The red room is a classic pre-twentieth short story and is written as a gothic mystery. A traditional gothic mystery would include old houses/ mansions, winding passages, ghastly ghosts, haunted rooms and darkness.
The characters are described in detail and any unusual features are pointed out to the reader e.g. “The man with the withered arm”, what happened to the man, did something or someone attack him, or was it the red room and what he experienced in there. The narrator would feel uncomfortable when seeing the man because it would make him think twice about what might happen to him in the red room. “The old women sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open”, the narrator and reader would be left wondering why she is concentrating on the fire, there could be something she is hiding and when she does stop looking at the fire and speaks what will she say. This would make the narrator believe the lady more and that there would be more truth in what she says. If she just came up to him and said what she wanted, she would not be taken seriously and because she acted as if there was something wrong by continuously looking at the fire. But then when she finally speaks she is more believable. The old lady keeps on repeating “this nights of all nights”, the narrator would get more worried, he would think what’s is wrong with this night, is it more frightening this night or the narrator could think she says this to all the people who come and want to go to the Red Room. “You go alone” if the narrator has to go alone the three people must be too frightened to go, they would not want to go because of their own experiences and what would have happened to them. Suspense is created in the first few pages to give the reader preconceptions about what might happen, it is created by how the characters are described and their weird lives, the way they speak and what they say and how the woman keeps repeating “this night of all nights”.
