Even without the horror, the mystery alone would be enough to be effective. But, when the author incorporates the horror into the story, not only is he keeping the reader puzzled, but he is also making the reader afraid. When an author can make the reader feel like this, then the elements of the story have been used effectively. The reader’s feelings are a measure of how effective the author has been in using horror, mystery or any other elements.
The other element used in ‘The Signalman’ is supernatural, or for those that don’t believe in ghosts, coincidence. The visitor never saw what the signalman did, so one has to ask, “Was there really a supernatural apparition, or was it just coincidence that the disasters happened after the signalman thought he saw something?” Unfortunately, because the story doesn’t reveal anything else we’ll never know what the author intended.
The mystery in this story is made effective by the supernatural/coincidence element because the mystery is the choice between supernatural and coincidence. The reader is left to decide if he thinks it really was a ghost that was seen or whether the signalman was imagining it and the disasters were just coincidences. The mystery stems from this because the author gives no indication to the truth and so either interpretation could be correct.
The horror used in this story is when the first two disasters happen. The train crash is the first disaster, with no explanation, and the woman on the carriage dying is the second, with the only explanation being so ridiculous that it’s unbelievable. The horror is like a staircase when the apparition is seen for the third time, but when nothing becomes of it, it is like reaching the landing and it flows into mystery. The mystery is then like the second flight of stairs until the end when it switches straight back to horror again, the horror of the signalman dying. The sudden shock of the death of the signalman is like falling all the way down the two flights of stairs, back to the horror at the bottom.
The second story read, ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, uses a lot of mystery and also employs a small amount of horror. However, there is no surprise used in this story either, but used again is the supernatural/coincidence element. This last element is responsible for the ending of the story and is what leaves the reader wondering what actually happened.
The story is about a good luck charm that is supposed to grant three wishes. When a poor family receives it, their first wish is for money, which they do get, but at the expense of losing their son. The mother, who is distraught, wishes for their son back, but the father realises that in order to get this, there may be something else that they have to lose. There is a knocking at the door, but the father grabs the paw and when the mother opens the door, there is no one there. That is where the story ends. We never know if it really was the son at the door and the father wished for him to go away, or whether it was just the wind rattling at the door, making a knocking sound.
This story compares well to ‘The Signalman’ because both authors leave the reader guessing at the end. Both use the supernatural/coincidence element superbly to create the mystery and horror that the story requires. The plots of the two stories are obviously very different, but they both have very small, subtle links to each other, like a piece of wire about to snap because it is too taut. The big thing that links these two stories is the way they use coincidence. However, this coincidence also involves mystery as well. In ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, the way in which the paw works is mysterious. Does it take something away in order to give you what you want, or was it just a coincidence that their son happened to die? And, like ‘The Signalman’, the ending is linked with mystery and so there is no surprise. The endings don’t give away what actually happened in the two stories whereas surprise endings do. If the story focuses mainly on mystery then it is unlikely to have a surprise ending because it would seem weird to be given clues throughout the story as to what happens at the end, but then be told something completely different to what the clues implied would happen.
The characters in the stories are quite similar as well. In both stories there is someone who believes what is happening is supernatural (the signalman and the mother) and there is someone who doesn’t know what to believe (the visitor and the father). This is very common in mystery stories because there has to be one who believes and one who doesn’t, otherwise there wouldn’t be different opinions and then the reader wouldn’t be able to choose which one he believed. If everyone in the story believed, then the reader would have to believe as well because the story would give that impression and then there would be no mystery.
The settings are typical of horror stories as well, because they are dark, isolated, and very mysterious. Horror always seems to work best in a dark place with no one around because it plays upon the fear that people have of being caught in a dark alley at night, for example. Horror stories set in a busy street in the middle of the day just wouldn’t work because people walk down the street during the day all the time and nothing ever happens to them so they wouldn’t believe that anything could. For the horror to be effective in a story, the reader has to believe that it could happen to them if they were in the same situation.
These stories are very similar to each other in most aspects and the third story has some similarities to the them, but there are also a lot more contrasts between it and them.
