The Young Man in 'The Red Room' and Sandra in 'The Darkness Out There' are both taken on a journey of self-discovery and realisation. Examine and analyze how H.G Wells and Penelope Lively present this to the reader.

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Madeleine Hull 10S

Mrs. Hart

Wide reading coursework

The Young Man in ‘The Red Room’ and Sandra in ‘The Darkness Out There’ are both taken on a journey of self-discovery and realisation. Examine and analyze how H.G Wells and Penelope Lively present this to the reader.

Penelope Lively and H.G Wells both wrote stories with large similarities even though they were written in completely different eras. The two main characters in ‘The Red Room’ and ‘The Darkness Out There’ stories both go on stories of self-discovery and realisation, although they are placed in different situations. Lively creates a character called Sandra who is suspected of being in her early teens, she is a normal naïve young girl with dreams that every girl has. She is placed in an awkward position when she visits an elderly woman, but realises that the elderly woman has dark secret that Sandra wishes she didn’t discover. H.G Wells character referred to as the young man, visits what seems to be an ancient castle that is suspected of having a haunted room. The young man is purely there to visit the room to discover for himself what the secret really is, but finds a much more horrifying secret.

 ‘The Darkness Out There has been written in the 3rd person, using this type of technique helps the reader with to understand the story more. This way the reader can see each characters opinion.

‘The Red Room’ is written in 1st person from the young mans point of view, this gives us more detail about his opinions and tells us what he is thinking throughout the whole situation. Using this technique shows the reader how the character has changed in more detail.

In ‘The Darkness Out There’ the story describes Mrs. Rutter as a sweet and nice old woman, but at the end of a sentence Lively adds words that give the impression that Mrs. Rutter has something that she is hiding, ‘her eyes snapped and darted’. This builds up suspense as the reader tries to figure out what possibly the secret could be. There is also suspense built up during Mrs. Rutter telling the story. There are breaks made by the other characters.  

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 In the story ‘The Red Room’ the whole story was filled with suspense. It starts from the beginning, when the reader is intrigued to find out why the young man is at the ancient house, to the end to find out whether there were really ghosts. The character that is referred to as the old woman says repeatedly ‘tonight of all nights’ this makes the reader asks questions about the timing of the vent, what made that night so special? This helped build up suspense, this made the reader believe that the young man was going to have a very ...

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