Writing in the late 19th century dealt with the theme of Science vs. Superstition because that was the time when science became inarguable and superstition obsolete, and people took scientists seriously. The Red Room and The Monkey’s Paw are two stories that demonstrate the theme of Science vs. Superstition because they have supernatural events that could be explained scientifically, but leave the reader to decide whether the events were of coincidence, or if they were actually something more than that. These stories reflect the period in which they were written because they are about how supernatural events can now be proven with science, which was actually happening at the time when the stories where written.
The narrator in The Red Room is an unnamed young man who is volunteering to find out what – if anything – haunts the red room of the three pensioner’s castle, on the “night of all nights”. The narrator has an disbelieving yet unsure attitude towards superstition and the mystery behind the red room since he doesn’t seem to believe in ghosts, yet he is still afraid of what might lurk in the dark e.g. “The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking… to reassure myself, I walked a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there.” and “I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight…”. These quotes show how he is uneasy in the circumstances involving ghosts and superstition but most importantly the dark, and he needs reassurance which he finds in the form of candlelight and his revolver.
