The next story Im using is titled The Darkness Out there, this was written in our century by the writer Penelope lively who began writing prolifically in 1970, and who at first started writing children’s books. The story is of a girl called Sandra and a boy called Kerry who Sandra doesn’t like. They both help do the chores for an old lady, while in the background of there mind was a far out ground of woodland which the old lady tells them of a plane crashing there but never blew up, so the three of them set out to see this plane in the cold rainy dark, to see what was left there, and who may be left there. The main theme of the story is how people are quick to judge.
Each of the two stories describes the characters in great detail. In the red room the three old people are described in a creepy way for example theirs the man with the withered arm and the woman with pale eyes and last of all the man with the shade with small, bright and inflamed eyes. All these characters start the build up have the reader’s imagination and stays with them through the story adding to the feeling of unease.
The first contrast between the two stories is the way in which they are narrated. The Darkness Out There is written in 3rd person narration and is told as if it was a fairy tail with a moral meaning to it. The Red Room is written in first person narration making the reader more liable to believe the story they are reading. It is narrated by the story’s main character the young man who has a scientific background, which makes him very disbelieving of the supernatural.
Both stories are designed for a suspense feeling using psychological fear. This meaning that there is the feeling of something around you but it is never there, still this feeling scares you from the inside making you imagine things and that those things are around you. For example in the red room when the man is in the red room and the only thing around him is the darkness and in The Darkness Out There when the old woman, boy and girl see the plane when they go out in the dark with a lantern. The darkness and noises give them a feeling of terror around them; because of this darkness it makes the surroundings different to what they would be in the daylight.
What’s more both stories include old characters which
I feel that this is because old people are the nearest thing to a deformed person with their crinkly skin and in some cases stubby bodies and this gives the feeling of creepiness in the real world itself.
One of the main characters in the Darkness Out There is Mrs Rutter who fits the stereotype of an old woman really well until she begins to tell the story of how she left a German to die after a plane crashed in a field not so for from her home. This makes the reader and characters views in the story change about the old woman and they begin to see her insensitive side.
Another main character is Sandra a young girl who goes to help the old lady ‘Mrs Rutter’ with her homework. Sandra seems very naive at the start of the story and she also represents her generation of young people very well by being superficial and girly, but after hearing Mrs Rutter’s story her views change about the world in general and she becomes less naive.
The Red Room has a typical setting for a horror story with it being set in an old run down castle with ‘chilly echoing passages’ and spiritual staircases’. H.G well uses this imagery of a cold dark quite place throughout the story. The young mans journey is separated into two parts, The physical journey to the Red Room and the actual psychological fear journey inside the Red room.
