In spite of his claims to being rational, a nervousness and sense of foreboding does creep into the narrator’s tone as the story progresses. We see this first in the unease and mysterious suggestiveness of some of his descriptions, as when he says the shadows in the red room make "that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing". As he grows more frightened, we see shorter sentences and more frantic, exaggerated language: "I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle, in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance". Still, by the time the narrator gets knocked unconscious, we’re a long way from over-the-top hysteria, and the tone maintains a certain distance from the utter panic the narrator is feeling at that moment.
The whole house, and particularly the red room, is dark. This darkness threatens the narrator, because he doesn’t know what might be lurking in it. It suggests dangers to him that aren’t really there. In the dark, the narrator first thinks the statue of Ganymede and the Eagle in the hallway is "someone crouching to waylay" him. The darkness that inspires fear, and the "Fear" itself are intimately connected. Where darkness lingers and suggestive shadows seem to come alive. At one end is a fireplace, and at the other end is an alcove. Because the alcove is farthest from the firelight, it is particularly dark, and is the favoured spot for those "living, lurking" shadows that make the narrator so nervous. Definitely creepy.
The room’s creepiness is actually very important to the story, because of the effect it has on the narrator. Everything about it – its colouring, its imposing size, its history, its darkness – is perfect for inducing fear, and it does. It’s that "Fear!" which haunts the room and overwhelms the narrator. Not only is the room the arena of the narrator’s "struggle against darkness" and Fear, it is itself intimately bound up with them.
Wells’s writing is certainly well ordered. His sentences and paragraphs are always neatly divided and structured in a point-by-point way fashion that complements the narrator’s analytical tone. But that doesn’t mean the writing is simple or terse. “I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died” This kind of sentence can lend an air of pretension to the writing. So too does Well’s word choice. He often tends towards old-fashioned words, "foregathered", and frequent use of overdone modifiers, as in "absolute silence" or "marvellous distinctness". And then, every so often, Wells will just hit you with something totally over the top: "My candle was a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light". "Ocean of mystery" and "island of light"? Kind of beautiful, but for some people that sort of imagery could sound just a little too epic.
Both fear and darkness are frequently described as active, threatening forces in the story, “darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace.” What’s the deal with all of this personification of two abstract, nonliving things? Well, first, it certainly sounds cool. More importantly, though, it helps Wells give metaphorical meat to one of the story’s big ideas. Fear is uncontrollable, and is almost like an active evil force or spirit in the way it can strike at human beings and render them helpless. What better way to do that than describing it as alive? And since darkness and fear are so closely connected in the story, why not do it for both?
In addition, giving life to the darkness also lets us more directly into the narrator’s nervous state of mind: his fear makes him see threatening figures in the darkness and leads him to feel that there is some dark power actively attacking him.
The ending of "The Red Room" is classic. What turns out to haunt the room? Drum roll…fear itself. And that killer last quote: "There is Fear in that room of hers – black Fear, and there will be – so long as this house of sin endures." There’s quite a suspenseful build up to the ending until the narrator announces what it is that really haunts the red room. We still never know what actually happened to the narrator up there. Was it all in his mind, or was there actually a ghost? When he tells the others that the room is "haunted," it sounds as if he’s going to concede, and admit – against what he said at the beginning – that there really is a ghost. But he doesn’t. The room is haunted by fear. No ghosts in this story.
Now you might think: "It’s just fear? I wanted a ghost!" Not so fast. If we take the ending seriously, what’s in the room isn’t "just" fear, it’s FEAR! Fear is far more terrifying than anything we could imagine. It’s dangerous. Fear killed the young duke, (who apparently fell down the stairs), and almost killed the narrator by making them lose their senses, and they couldn’t do anything to control it. That might be worse than your garden-variety ghost could manage. And what’s more, in spite of his initial boasting, didn’t the narrator lose the battle with fear? He couldn’t beat it. It’s just his luck that he didn’t fall down the stairs or otherwise mortally injure himself, like the duke did.
What about the dire pronouncement the man with the shades makes at the end? He proclaims that the red room will remain haunted by Fear until the house is gone. We think this suggests something else about fear. Fear isn’t just in one’s head; we should actually take that language of it haunting a place seriously. The eerie atmosphere and the dreadful history of the red room combine to make it a place that will scare whoever visits it, even if they "know" it’s not really haunted. What happened to the narrator will happen to anyone else who tries. Each additional person’s defeat by fear in the red room will only increase its frightful reputation.
When all’s said and done, you might still feel let down about there being no ghost. In which case, here’s something else to think about. We get the conclusion that there is no ghost from the narrator, but it’s not clear how he knows that. Sure he and the guy with the shades, and almost certainly Wells himself (who’s trying to make a point), think there’s no real ghost. But what was blowing out all of those candles? What took care of the fire just when the narrator needed it? We didn’t have any mention of wind, besides one measly draft that makes one of the candles flicker (i.e., not nearly powerful enough to blow out multiple candles). And did the narrator really get so battered just from crashing into things? "The Red Room" answers none of these questions.
