a mood of fear because nobody knows if there is anything round the corner. Therefore, the mood of fear is already established during the beginning of the story.
If this short story was read at night during the Victorian times when there was no electricity, it would be frightening for them to listen to. In the Victorian times the thought of ghosts used to make them very scared. Therefore, if this story was being read to them and they heard a noise in the room they would immediately think it was a ghost. The effect of the darkness would make them feel that they are actually walking through the passage, which would be a scary feeling for most.
There are three characters other than the narrator in the red room and they all are in it for the same purpose. The three old pensioners are trying to prevent the narrator from going to the red room.
