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.
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.
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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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 to the environment with the invention of the railway.
Carrying on, Dickens writes,
'From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him'.
By writing this, it shows that there is a class difference between the signalman who is down in the trench and the narrator who is high above him, class difference was common in the Victorian era and Dickens has used this in his story to show the difference between the narrator and the signalman. As the story goes on, it says,
'Came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush... start back, as though it had force to draw me down'.
This quote shows that Dickens sees the train as a bad thing, a creature-like object, like it has an unnatural power to grab him and hurt him, which the train can't do because it is not able to grab, another unnatural factor is the part about drawing him down, and this shows that the narrator sees the train coming from hell. This adds to the unnatural feel that Dickens has about the train, because with the train being a new invention it was unnatural to him and he isn't in favor of it, also being in a train accident would have affected his opinion of the train. The next piece of setting is when it says,
'I found a rough zigzag descending path... the cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitate... clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down',
This use of the word descending shows that the narrator feels he is being led somewhere he doesn't know; again this adds to the unnatural feel the narrator has about the place. Also, the use of the words oozier and wetter compare the land on top to the land in the deep trench, these are comparative words, and show that the land in the steep cutting is completely different to that on normal land, as thought it is a whole new world, an unnatural one. Another piece of setting is when it says,
'His post as in as solitary and dismal place as ever I saw',
This adds to the mystery because the narrator doesn't know where he is, and the place has no similarities to where he had come from, again adding to his unnatural thoughts of the place. Carrying on, Dickens writes,
'On either side, a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view... only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon... in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air.. it had an earthy, deadly smell... as if I had left the natural world'.
This large quote refers to the idea that the narrator feels he is in a strange and unnatural world. Dickens metaphorically describes the railroad as a great dungeon, this shows that the narrator feels he in trapped and can't escape. Also describing the architecture as barbarous and depressing, again gives the reader a sense of and unnatural world, one that the narrator doesn't like. Dickens continues the story by saying,
'Lovely evening and that he left early to enjoy it'.
This quote puts the reader in a sense of confusion because previously in the story, when he went to see the signalman it was usually 'dark and the land almost seemed angry', but now the land seems calm and relaxing, I know this when its says 'Lovely evening', this could be linked to the signalman's death as now the land seems at ease now that he is dead. At the end of the story Dickens leaves us with the cliffhanging question of 'Who is the narrator?', 'Who was the person the signalman kept seeing?' and 'Was this person trying to warn the signalman of his death or was it just an unfortunate and tragic incident?
In the gothic novel of 'The Red Room' even the name adds a sense of fear to the novel as the colour red is associated with the blood and with hell so it adds suspense even from the start. As in 'The Signalman', Wells uses senses to show the fear and unnatural feeling of it which adds to the suspense of the story. Sound plays a big part of this story in order to scare the reader, for example:
'Echoes ran up the spiral staircase'.
Also the writer uses different ways to add to the suspense by using fear. Wells does this by giving inanimate objects a frightening aspect about them like for example:
'The door creaked'.
This quote of a creaking door is very common in ghost or horror stories and gives the reader a sense of wondering if this story is just going to be another ghost story. Another way Wells bring fear to his story is the vivid and descriptive use of darkness which is very successful in gothic novels, darkness has always been associated with fear and death, as we do not know what is beyond the darkness and our fearful reaction is to explore it, but in this story Wells uses personification to powerfully describe the darkness, to examples are:
'The darkness closed upon like the shutting of the eye', and
'The darkness sprang to its place'.
In these quotes Wells gives darkness the power to move and to almost creep up on the character as if it has the power and ability to be under its own control, almost as if the darkness has a mind of its own. This adds to the fear which in turn sucks the reader into carrying on the story. Wells uses darkness to continuously to scare the main character, but it also scares the reader as we do not wish to think that the darkness can be so influential and brutal for example in the quote:
'Vain struggle against this remorseless advance'
It once again proves that the almost life like darkness does not want to leave the man alone and that it has no remorse for its actions. Wells also uses the main characters' fear to emphasise how we all have a fear of the dark by how he reacts to it by frantically relighting matches over and over again.
