Also, “The Signalman” has its own verbal motif; both motifs help build constant tension and are structured to plot.
“Halloa! Below there!”
In “The Signalman” this is used as the opening line which frightens the Signalman and reappears in the story. Both stories are full of pejorative language and visual/tactile sense images which create mystery and suspense as the story grows.
“Fashions born in dead brains”
“Violent pulsation”
“Oozing walls”
This adds implicit criticism which over turns the natural world, from this we get the feeling of the distortedness that “The Red Room” brings and therefore the readers might fear what the room brings as the story progresses.
“Descends into darkness”
When we hear this, we immediately link it with hell imagery. There is a continuous use of pathetic fallacy which underpins both stories. Such as in “The Signalman” there is a reference in the beginning.
“In the glow of an angry sunset”
Sunsets are usually linked with calmness and happiness but here we see Charles Dickens use “angry” to express the horror of the story .By using angry this immediately alerts us that something is not quite right and is quite off putting.
In “The Red Room” H.G Wells expresses how un-pleasant, grotesque and intimidating the old people are as he uses several horrible images which scare the reader and make them question what actually happened to them. The old people reassure the narrator about “The Red Room” by saying how safe it is at the beginning.
“‘I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen yet’”
However, because of their distorted physical appearance this hints that something will happen as the readers will sense something is not quite right and odd. The author has chosen to make the old people anonymous which build on the tension as the readers would constantly question who are they?
“A second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth”
The title, “The Red Room” is instantly linked with the idea of danger and warning as red signifies blood, anger and evilness. This brings the room alive and gives it more intimidation and more purpose; it also gives the idea that the room is possessed by a strange and un-welcomed being. The colours used in this story all help to personify evil. Red and black are constantly used throughout the story which underpin the mystery and is symbolic through light to dark.
“Glance of his red eyes”
“Red light”
“The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim”
This shows that even light, which could symbolise holiness and the idea of God’s light helping to exercise the evilness but we get the sense that the room is greatly troubled and cannot be saved. The colour black is linked with the idea of death, the plague and darkness this gives us an un-earthy feeling combined with warning and evilness that the colour red brings which gives off how disturbed it is.
As well as the idea of colours being used, there is a strong use of shadows in “The Red Room” which shows unease and a forbidding figure. This helps to make the ghost seem more alive and living as the shadows are seen sweeping which is a form of movement.
“The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead”
In “The Signalman” we learn about the signalman’s past. The story is written in the first person therefore we get a lot of personal opinions and indirect speech. As there are a lot of the anonymous narrator’s personal opinions we therefore get the story in his own words and how he viewed the situation.
“This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being set free, had a newly awakened interest in these great works”
The use of ‘magic three’ helps to make point and makes it stand out.
“barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air”
This helps to set the tone of the story and continues the tension. ‘Depressing’ helps to describe the air more, making us aware of the un-healthiness and un-clean.
“Terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel”
We can see that H.G Wells uses the idea of the symbolic colours. This also helps grow the idea of descending into hell. The black tunnel makes us think of the narrator entering hell therefore we fear of what will happen, it is also perceived as a metaphoric journey from good to evil.
In “The Red Room” in one paragraph, H.G Wells uses a folklore lexical set which helps to build the idea of the ghost.
“Omens”
“Spectral”
“Witches”
“Ghosts”
Using nouns such as these help the readers to envision the ghost easier and maybe even scare them. Both stories have a cyclical plot; there is a cycle of something such as a figure appearing throughout the stories which leaves us in great suspense as we are un-aware of how it ends. There is huge irony because both stories tell us it is fear which fuels the storyline, not an actual ghost but the idea of there being one scares the characters therefore this is a clever “ghost/gothic story” because there is none.
“In all its nakedness- Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms”
Here we see Wells using “Magic three” to get the point across that it “deafens and darkens and overwhelms” This could be Wells way of adding his own moral to the story; that the cause of us seeing shadows, hearing sounds are because it is a figure of our imagination. Wells describes fear like it is a person, therefore he personifies it. In doing this we are more likely to understand its actions because of its ‘human form’ that has been described throughout the story.
“The shadows in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude.”
As we establish the fact that there was nothing haunting the room we wonder what happened to the old people and was it the room that had an effect on them. I think that Wells had deliberately made the people old as he knew it was easier to make old people look grotesque as the elderly are fragile and wrinkly looking, therefore he took the chance to make them have distorted features to fuel the suspense and tension of the story. Wells has done a good job by maintaining the emotions of all stereotypical ghost/gothic stories because he has used archaic language which would have been appropriate for the Victorian society and because of the excellent visual images which help readers to picture the terror quicker. Readers would enjoy being scared and might be relieved towards the end because the ending twists everything by revealing there was clearly nothing.
In “The Signalman” it has a very similar ending. Dickens uses the idea of fear being the fuel of the story. The signalman dies from fear which Dickens tells us it is “infection of the mind”. Dickens maintains the gothic/ghost storylines as he decides to kill the anonymous eponymous hero at the end and in most typical stories they include ghostly deaths.