‘The Red Room’ is situated in a very old house that is supposedly haunted. A young man arrives at the house and says he can spend the night in the room because he has a gun. He lights all the candles in the room and feels fine, until the candles start going out for no reason, even after he has re-lit them. He falls over in the darkness and the next thing we know, the owners of the house are waking him up the following morning. He says to the owners that there is nothing evil in the room, but that it was his fear that made him fall over and knock himself out.
This story focuses mostly on horror but does have a bit of mystery in it as well. This story also has a very minor surprise ending. It isn’t a complete twist where the story is rotated 180 degrees, but it shows that what you were led to believe at the beginning isn’t true. The story doesn’t include a lot of coincidence either. In the other two stories, the supernatural element could be explained by coincidence, but in this story, the supernatural cannot be coincidental because the candles wouldn’t suddenly start going out all at once. And because there was nothing mentioned about a draught or a strong wind, none of the candles would go out.
The story does have the right characters for a mystery, even though there isn't much mystery in it. As mentioned earlier, a mystery story needs someone who believes and someone who doesn’t. In ‘The Red Room’, the owners of the house believe that the room is haunted by the old duke who used to own it and the young man doesn’t believe that it can be haunted. It would make a good mystery story because it has all the mysterious elements, but it is written as a horror story so therefore cannot be a mystery. The way the author has structured this story isn’t for a mystery but for a horror. Had he intended it to be a mystery then he would have given subtle clues to the ending of the story, but would have left the reader guessing at the end. This isn’t the case because there aren’t any clues that imply the ending, and in the final paragraph, the whole story is explained and so there isn’t anything mysterious left at the end.
Of the first three stories, ‘The Red Room’ is the odd one out because it is written as a horror story with a bit of a surprise ending. The other two stories differ from this one because they are written as mysteries with a supernatural/coincidence element in them.
After reading these three stories, we looked at three others that differ greatly to the previous three because they build the story around the surprise ending rather than the mystery or horror. The authors do use a bit of mystery and horror, but the story focuses mostly on the surprise at the end.
‘The Necklace’ is about a woman who borrows a necklace from a friend for a posh party and then when she returns from the party discovers that she’s lost it. She finds an exact replica of the necklace for a lot of money and spends the next ten years of her life paying off the debts that she incurred to buy it. When she sees her friend in the street, she decides to tell her the truth, but discovers that the necklace was a fake and wasn’t worth anything. This is the surprise at the end because she discovers that she needn’t have spent her life paying for an expensive replica of a necklace that was worth nothing.
‘Désirée’s Baby’ is set in Louisiana at a time when there was a huge fuss made about race and miscegenation was frowned upon. It is about a white couple who has a black baby. The father automatically assumes that it’s the mother who’s black and sends her away. However, after reading a letter, he discovers that he’s black. The twist in this is obviously that the man turned out to be black and not the woman after he had been so quick to accuse her.
‘The Clubfooted Grocer’ is about a man with a wooden foot who has pirates after him because he stole something from them. The pirates break into his house and he jumps out of the window to try and run away from them but kills himself in the process. His wooden foot smashes and all of the diamonds he stole come out of it. The twist in this story is that the pirates are looking for the diamonds and all the time they are in the grocer’s foot.
All these stories make full use of the surprise element by building up the plot making the reader think one thing, only to turn around at the end and say that it was something completely different. Because these stories focus on the surprise, these don’t really compare to the first three, which focused on horror, mystery and coincidence.
‘The Necklace’, ‘Désirée’s Baby’ and ‘The Clubfooted Grocer’ tell the whole story to the reader, eliminating the mystery because it means there is nothing to guess at the end. This is the same as in ‘The Red Room’ because the young man says what is in the room and there is nothing left unanswered at the end. ‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ differ here because there were unanswered questions at the end and places where the reader needed to guess things.
In conclusion, 19th century authors employ various techniques and themes into their work to entice the reader including; horror, mystery, surprise, supernatural and coincidence. If these are used in the right way with the right amount, then they can be extremely effective, but used too much, or in the wrong way then they are as effective as an umbrella at a nuclear weapons testing site. From the stories looked at, one can clearly see how effective the right amount of any of these elements can be and how it can produce a great story.
