The Red Room and The Monkey's Paw(Compare and Contrast)

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Shariar Vicky English Coursework       08/12/2007   10:31 AM

A Comparison of the effectiveness of authorial techniques used in two short stories “The Red Room and “The Monkey’s Paw”

In this essay I am going to compare H.G .Wells’s “The Red Room” and “The Monkey’s Paw” written by W.W.Jacobs.

 H.G.Wells is very well known for the science fiction books that he wrote. With his first novel “The Time Machine” which became was immediately successful he began to write a series of science fiction novels that revealed him as a writer of many ideas and a strong sense of imagination. In his lifetime he has been a novelist, journalist and historian.

W.W.Jacobs was an English short story writer best known for his classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw” which was given to the public to read in 1902.He has not written as many books as H.G .Wells but has wrote some good pieces of work.

In both “The Red Room” and “The Monkey’s Paw” the titles are both strange. For example “The Red Room” makes us think of blood, danger, violence, and stop so we assume that in “The Red Room” something bad is going has happened or is going to happen and it makes us feel scared. “The Monkey’s Paw” is a strange title because the “Paw” is part of a monkey’s body and causes the reader to wonder where the rest of the monkey is and why it is just called “The Monkey’s Paw” and makes us wonder what is going to happen in the story. They are both short horror stories which display a sense of terror, suspense and tension. Short stories have a simple plot, limited number of characters and the outcome is generally surprising and is often delivered at the end.

“The Red Room” is about a young man who does not believe in ghosts and he has no fear so he plans to spend the night at a castle called Lorraine Castle where there is allegedly haunted room called “The Red Room”. He meets three old people who warn him not to enter “The Red Room” however he is so confident that no ghosts exist so they cannot persuade him from going to “The Red Room”.

However when he is going on the way to “The Red Room” he encounters shadows moving and hears strange and weird sounds. When he arrives in

“The Red Room” he encounters stranger more terrifying moments like candles extinguishing themselves and shadows appearing and moving forwards to him as if they were humans as well as darkness surrounding the entire room. In the darkness he strikes something on his head and loses consciousness. When he regains consciousness his head is bandaged, three old people are surrounding him eager to know what occurred in “The Red Room”. They thinking that the room is haunted and that there are ghosts but much to their disappointment the man reveals the only thing what made “The Red Room” terrifying was Fear.

“The Monkey’s Paw” takes place in a house called Laburnum Villa. It describes how a soldier named visits a family of three: A father mother and son who live in the Villa and he tells them about his adventures in India and what he found. He tells them about a mysterious object which is a monkey’s paw which has magical powers that grant the user three wishes. However there are consequences to the wishes that you ask for. The family does not believe in this and so their first wish is for £200.

The day after the old man had his first wish an employee of the son’s workplace arrives at the family home bringing grave news about the son having an accident at work and that they will get compensation for it. They received the same amount of money that they wished for. A few days later after hearing the news of their son’s death, the mother due to her grief used the monkey’s paw wishing for her son to come back home alive. At the same moment loud knocking is heard on the outside door. The father thinks the thing outside their door is not their son but is a monster of what they wanted however the woman thinks it is her son come back from the dead and goes to open the door and so in a act of desperation the old man uses his last wish .The knocking stops and when the mother opens the door there is no one there.

A setting is a place where something is set for example most horror and gothic stories are located in a scary isolated surrounding such as; a castle, forest and places where there is dark and scary surroundings. The reason why authors use these kinds of surroundings is to make the reader feel scared and for them to imagine what it would be like all alone in a big castle or a dark forest surrounded by noises and shadows which you can’t interpret.

The setting may affect the atmosphere and tension in the story by making it scarier and feel more afraid as well as make the reader less inclined to put the book down. The setting of a horror story affects the audience by making them feel afraid and make them imagine that they are there in the story experiencing the dreadful and terrifying things in the story and make them feel scared if they are reading the book by themselves in a dark surrounding.

Isolation is when a place or person is by themselves or away from civilization. Isolation may affect the audience by making them feel like they are by themselves and that because they are the only person reading the book they will feel scared. It is typical for a place to be isolated

in ghost stories because if there were quite a lot of buildings in the area then it would make the experience less frightening because where there are lots of buildings there are lots of people so it makes the reader feel safe whereas where there is only a couple of buildings the reader feels that if there are so little buildings what can they do to stop the horror coming.

Another technique used in the setting is pathetic fallacy. Pathetic Fallacy is when the mood, tension or the atmosphere is compared to the weather for example “Morning, dismal and wet”. This describes the mood and the weather all in one line. The quote is from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” novel. Authors use pathetic fallacy in ghost stories to make the reader understand the weather and the character’s emotions. If in a story the castle was terrifying then the weather outside would be raining and thunder and lightning would commence. It makes the reader feel that the emotions of the character is portrayed with the weather and show their mood of what the character is feeling as well as creating a more scarier atmosphere.

“The Monkey’s Paw” is set in a isolated place called Laburnum Villa which is not a typical setting for a horror story because it is not a very big house and is small and is comforting as it says “ the fire burned brightly”. This makes the reader feel safe. I personally think that this does not add to the level of tension because as far as the reader is concerned when reading that the setting is not a castle or spooky surroundings they are immediately ponder whether this story will be scary at all.

The inside of the house is told to be warm and that the father and son of the house as playing chess e.g. Father and son were at chess”. This makes the reader feel that nothing bad is going to happen if the characters are playing chess together and enjoying each other’s company.  The inside of the house also tells us that this story was written a long time ago because it says “fire burned brightly “. Nowadays every household has electricity and it is a bit strange for a parlour to have not have electricity so this suggests that this story was written some time ago. The author however describes the place of where the cottage is as a bad place to live as the text says “beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst”. This suggests that the place where the characters are located is a horrible place to live and that they don’t want to live there. The surroundings outside the parlour affect the reader by telling them that the family have no contact to other people and have to travel quite far to go get help.

“The Red Room” however is set in a castle and as far as the reader can imagine away from people. The name of the castle is called Lorraine Castle and this is a typical setting for a horror story because a castle represents many things. A castle has many rooms and secrets that cannot be revealed except by trying to find out what is in there. Castles make a horror story be one because a castle is enormous, dull, and can give out echoes and a person can feel very lonely. Castles are used in films because they portray a sense of fear and make people feel that there is something in their making them feel scared. This adds to the level of the tension very much because it makes the reader feel that a castle contains many hidden features and they can be revealed.

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The inside of the castle is said to be big as it has many doors and lots of staircases e.g. “you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase and halfway up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the steps”. This explains that the house is vast and very big and that it takes a little bit of time to go to a certain part of the castle. Also it describes ...

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