The Kitbag is a story written by Algernon Blackwood. He writes a story about a man, Johnson, who was involved in a murder case involving John Turk. The author gets straight to the point when he makes the first sentence unpleasant.
Johnson prepares for his holiday to forget what he has been through recently until a kitbag comes along which changes the story’s atmosphere. We assume there is corpse in the kitbag but later on in the story, we discover out how imagination can play tricks in his mind. The man was left haunted by the image of John Turk’s face.
The story has gothic imagery and horror which suggests supernatural behaviour as the theme connects to the setting. The setting is based on a house which is large, lofty and empty.
The Speckled Band is written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Short stories are dense fictional narratives. They usually concern a reasonably small number of characters involved in a single event or situation. There is usually only one focus, aimed at provoking a single emotional response from the reader. The dialogue is used very carefully in a short story due to a lack of space for extended development of conversation and narrative. The mood in the Speckled Band is calm but there is a bit of tension. In the Speckled Band some of the words help to capture the mood like ‘glancing’, ‘terrible’ and ‘tragic’. At the beginning you can't really tell what's going to happen. The Speckled Band is a traditional detective story because they're telling about past crimes.
Red Room shows the main character is a male who is very confident that there is no such thing as ghosts. He is arrogant and refuses to listen to the warnings given by the old people. This is the first part in the story that starts to create suspense as the reader wants to find out what the man is willing to do to prove himself. He says that he will only start believing in ghosts if he meets a ‘tangible one’. However, we don’t get to find out his name and also find out he is vulnerable and isolated. The story is set in an old castle, where there is a room which is believed to be haunted by the old people living there. The old people have ‘yellow teeth’ and are ‘bent’ as well as ‘withered’.
On the other hand, Johnson, a character in kitbag, ‘was a young man of twenty six with a delicate face like girls’. Also he seems to be an ordinary person. He looks forward to a change of scenery and the thought of the ‘criminal court was an evil dream in his mind’. When the haunting begins, he tends to speak to himself to reassure himself he is just imagining things and there are no such things as ghost.
In the Speckled Band, there is a traditional detective, Sherlock Holmes, who is very observant, and is very intelligent. Also in the story, there is Dr Roylot who is a massive man and violent. This gives us the impression he could be involved in the murder as Helen Stoner shows anxiety and fear when talking about him.
To contrast the main characters in the short stories above, Johnson (Kitbag) and the young man (Red Room) link together because it starts off with normal atmosphere which slowly turns into something sinister. Also both stories give a sense of danger and a fear of being attacked. However in Speckled Band, it is totally opposite. This is because it is finding out how the murder took place as no one seems to get haunted. One of the common things that these short stories have is the building of tension. Both Johnson and Dr Roylot are cold, violent, and brutal and have no regret or guilt about what they have done.
In the Red Room, the language used is an old fashioned style with long sentences. It tells the story slowly. People were entertained by stories which had plenty of detail and created atmosphere. Also people at that time used to believe in ghosts. It is written in the first person which makes it more effective. This is because it becomes more dramatic and personal. This is vital way to make you feel part of the story. The story uses gothic imagery on many occasions such as describing the house, ‘old fashioned furniture…’
In the Kit Bag, there is a frequent use of adjectives in the long sentences which makes you stop and think and also creates an image in your mind. This effectively builds more tension. The author uses gothic language to describe the weather such as ‘howling’ and ‘roaring’ which is personification. There is alliteration, ‘dark December’, which adds to the atmosphere with the sad, heavy ‘d’ sound Also there are similes used such as ‘face like a young girls’.
The Speckled Band contains long sentences and similes. Also, the weather conditions are similar to the weather conditions in the Kitbag. The menacing atmosphere is created by the weather in this short story.
