Outline how H.G.Wells and W.W.Jacobs builds an atmosphere of tension, fear and suspense.

NAME- PRATEEK BHANDARI

CLASS- 11C

GCSE ENGLISH COURSEWORK

Tension means ‘the state or degree of being tense’ and suspense means ‘a state of anxious uncertainty.’ This shows that when we are suspicious, we are likely to be tense and when we are tense we feel fearful of what is going to happen next. Therefore all the three are words are related. ‘The Red Room’ by H.G.Wells and ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ by W.W.Jacobs have mysterious titles. The word ‘Red’ in ‘The Red Room’ symbolises danger or blood whereas the word ‘monkey’s paw’ gives us an idea of the story being something related black magic or exoticness. Both the writers build an atmosphere of tension, fear and suspense throughout in many ways.

Short story writers, especially mystery and horror, have to keep the attention of their readers throughout. In most of these texts, readers would have noticed, writers building in more tension to make the story more interesting. The awareness of the tension being built in ‘The Red Room’ is immediate, for example ‘I can assure you’ is the first line said by the writer himself and then he carries on by saying ‘it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’ These lines give the readers an instant thought that the story would be very thrilling and terrifying since it is related to ghosts. Therefore the tension builds within the readers. W.W.Jacobs on the other hand, builds tension gradually. That way the readers are given constant setbacks after certain intervals for example, ‘In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table Herbert laughed at his fears’ this is where the tension reduces after some terrible experiences that had happened last night. Therefore, the contrast of building of tension in both the stories is quite different, but at the same time the atmosphere made keeps a constant impact on the readers.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The fear factor, in both the stories is built in with the use of locations or the weather conditions. ‘The Red Room’ is located in an old castle in an isolated area, ‘the great red room of Lorraine Castle.’ Castles are known to be terrifying because they have large corridors, passages, rooms and halls which automatically give a menacing appearance to the readers. ‘The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead,’ in this quote the shadows are used as a fear feature of darkness and the lot unknown. Similarly W.W.Jacobs symbolises fear through the location. The house in which the family lives is in an isolated area, ‘That’s the worst of living so far out.’ The author also makes a fearful environment with the help of weather adjectives such as ‘cold,’ ‘wet,’ and ‘winds’ to signify the environment created by fear. One thing which both the authors have used very commonly is words such as ‘shadows,’ ‘candles,’ and ‘silence’ since they are significant in horror stories.

One major similarity between the two short stories is that in both the stories there are old people who believe in spirits and there are young people who do not believe in spirits. In ‘The Red Room’ the young man believes in the fact that the old red room is not haunted and is also keen to discover the reality behind it, ‘I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.’ Where as the three old people have a completely opposite view point, they think that the red room is ghostly and are afraid of going even near the room ‘It’s your own choosing.’ Similarly, in ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ the Mr. and Mrs. White are keen to find out the truth behind the monkey’s paw and to do that they grant three wishes. On the other hand their son, Herbert, does not really believe that the wishes would be granted, ‘Well, I don’t see the money, and I bet I never shall.’ The fact that there are differences between the viewpoints of the two different age groups creates tension and suspense. This is because we do not know which of the two view points will be true.

The last feature that affects the atmosphere of the story is, in which person they are written in. ‘The Red Room’ is in first person which follows the story very closely whereas ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is in the third person where we get to know different view points and reactions of various characters. The affect of first person stories on the readers is that the tension and suspense is constant, they hardly fall down. Whereas in third person stories, the amount of suspense keeps on increasing and decreasing, this makes it sound more thrilling.

In summary, the stories have constant building of tension and suspense which we are always unaware of but that is where we get the most attracted to the scripts. The environments are again also very unpredictable; every moment in the room is a new experience for H.G.Wells, for example. In my opinion, endings in both the stories are very contras tic since ‘The Red Room’ has a positive ending whereas; ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ does not.

TOTAL WORDS- 985