On the first visit we feel there is something troubling the Signalman but reader is made to wait. The three mysterious encounters are then revealed but there is suspense because the ghost has appeared again and we are waiting for the next tragedy to happen.
The atmosphere in ‘The Signalman’ is generally set in the first few pages. This is done by adding an variety of adjectives to the text, and at the same time keeping the story short. A few cases of this are: “solitary and dismal place; excluding all view but a strip of sky; great dungeon; barbarous; depressing air, struck chill to me as if I had left the natural world”. In the space of about 150 words, Charles Dickens creates a superb setting for his spooky tale, with his extensive use of adjectives. His wide use of adjectives draws the reader into the story more and more until the reader almost experiences the spooky setting for himself and is on the alert for a supernatural event.
The pace of the writing is also a major factor of a ghost story because the complex sentences add pace and excitement to the writing. They are used when there is action in the story. Charles Dickens does this by making his sentences flow more by using commas. He also slowed down the pace by using more compound and simple sentences; these short sentences also add tension. For instance when the signalman is describing his torment there are very short sentences of a single word such as “Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know…” Dickens uses a major amount of direct speech in this story. The way the dialogue is presented makes the reader feel as though he is actually present himself.
“The Red Room” is a nineteenth century short story written by H.G Wells. The Red Room is based upon the Gothic genre it is concerned with the myths in a haunted room in Lorraine Castle. The leading role is giving to a self-confident young man who is not scornful about ghosts and believes he is not easily frightened. He says ‘I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’. As the story unravels it is his pride that causes his downfall. In the Red Room we never find out the entire character’s name.
H.G Wells builds up suspense so that the reader remains interested in the story. He does this by building up the tension all the way until the young man gets to the room. The things the young man says in the first paragraph makes us, the readers see that the young man is going to stay in the room for the whole night and come up unharmed.
The other characters in the story are three old people; two old men and one old woman. The first old man is referred as the man with the ‘withered arm’, the old woman is referred as the ‘old woman’, and the other old man is referred to as “even more bent, wrinkled and more aged than the first”. Even though the old people have lived there for eight-and-twenty years they have never been into that room. The old people don’t seen human.
H.G Wells creates a lot of suspense during the young man’s walk up to the Red Room by letting the young man explore the castle on his way. This allows H.G Well to build up tension because the young man is by himself because the old people said ‘ if you go to the red room to night this night of all nights you go alone’. The young man then bumps into something as he is walking which happed to be a Chinaman on a old fashion round table. That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me’. The hall was long, draughty chilly and dusty the atmosphere was very chilly. H.G Well makes the candles go out to and the moonlight creates shadows, which are always in horror stories.
H.G Well uses techniques like making echoes run up and down to build up tension. He also uses long passageways and spiral stairs to show that the castle is like a maze he says that is not what he expected when he went thought one of the doors.
‘ A shadow came sweeping up after me’ H.G Wells suggests to the reader that there is something or someone following him. By now the young man is not as brave as he was before. The best trick H.G Wells used was absolute silence because you will never know what’s going to happen next. H.G Wells builds up tension all the way up to the peak.
Darkness is a main factor in this short story; Wells uses darkness because it creates fear. That fear of the unknown leaves the narrator vulnerable.
As the young man enters the red room he closes the door behind him and locks the door. H.G Wells uses red because when we think of red we think of danger. The young man remembers the legends and stories regarding the room. The room is a large, shadowy room with a lot of hidden areas H.G wells uses hiding areas because the reader doesn’t know what is going to come out from the hidden area. That’s why when he entered the room he began to walk around the room peering around all the furniture. The young man says ‘one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness’. He says this at the beginning of the story when he was extremely confident that nothing will frighten him he is not as confident as he was now that’s why he lights up all the candles in the room because the darkness was increasing all over the room. The shadows in the hidden areas are very dark suggestion that something could be lurking or living in there. The tension rises even more when the young man starts to talk to himself to keep himself clam then hears an echo, which sounded unpleasant.
The candles then go out and he doesn’t know why so he walks up to a fireplace to relight the candles but once he puts he hands though the bars it goes out H.G Wells does this so that the room is incredibly dark and silent and the readers do not know what is going to happen next. Light and dark play an important role inside the room because light means certainty and dark means uncertainty. Light represents knowing and dark means unknowing.
The ending is something that some of the readers would expect because the young man wakes up with his head bandaged, and the man with the withered arm looking at him and the young man was trying to recollect what had happened. H.G Wells does this to make the reader think the young man is dead. When the three old told him what happed he starts to remember slowly. The old man says to him ‘you believe now that the room is haunted.’ He then goes on to say ‘it is the thing that haunts poor mortal man and that is, in all its nakedness- Fear!’ H.G Wells chooses fear because it had no sound, shape, form, or light.
I believe “The Red Room” is the more effective of the two supernatural stories because fear seems to take on a personality in itself suggesting it can work against you and have power over you. This is shown by the way in which the narrator reacts to the circumstances in the red room. Wells is effective in creating tension, as we have to wait and find out what really frightened people about the red room. The ending might be seen as a little disappointing because in our 21st century we would rather see what lurks behind the darkness of our mind and our surroundings.
