In “The Landlady” Billy is pulled into a false sense of security. The moods of the story change. He gets drawn towards the Bed and Breakfast. The word “Bed and Breakfast” was written three times. It was like a large black eye looking at Billy forcing him to say, not walk away.
When Billy rings the doorbell, all of a sudden the door opens. Standing there is an old lady. Billy didn’t even have a chance to take his finger off the doorbell. Something like a “jack in a box”. It makes Billy jump but he still seems very happy with the Bed and Breakfast. The Lady gave him a “warm-welcoming smile”. Billy describes the old lady as having “round pink face and very gentle blue eyes”. “Seems terribly nice”, “looked exactly like a mother of one’s best school friend”. Inside, Billy noticed that there was not any “hats or coats in the hall. There was no umbrellas, no walking sticks, nothing”. They have the place all to themselves. It is strange what she means when she tells Billy “such a pleasure when now and again I open the door and see someone standing there who is exactly right”.
The place seems “charming”. The “comfort” of having a hot water bottle. Billy thinks to himself “she might seem a bit ‘dotty’ but she is ‘harmless’”.
The Landlady always calls Billy “dear” as an endearment. The Landlady also said “I’m glad you appeared”. Why would she be so glad? Maybe she has not had anyone visit her for quite some time now.
Billy found a guest book in the living room. There were only two other entries. He started to read them. “Christopher Mulhdland from Cardiff” and the other was “Gregory W.Temple from Bristol”. Suddenly “Christopher Mulhdland rang a bell”. Billy “could feel her eyes resting on his face, watching him over the rim of her teacup”. Billy noticed “she had a smell, white, quickly hands and had red finger nails”.
The strange bit the Landlady said, “there wasn’t a blemish on his body. His skin was just like a baby’s”, talking about Mr Temple. How does she know this? Billy found out the parrot was stuffed, the Landlady had stuffed it herself. “Perfectly preserved” “I stuffed my little pets myself when they pass away”. Billy’s tea tasted like “bitter almonds”
The’ Red Room’ is about a man who thinks there is no such thing as ghosts. He wants to prove this and decides to go to the ‘Red Room’ that’s supposed to be haunted.
He goes and the old woman and the old man couldn’t believe that he was going to spend one whole night there.
He sets down the corridor, up the spiral staircase, then down another corridor to the ‘Red room’. Strange things happened on his way there. It was very chilly with a draught. There were echoing noises down the passage. When he got to another corridor it got very spooky. There were candles lit with dust, silence spread evenly. The moonlight picking out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination.
When he was in the Red Room, nothing happened till later on. One candlelight went out. When he relit the candle, more candles went out. Every time when he would relight a candle, more and more would go out. The light goes out like someone suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb.
He woke up the next morning to find himself in the kitchen with the old man and woman. He found out the fear ‘The Red room’ has is fear. Fear that there would be neither light nor sound.
The main character in ‘The Red Room’ is a man who thinks there’s no such thing as ghosts. He does what he wants to do; no one can change his mind.
The ‘Red Room’ sounds boastful. There are quite a lot of grim details. “Ghost” is mentioned quite a lot. The narrator is to spend one night in the red room with the “spiritual terrors”. There are disturbing descriptions, which create a “gothic” look. The narrator sees himself in the “queer old mirror” as a distorted image. He hears creaking noises from the hinges of the door. He finds that the old man and woman are silent and unfriendly.
In “The Red Room” Wells continues his story in the gothic manner. He goes down the “chilly echoing passage”. He walks down with his “flickering” candle making a “cower and quiver” shadows. “Darkness, rustling” noises as he went up the spiral staircase. “Moon light picking out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination”. He feels like a “twinge of apprehension” as he opens the door to the red room. It was “dark” and “shadowy” “echoing from the crackling fire”. The candle did not give off much light. The “reds and blacks”. The “stillness” in the room. Beyond the small light of the candle “The shadow in the alcove at the end of a particular hard that indefinable quality of a presence, that add a suggestion of a lurking living thing”. The tension starts to build up. He lights more candles to get rid of the darkness until the whole room is illuminated. All on a sudden, one candle light goes out “like someone suddenly nipped between his finger and thumb” every time he tried to light a candle, another would go out. He injures himself and falls loosing consciousness. He wakes up to see the Old man and woman around him. He then agrees “the Red Room” is haunted, but not by ghosts, by fear of darkness.
The Landlady and The Red Room have only a few things in common.
In the Landlady Billy Weaver was an innocent young 17 year old man who only wanted to get a better job and was trying to find ‘The Bell and Dragon’ for somewhere to stay the night. Billy came across a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ place. The owner, the old landlady, drew him to stay at ‘The Bed and Breakfast’. Billy couldn’t have thought anything bad was going to happen. But we know he was drawn into trouble.
The man in ‘the red rooms’ thoughts is very shallow at the beginning of the story. When the old man tells him not to go in the room, he judges him as foolish for believing that there is a ghost inside.
The man was hunting/seeking for trouble. He wanted to prove a point there was no such thing as ghosts. To prove this he went into ‘The Red room’ on his own mind and was haunted, not by ghosts but by fear of being in pitch darkness. The man first started off as a non-believer in ghosts, but when he came out he felled into the trap. There was something to believe in, not ghosts however, but fear.
