The three 19th century mystery stories I will refer to are 'The Red Room' by H.G Wells, 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens and 'The speckled Band' by Arthur Conan Doyle.
English Essay
How are strange characters and atmospheric settings used to create effective 10th century mystery stories? Refer to three stories in your response.
I think that the main reason that 19th century mystery stories included peculiar characters and atmospheric settings were in order to get the reader pulled into the story and feel everything that the protagonist feels. The three 19th century mystery stories I will refer to are 'The Red Room' by H.G Wells, 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens and 'The speckled Band' by Arthur Conan Doyle. Each writer uses different techniques; there are also many that they all use. I will now show you all of the similarities and contrasts.
The Red Room's main character is also the narrator; he is a cocky young man who he considers is scared of nothing. He confronts 3 old people who warn him not to go into the 'Red Room' being arrogant he ignores them, he goes to the Red Room and after being so scared he runs away he confronts the 3 old people again, he tells them that it was in fact fear itself that made him scared.
In the Signalman the protagonist starts as a curious person interested about what haunts the old signalman. The protagonist goes back to signalman to talk about him more. The third time that the protagonist comes back to the signalman he is dead. He was run over by a train, which was the very thing that was haunting him; Ironic or what?
The Speckled Band is quite different from the other two mystery stories; we can tell from the start that the story is in fact a flashback. The main character; Sherlock Holmes is a professional detective, it starts off with a women coming to him asking for help, it appears that her step-father wants to kill her. Holmes investigates this and after much detective work he thinks that he knows the answer to the investigation. He sets a trap but after scaring a snake to the women's stepfather through a vent he dies. With Holmes proved wrong and the murder dead Holmes returns home with the death of a man on his conscious.
In the Red Room we learn that the protagonist is cocky and arrogant. I know this because he says ' It would take a very tangible ghost to frighten me' it makes you think that he believes that he is upper class while everyone else isn't.
In the Signalman, the protagonist tries to help the Signalman, I know this because he says ' you look at me as if you dread of me' this shows that he's asking if the signalman feels uncomfortable with him there.
In the Speckled Band our views change about the main ...
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In the Red Room we learn that the protagonist is cocky and arrogant. I know this because he says ' It would take a very tangible ghost to frighten me' it makes you think that he believes that he is upper class while everyone else isn't.
In the Signalman, the protagonist tries to help the Signalman, I know this because he says ' you look at me as if you dread of me' this shows that he's asking if the signalman feels uncomfortable with him there.
In the Speckled Band our views change about the main character, it starts off us thinking that he is the perfect detective and that he could solve any mystery. It turns out that there is a mystery he cannot solve, this makes us think less of him and maybe even think of him as a murderer.
In the Red Room, the difference between the protagonist and the three secondary characters is big; the age is very different, as is there social class. Perhaps the largest difference is the personality of the 2 groups, one is very cocky while the other is trying to help. This fact may be due to the age and social class mentioned above.
The Signalman's two main characters aren't too different from each other, the age is a little different as is the social class but the personality is more or less same. The narrator is caring and curious while the signalman is caring but he is curious in a different way.
The Speckled Band's two main characters are extremely different. The Stepfather is an aggressive and almost crazy man. He has strange interests, which makes the reader wonder about him. Holmes on the other hand is clever and almost Godlike at the start but it turns out he is no more godly than you or me.
The setting of the Red Room is very gothic set in a large 'haunted' mansion, it has many dark rooms and corridors, which make it seem very scary. It uses imagery and pathetic fallacy to entrance the reader of actually being there.
In the Signalman it is very damp and dark much like the Red Room. It is also set next to a railway which is in context with when the text was written, trains were new when this was written and therefore a very 'hot' topic. We know that the setting is very dark because it says 'under the bridge it was as dark as the nights sky'.
In the Speckled Band the setting changes a small bit. This is unlike the other 2 stories. The first one or two pages are set in an office while the others are all set in a manor house. I think that the setting is usually quite dark and atmospheric; the writer has achieved this very well using pathetic fallacy and a bit of imagery.
In each of the 3 stories, the plot is very different, The Red Room has a moral to it in the end, the Signalman ends quite sadly and The Speckled Band ends with us knowing that Holmes isn't that great.
In The Red Room the protagonist starts off very cocky but after being scared out of his life he learns that he is scared of some things, this gives a moral to people about being boastful, back in the 19th Century a lot of stories had morals and this was one of them.
The Signalman is a sad story, since in the end The Signalman dies. This makes the readers feel sad and frustrated since another thing is that they never find out what actually haunts the Signalman.
At the start of The Speckled Band you think that Holmes is perfect in almost every way, he is known by lots of people, he bends a metal stick with ease. This greatness doesn't last as he investigates, he thinks he knows the answer and what's worse is that he ends up killing the potential murderer, Holmes goes back to his office sad and distraught.
Narrators area big part of every story, sometimes the narrator is part of the story and sometimes an all-knowing Godlike figure. The Red Room and The signalman share the similarity of the Narrator also being one of the main characters as well. In The Red Room the cocky young man is the narrator, In the Signalman the curious man is. This is where the Speckled Band is so different; it starts off with Watson glancing over some notes and talking about one case in particular, this case is the one that the whole story is about. This makes the story a bit like one large flashback. Since it has already happened Watson, the narrator, is a bit like the all-knowing person I have already talked about.
Withheld information was widely used in 19th Century Mystery stories. It make the story feel that much more creepy when you don't know the names of the people and only the descriptions given. The Red Room and The Signalman once agin share this similarity when the Speckled Band does not.
In the Red Room there are only 4 characters, they are referred to as 'the man with the withered arm', 'the man with the shade', ' the old woman' and lastly 'I' since the narrator is talking about himself.
In The Signalman there are only 2 main characters, the signalman is called 'him' and the narrator is called 'I'. At the end of the story another character called Tom, who is the train driver, talks to the narrator. I do not know why the writer told us the name of the train driver unlike the other 2 characters.
In The Speckled Band we know all of the characters names. This is because Watson is telling us about the investigation and there would be no point of telling us Watson's name and no one else's.
In conclusion I believe that strange characters and atmospheric settings are used to grab the reader and pull him into the story, create lots of tension and just to make us all enjoy a good read. I think this essay proves that 19th Century mystery stories used many techniques to make the characters peculiar and the settings spooky. The reader is able to learn the characters personalities quickly and is able to work out where the story is taking place; they also know whom the narrator is which enables the reader to what effect the writer is trying to use.
