The Ostler has three main characters, the protagonist Isaac, Mrs Scatchard, who is Isaacs mother and Rebecca. We don’t trust Rebecca because in Isaacs dream while he stayed at the inn, Rebecca or someone very close in appearance tried to kill Isaac. We do trust Isaac and his mother so when Rebecca returned seven years after the dream, tension begins to build between her and Mrs Scathard because Mrs Scathard realises Rebecca is the woman of the dream. Isaacs character changes after he meets Rebecca because she seems to have a power of him ‘it scared me out of my senses, and I’m not my own man again yet’ ‘The Red Room’ has one main character, a male twenty-eight year old, and three ‘grotesque custodians’. The protagonist does not trust the ‘grotesque custodians’, this helps to create a tense atmosphere between them. Also a ‘Confession Found in a Prison’ has one character. We don’t know much about him, other than the fact that he held ‘a lieutenant’s commission in His Majesty’s army’. We don’t trust this character because he is a cold-blooded murderer. There are other characters in this story like his brother, wife, sister-in-law and the child he murdered.
Lorraine Castle is the setting of ‘The Red Room’ it is an old castle, in which ‘the red room in which the young duke had died.’ It is also haunted by ‘the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband’s jest of frightening her’. The ‘grotesque custodians’ add so much to the tension and creation of a frightening setting.
The Ostler is set in the suburbs of a large sea-port town on the west coast of England. The setting is described in detail when Isaac is staying at the inn. ‘The bleak autumn wind was still blowing and the solemn, monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful to hear through the night-silence.’
‘Confession Found in a Prison’ was told from a prison setting. The protagonist was sitting in his prison cell about to die. ‘That I am alone in this stone dungeon with my evil spirit, and that I die to-morrow!’ The story told is set in a cottage and garden. A pond in the garden sets the main event.
Charles Dickens, H.G.Wells and Wilkie Collins write in Standard English, and uses formal language, also they all use imagery to help develop the text, like in ‘The Red Room’ ‘my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver.’ H.G.Wells uses personification to make the shadow seem alive and to build on the tension. H.G.Wells uses words such as ‘fancied’ to mean ‘thought’, we still use that word today but it has a different meaning. The Ostler uses figurative language. It turns the wind blowing though the trees into something different. ‘The wind moaned through the trees, murmuring his name, haunting him to the very bone.’ The noise coming from the wind would of made Isaac nervous, creating more tension. In ‘Confession Found in a Prison’ Charles Dickens uses formal language to tell the story of why the protagonist is in his prison cell.
Wilkie Collins uses complex sentences to help build tension in his story ‘The Ostler’. These sentences are very descriptive and they are before the climax of the story. He also uses broken sentences, which give the effect of the story happening as we read it. The tension rises when either Rebecca or the dream woman is around because she is a threat to Isaac.
In ‘The Red Room’, H.G.Wells uses complex sentences to build tension when the protagonist is on his way up to the ‘Red Room’. Like ‘The Ostler’ these sentences are descriptive and happen before the climax of the story. The tension rises and falls when the protagonist is walking up the corridor because he sees something than makes him nervous and then he calms himself down by giving it an explanation. ‘Confession Found in a Prison’ uses a mixture of compound and complex sentences, when the story is building up to the action. This helps to build tension.
The original readers of these type of stories in the nineteenth century, would have enjoyed them for the same reasons today we enjoy watching horror film, but because televisions weren’t invented in the nineteenth century they read books instead, some of the those books have been turned into horror films. The stories are popular now and then because they re short, condensed and suspense and tension builds throughout them.
I think that the most successful in building tension and suspense was ‘The Red Room’ by H.G.Wells because the tension rises and falls in the story. I think that ‘The Red Room could easily be adapted into a film or television show.