During the story Wells creates a sense of reality as in some aspects of the story the reader can relate to what is happening to the character as he is more afraid of the darkness creeping up on him than of the ghosts and ghouls that are supposedly haunting the room. The character even ensues in a battle to cancel out the darkness by relighting candles repeatedly in order to make the darkness retreat until the candle goes out and the darkness returns for example in the quote:
'With this I delay striking the match, but the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept up upon me, first a gained on this side then on that side'.
This passage clarifies that the battle although well fought by both sides appears to be never ending which draws the reader into the enraging war, this creates not only a sense of fear but also an unrivalled sense of reality for the reader as they question themselves 'How would they act in the same circumstances?'
In the story 'The Man with the Twisted Lip, by Arthur Conan Doyle, Doyle uses London as his setting which immediately gives the reader a huge sense of reality as he uses real places like 'Upper Swan Lane' as the main parts of his setting which invites the reader to carry on the story in order to find out what is creeping around real life London.
Doyle in this particular story uses the title 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' which adds mystery right from the beginning as the reader is curious to find out who is this man and what kind of man has a twisted lip, but like Dickens and Wells, Doyle also uses effective imagery in order to emphasise what is happening and how the mystery is unravelling piece by piece, he uses phrases such as:
'Blind as a mole'
Which shows that even the great Sherlock Holmes is puzzled by the case, once again just like Dickens and Wells, Doyle is no different when he uses the feature of sound to create the atmosphere and also the setting, he uses the senses to can explain and even create what is happening in the story and Doyle uses this to great effect by describing the way people talk:
'In a low, monstrous voice'
This imagery allows you to paint an idea in your head of what the person is like, also in quotes like:
'Broke into a scream'
Show us that Doyle even describes the pitch and the tone of the person's voice which in turn also tells you the state of what the person is in. Again in this story Doyle goes in to great detail of what a person looks like in order for you to paint that image in your head for example, this benefits the reader greatly:
'Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange and fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, head thrown back and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack lustre eye turned upon the new comer'
When Doyle describes the opium den, he describes the people in the opium den as 'bodies', not as people. This shows that he does not see the 'bodies', as humans. He only looks at them as 'bodies', and nothing more. In addition some stories use isolation or the unfamiliarity of the main character, with the setting, such as The Signalman. This uses isolation. In this story, Watson finds himself in the opium den. This is very unusual because he had never been there before. Also, he discovers Sherlock Holmes is there as well. Holmes and Watson were surprised to see each other, I know this when Watson says,
'I was certainly surprised to see you here... but no more so than I am to find you.'
With them being partners, you would have expected them to know what each other was doing and were they each other where. In this vast description of the people in the opium den Doyle also shows you not only the effect of the opium but the cramped and disgusting environment that these drug addicts thrived in.
In conclusion all three writers brilliantly use their own style and their own setting to great effect as they all made the reader feel tension, fear, suspense and mystery. The Signalman has a very mysterious ending compared to the two other stories and also the Signalman in contrast to the other two stories builds the most tension using vivid descriptions of the paranormal and almost unnatural world that is the railway. In 'The Red Room', Doyle uses setting to investigate the different aspects of fear, this would have also left the reader frightened as it actually explored the meaning and reason of why are we afraid of the dark but it also leaves the reader with a sense of the supernatural about the dark because of Wells' use of personification when talking about the it. In 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' Doyle brings a sense of reality that the reader would enjoy which adds the ageless quality to the story. Finally, I believe that all of the authors were successful in bringing suspense to the storyline. They did this by using the words in the right places and the right times. Also the words that they chose, all add up to making the reader want to read on which is what they what they were trying to accomplish.