'The Red Room' is a nineteenth century short story written by H.G Wells

Red Room

‘The Red Room’ is a nineteenth century short story written by H.G Wells (Herbert George) (1866-1946) English author and political philosopher, most famous for his science fiction romances that variously depict alien invasion, terrifying future societies, and transformed states of being.

The Red Room is based upon the Gothic genre it is concerned with the myths in a haunted room in Lorraine Castle. The leading role is giving to a self-confident young man who is not supercilious about ghosts and believes he is not easily frightened. He says ‘I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’. As the story unravels it is his pride that causes his downfall. In the Red Room we never find out the entire character’s name.

H.G Wells builds up suspense so that the reader remains interested in the story. He does this by building up the tension all the way until the young man gets to the room. The things the young man says in the first paragraph makes us, the readers see that the young man is going to stay in the room for the whole night and come up unharmed.

The other characters in the story are three old people; two old men and one old woman. The first old man is referred as the man with the ‘withered arm’, the old woman is referred as the ‘old woman’, and the other old man is referred to as “even more bent, wrinkled and more aged than the first”. Even though the old people have lived there for eight-and-twenty years they have never been into that room. The old people don’t seen human.

H.G Wells creates a lot of suspense during the young man’s walk up to the Red Room by ...

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H.G Wells creates a lot of suspense during the young man’s walk up to the Red Room by letting the young man explore the castle on his way. This allows H.G Well to build up tension because the young man is by himself because the old people said ‘ if you go to the red room to night this night of all nights you go alone’. The young man then bumps into something as he is walking which happed to be a Chinaman on a old fashion round table (Buhl table).’ That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me’. The hall was long, draughty chilly and dusty the atmosphere was very chilly. H.G Well makes the candles go out to and the moonlight creates shadows, which are always in horror stories.

H.G Well uses techniques like making echos run up and down to build up tension. He also uses long passageways and spiral stairs to show that the castle is like a maze he says that is not what he expected when he went thought one of the doors.

‘ A shadow came sweeping up after me’ H.G Wells suggests to the reader that there is something or someone following him. By now the young man is not as brave as he was before. The best trick H.G Wells used was absolute silence because you will never know what’s going to happen next. H.G Wells builds up tension all the way up to the peak.

As the young man enters the red room he closes the door behind him and locks the door. H.G Wells uses red because when we think of red we think of danger. The young man remembers the legends and stories regarding the room. The room is a large, shadowy room with a lot of hidden areas H.G wells uses hiding areas because the reader doesn’t know what going to come out from the hidden area. That’s why when he entered the room he began to walk around the room peering around all the furniture. The young man says ‘one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness’. He says this at the beginning of the story when he was extremely confident that nothing will frighten him he is not as confident as he was now that’s why he lights up all the candles in the room because the darkness was increasing all over the room. The shadows in the hidden areas are very dark suggestion that something could be lurking or living in there. The tension rises even more when the young man starts to talk to himself to keep himself clam then hears an echo, which sounded unpleasant.

The candles then go out and he doesn’t know why so he walks up to a fireplace to relight the candles but once he puts he hands though the bars it goes out H.G Wells does this so that the room is incredibly dark and silent and the readers do not know what is going to happen next. Light and dark play an important role inside the room because light means certainty and dark means uncertainty. Light represents knowing and dark means unknowing.

The ending is something that some of the readers would expect because the young man wakes up with his head bandaged, and the man with the withered arm looking at him and the young man was trying to recollect what had happened. H.G Wells does this to make the reader think the young man is dead. When the three old told him what happed he starts to remember slowly. The old man says to him ‘you believe now that the room is haunted.’ He then goes on to say ‘it is the thing that haunts poor mortal man and that is, in all its nakedness- Fear!’ H.G Wells chooses fear because it had no sound, shape, form, or light.

This is a story like no other I thing the idea behind the story is that H.G Wells wanted to tell us that fear is the most scariest thing to frighten humans because when the young man started getting scared fear was with him. The Red Room is a good story I enjoyed doing work on it.

Light is very symbolic in the Red Room it represents safety it helps to claim tension. The young mans relationship with the old people help him because the old people look after him and bandaged his head. We discover that ghosts do not haunt the Red Room. It is fear that haunts the Red Room and that fear cause the young man’s reactions. At the start of the story the young man says ‘I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’.