These ‘hooking techniques’ are used to create interest in the story and ‘hook’ the reader in to read to the end and find out what the story is leading up to.
Another large similarity between the two short stories is the use of a strange twist in the plotline toward the end of the story.
In ‘The Darkness Out There’ the main character (Sandra) judges the old lady to be a harmless “old dear” but she turns out to be not what she seems after she tells them of her past and the horrific evil she is capable of by leaving the dying German out in the forest for days until death.
In ‘The Red Room’ the opposite is true the ‘grotesque custodians’ who belittle the man turn out , the reader finds to be nice people who greet the man after his accident “like an old friend” rather than a big headed young man trying to prove himself.
Both stories are centred around a myth or legend. In the ‘The Red Room’ it is the legend of the duke and duchess that died in a panic or killed by a ghost (it is an astonishment to the reader when they find out it was not a ghost at all.)
In ‘The Darkness Out There’ the urban myth Sandra was scared of was the
‘Gypsy type’ people that might rape her.
These myths make the reader think that something related to the myths may happen.
‘The Red Room’ is a first person narrative because it only has one main character so it lets you understand his inner thoughts and feelings.
‘The Darkness Out There’ is a third person narrative; this is unusual because it is told from Sandra’s point of view.
The writers include both young and old people to show that you cannot always trust stereotypes and that people are not always what they seem to be at first.
In the beginning of both stories the old characters are portrayed as opposites between the two stories, in ‘The Red Room’ the old people are at the beginning shown to be “grotesque custodians” but to be just trying to warn the young man away from ‘The Red Room.’
Similarly and Contrasting in ‘The Darkness Out There’ the old woman in it is depicted as a “kindly old woman” but ends being described as an evil “bitch” by the finish of the story.
The authors both use certain techniques to build the atmosphere in the story, such as the description of the old people in ‘The Red Room’,
You are not told who they are in any great detail and the mystery surrounding them adds to the eeriness and sinister feel of the story.
In ‘The Darkness Out There’ though with Mrs Rutter the atmosphere is created more subtly with outwardly all going well but little things in the background contributing to the overall feeling of uneasiness for the characters, For example; The forest myths (Rapists and German plane crashes.)
At the beginning of ‘The Red Room’ the young man does not like the old people, know this because he calls them “grotesque Custodians.”
At the end his opinion has completely changed as he realises that they were only trying to help him.
This is similar to ‘The Darkness Out There’ because Sandra also has a very big opinion change before the conclusion of the story,
Sandra judges Kerry as having “a chin explosive with acne” and Mrs Rutter as an old lady with a “creamy pool of a face”.
But at the end of it she realises how easy it is to misjudge someone using stereotypes.
‘The Red Room’ and the settings in ‘The Darkness Out There’ are described as dark places (the Red Rooms “Dark subterranean passages”)
The author uses the characters reactions to further the descriptions in the dialogue.
To make the castle sound scarier the words used are uncommon to what we would normally use in the situation.
Normally we would say ledge out side of the door but in ‘The Red Room’ the word used is slab to make it sound old, heavy and to add to the atmosphere.
Conclusion:
The two stories have many similarities and differences in various areas,
Both of the characters judge by appearance and rely on that judgement to make assumptions about peoples characters (Mrs Rutter: Kind simple stereotypical old person) but before the end of the stories they learn not to ‘judge a book by its cover’
The man from the red room learns that’s the ‘grotesque custodians’ as they first appeared are nothing of the sort and they were actually trying to warn him away from the room.
These assumptions made by the characters are used by the authors to show that we also judge people by their physical descriptions.
The stories plotlines both take amazing twists towards the end although the twists are completely opposites, in ‘the red room’ the grotesque custodians become gentle people who show the man respect after the event.
‘The Darkness Out There’ changes from Mrs Rutter the kindly old lady into Mrs Rutter the evil ‘bitch.’
