In three short stories, 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens, 'The Red Room' by H.G. Wells and 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writers use setting to create suspense and by doing this keeping the user gripped.

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Examine the Settings that the Writers have Chosen for their Stories and Consider the Effects that Each Writer has Created and how they Contribute to the Atmosphere

In three short stories, 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens, 'The Red Room' by H.G. Wells and 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writers use setting to create suspense and by doing this keeping the user gripped.

"The Signalman" by Charles Dickens was written in 1865, the oldest of the three Victorian stories. It was written in the time when the railway was recently invented, so setting the story on the railway gave this short story a contemporary touch. To today's readers, references to trains signal boxes and railways give the story historical context. The signalman himself seems to be a well-educated gentleman but for an unexplained reason has a low rank of social class. Dickens chose to invent the location in his story, this increases the atmosphere of mystery as the reader cannot link to that place in real life, and the reader not finding out who the signalman is adds to the suspense.

In 'The Man with the Twisted Lip', a story about the great detective Sherlock Holmes, Holmes displays aspects of life in the last decade of Victoria's Reign. Holmes first appeared in 1887 whilst the real-life Jack the Ripper committed his gruesome and notorious murders in the autumn of 1888. Conan Doyle is particular in describing the location of the story, this location being in the same network of streets the Jack the Ripper tormented. With Jack the Ripper never being caught, they more or less consoled themselves with the thought that the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes was rarely outwitted. Conan Doyle used the publics criticism of the police to evolve his character, and by making him an amateur detective who can solve complicated crimes, he was able use this to sell his story. In this particular story, Conan Doyle chooses to reflect the period's contemporary events, social conditions and problems.

'The Red Room', by H.G. Wells is the most recent of the three and the choices that he made throughout the story and about setting deliberately bestows on its quality. He makes clear how ancient and old-fashioned everything in the castle is. Wells doesn't link the story with the period in which he wrote it, so that he could explore the ageless nature of fear and thrill itself, whereas Dickens and Conan Doyle set their stories in the time period in which they were wrote. This shows, as there are very few references which place it in the 1890s. Wells uses Gothic literature to attempt to terrify the reader and it always involves the supernatural, ghosts, curses, hidden rooms and witchcraft with locations such as castles, monasteries and cemeteries. This story contains Lorraine Castle, grotesque characters, haunted rooms, ghosts, witches, superstition, previous deaths and curses.
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In "The Signalman", Dickens uses setting to create a mysterious and unnatural atmosphere. Dickens does this instantly at the beginning of the story,

"His figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench...in the glow of an angry sunset".

This shows the man in the trench can barely be seen, this creates an unnatural feel because the reader instantly wonders who this man is, why he is down there and what he wants. Also describing the sun as angry its shows that the sun, a natural thing is angry and what man has done ...

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