Pre 20th Century Prose Coursework

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Pre 20th Century Prose Coursework

The stories we have been studying from Telling Tales are “The Necklace” and “The Red Room”. The authors for these two stories are Guy de Maupassant for “The necklace” and HG Wells for “The Red Room”. The necklace is set in Paris. “The necklace” is about a lady called Madam Loisel who is not rich enough and is not satisfied with what she has got. One day her husband tells her that they’ve been invited to a party, but Madam Loisel is unhappy because she does not have anything to wear. So her husband Mr Loisel sold his gun to buy Madam Loisel a good dress. She still wasn’t happy and she wanted some jewellery to wear, so she borrowed a necklace from her good friend Madam Forestier. Madam Loisel had a good time at the party because everyone was looking at her. She then loses The necklace somewhere and tries to find it. She couldn’t find it anywhere so Madam Loisel and Mr Loisel decide to buy Madam Forestier a replica necklace to replace the one Madam Loisel lost without Madam Forestier knowing. They work so hard to replace it and eventually they replace the necklace by selling their home. They then become so poor. “The Red Room” is about the narrator who is about to go in a haunted house which everyone thinks is haunted. The narrator is asked to spend a night in this haunted room. Three strange people warn him about the history of the room, but the narrator is not afraid and he is confident he wants to go in the room, but he starts to get worried when the three strange people warn him about it. He is quite scared and worried at first. He then realises that the room is haunted, but there is no ghost. The room is haunted with “black fear” of his imagination.

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In “The Red Room” suspense and tension is created for the reader when the narrator goes inside the room. The author uses long sentences like “It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there.” This sentence creates some suspense because it makes the reader feel that there is a ghost or spirit in the room. The author also creates suspense and tension by using long descriptive paragraphs. The author uses metaphors like “shadowy window bays” and he uses long sentences like “The long, draughty subterranean ...

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