Creaking doors, distorting mirrors and candlelight are also devices that both of the authors use. These create a more dramatic atmosphere. They both also use images and sounds that most readers consider creepy.
The presentation of the characters also adds to the tension. The Red Room introduces the reader to three peculiar, old characters. These are the keepers of the castle. The way that they are introduced implies that this is no ordinary place. They are only referred to by their odd features, rather than by their names. For example: ‘the man with the withered arm,’ The old woman is made to appear slightly mad as ‘She swayed her head slowly from side to side.’ This may makes the reader wonder why she’s like this. Perhaps the castle has made her this way. The three old characters are so odd and strange that the main character mocks them. He observes that ‘their very existence was spectral.’ This implies that they themselves are more ghostly and ghoulish than whatever it is that inhabits The Red Room.
The narrator (who is the main character) begins the story by being over confident and boastful. ‘it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’ His confidence, however, deteriorates as the story progresses. He becomes slightly more nervous. This shortly turns into an unsettling feeling when he thinks about what happened to the last person who visited the room, ‘the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension.’ He becomes increasingly frightened and towards the end of the story he is absolutely terrified. ‘With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove.’ This panic is created as candles are going out faster than he can light them.
In The Monkey’s Paw, Sergeant Major Morris’ entrance adds tension, ‘as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came towards the door.’ His noisy arrival breaks up the family’s cosy evening. His ‘heavy’ walk signifies that something serious is going to happen. Morris has a red face. He is ‘rubicund of visage.’ He also drinks too much ‘At the third glass his eyes got brighter,’
He introduces the monkey’s paw and the manner in which he goes about this, shows that he doesn’t want to talk about it. ‘Nothing,’ said the soldier hastily. ‘Leastways nothing worth hearing.’ Here, it is quite clear that Morris is trying to dismiss talking about the paw.
Jacobs also creates a sense of foreboding with a character called Herbert White. ‘He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible that he gazed at it amazement.’ This highlights Herbert’s danger to the reader, therefore, adding tension.
The structure is a key part of building tension and keeping the reader interested. The Monkey’s Paw has twists and turns given by the three wishes and then stops ‘The knocking ceased suddenly,’ to leave the feeling of relief. This differs from The Red Room as that’s aimed towards one point and ends with explaining what has happened. I.e. the importance of fear rather than anything substantial in the room
The Monkey’s Paw has multiple short bursts of tense moments ‘the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came towards the door.’ This makes your heart beat go faster. Both authors have paid careful attention to the structure of their stories – especially important in a short story – packing in the twists and turns of emotion – hope & despair in the Monkeys Paw which builds slower at the start. The Red Room is less subtle with its shocking description of the old people in the castle at the start of the story. With less of a story line to rely on it has to be more in your face with the impact of setting and characters being all-important.
With both stories the language is influenced by the period in which they were written – there was greater formality and more rules than today. The language is sometimes dated e.g. from The Monkey’s Paw ‘rubicon of face’ and ‘hospitable haste’ would not be commonplace now. The stories have to try hard to paint pictures and entertain – they were written for readers unused to the visual images presented to them daily on television: ‘the somber reds and blacks of the room’. A greater discipline is needed in this medium to bring images to life – ‘a shadow came sweeping up after me’. A mixture of terse short sentences ‘you go alone’ and longer description e.g. of the second old man are employed in The Red Room. Plenty of individual words are chosen for their impact throughout the stories: ‘frightened’ ‘withered’ and ‘terrors’ from the first few lines of The Red Room, and ‘grimly’, ‘violence’ and ‘beastly’ from the beginning of The Monkey’s Paw.
The feelings that The Red Room left me thinking that it ended fairly obviously. The device to add tension that worked best, for me, were the people who lived in the castle. I felt that the rest of the story was disappointing. At the end of The Monkeys Paw I was left with the feeling that it was less predictable because the constant twists. I felt sympathetic towards the parents at the loss of their only son. There is something left to wonder about rather than a neat solution, however this would not satisfy every reader; those who prefer a happy ending are less likely to be satisfied in a ghost story but at least a clear closure can be achieved. The success of the Red Room is in the proving of a point – even the bravest person has to submit to fear at some time.
The Monkeys paw is the more successful for me because it had a more exciting story line. The tension was built up using similar techniques as The Red Room but the characters are more believable and are easier to relate with.