“Here I am Lavinia.”
Lavinia turned, there was Francine, at the bottom porch step, in the smell of zinnias and hibiscus. Francine was dressed all in snow white and didn't look thirty-five.”
Again we can see Bradbury’s attention to detail being shown, with the way he spends time describing each of the characters.
Another difference that we can see in the style of the two writers is the way they use their characters. Bradbury writes in the third-person style, whereas Collins uses the first-person style of narrative writing.
In the next few paragraphs of each story the authors start to build up tension and create an atmosphere of suspense. This is when the stories start to get really interesting.
In “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” the idyllic setting is broken for the first time when an old woman called Grandma Hanlon calls out to Lavinia and Francine, “Where you going ladies?”
The girls then reply, “To the elite theatre to see Harold Lloyd in Welcome, Danger!” To this Grandma Hanlon responds, “Won’t catch me out on no night like this… not with the Lonely One strangling women!”
This is the first indication in the story that an air of fear and menace lies beneath the apparent calm of the setting. The tension is eased however when Lavinia says to Francine, “Those women like to see their tongues dance.” Francine isn’t so sure and suggests to Lavinia, “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the movie… the Lonely One might follow us and kill. I don’t like that ravine. Look how black, smell it, and listen to it.”
Again here is an example of how Bradbury describes the area so that we, the readers, can picture it in our minds, and the way he uses his words and puts emphasis on them makes us want to smell and listen to the ravine with the character.
In “A Terribly Strange Bed” the tension is built up in a different, discreet sort of way. The first signs of tension appear when Collins says to his friend, “For heaven’s sake,… let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gambling with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s, to a house where they don’t mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise.” The very length of these sentences in my opinion tends to lessen the impact that Collins’ wants his words to have on the reader.
Collins describes the people in this blackguard betting house with great detail so that we, the readers, can get a ‘feel’ for the place and so he can create an atmosphere for the story.
He describes the people using the following sentences; “We did not find many men there. But, few as the men were who looked at us on our entrance, they were all types - lamentably true types – of their respective classes.”
“We had come to see blackguards, but what these men were was something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism – here there was nothing but tragedy – mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was unbearable. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly to register how often black won and how often red – never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes and the darned greatcoat, who had lost his last sou, and still looked on desperately after he could play no longer – never spoke.”
Here again I can see Collins’ deliberate use of long, descriptive sentences and again in my opinion as a modern day reader I feel the length of these sentences lessens the impact that these sentences give.
In the paragraph, Collins uses the one phrase three times, “never spoke.” He uses this phrase after he describes each of the three characters. The way that he repeats these words after the descriptions reinforces the feeling of loneliness and silence inside this gambling house. The style of his writing here is effective in communicating his meaning.
Both writers continue with this building up of tension and then easing of it again over the next few pages of each story, eventually building up to the climax of each story.
As we come to the climax of each story, we can detect distinct differences between the styles of the pre-20th century writer (Ray Bradbury) and the 20th century writer (Wilkie Collins).
In “The Whole Towns Sleeping,” the story climaxes with the main character, Lavinia, running away from sounds, which she thinks are “The Lonely One” chasing her. Bradbury uses his words to gradually build up the tension until you, the reader, can feel it as well. He uses some long, winding sentences, such as, “She heard music, in a mad silly way, she heard a huge surge of music that pounded at her, and she realised as she ran, - as she ran in panic and terror – that some part of her mind was dramatising, borrowing from the turbulent score of some private film. The music was rushing and plunging her faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down and down into the pit of the ravine!
This sentence, though long, gives a rushed and breathless feeling and as you read through it you feel that Lavinia runs faster. This sentence really raises the level of the tension.
The story ends with Lavinia reaching her house and telling herself what to do. When she is in her house there is a single sentence which breaks the tension, “the music stopped.”
This sentence lulls us into thinking that nothing else could possibly happen. But the last few sentences finish the story dramatically. ‘“She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.”’
‘“What?” she asked, “What? What?”’
‘Behind her in the black living room, someone cleared his throat…’
In typical 20th century style we are left to imagine the sequence of events that follows.
“A Terribly Strange Bed,” however has a completely different style in the climax of the story. The climax of this story is spread over three or four pages and, I feel, has not got the excitement of “The Whole Towns Sleeping.”
The climax of the story ‘begins’ with the Englishman playing a game of ‘Rouge et Noir’ and winning. There is then mention of an ‘Old Soldier,’ who befriends the Englishman.
After the Englishman ‘breaks the bank’ the ‘old soldier’ gets him wine to help him celebrate. Then when the Englishman is quite drunk the old soldier decides to help him sober up by getting him a cup of the gambling-house’s ‘strongest coffee.’ We later find out that the coffee was drugged. After the Englishman has drunk his coffee the ‘Old Soldier’ persuades him to stay the night at the gambling-house as it would be too dangerous to go home in his state of drunkenness, the Englishman agrees and is shown to his room. The next few paragraphs of the story describe what his bedroom is like.
The Englishman soon realises that the canopy of his four-poster bed is closing down on him, and we find out about this gradually as Collins again drags out his sentences and, I feel, lessens the impact of them.
The Englishman is only awake because his coffee was drugged too strongly.
After the Englishman escapes the gambling-house he makes his way to the police –station and he tells the police about the people and the ‘evil goings-on’ at the corrupted gambling-house.
The story finishes with a non-dramatic climax of the police following the Englishmans advice and going to the gambling-house. There they find out about the nature of the bed and arrest all of the people in the gambling-house.
Overall, after reviewing both stories I have decided that although both the stories are highly interesting, I prefer the style of Ray Bradbury and his story, ‘The Whole Town’s Sleeping.’
