Throughout the story the writer uses many techniques to create and sustain fear and suspense and to make the story as realistic as possible. Wells uses similes, metaphors and personification regularly as well as matching the event with the length of sentences and range of vocabulary.
The main character of the story is not introduced to us in any way, all we know is that he is 28 years old and is at the castle to try and prove his manhood and, by staying overnight in a ‘haunted room’. We do not know how he came to be at the house or whom he is trying to prove himself to. He is, at no point in the story given a name, this is done for a purpose, to create a mysterious and uneasy atmosphere, but within the first few lines of dialogue we understand that he is a very confident and boastful man:
‘It will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’
However brave he says he is, he carries a gun with him. This shows that he is prepared for a possible emergency and it reinforces that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. By the end of the story the man has much changed and the confident boastful man that we knew at the beginning has gone, again, this tells us that he had really experienced authentic fear.
The story begins in the ‘old people’s room’ (housekeeper’s room) and the main plot is brought up straight away, which immediately engages the interest of the reader. This room, like much of the castle, is very dark and dreary, not very welcoming and everything in it is very old. It is typical of a 19th century room; it has a mirror at one end of the room and a fire near to the table. The setting of each room is described extremely acutely so as to make the reader think that they are actually there.
‘Her ladyship’ left the old people that inhabit the house in charge.
They are all-elderly and are in some way disabled, one of them has a withered arm, which could suggest that he could have been hurt when he was working, it could also suggest that it may have been scared badly either by a fire or other means.
The old woman was said to be:
‘Pale… with eyes wide open staring in to the fire’
If someone’s eyes are fixed on something then they are concentrating on the desired subject, and it could possibly mean they are not focused on any of the other surroundings.
One of them has a nasty cough and the woman is just old and decrepit. One of the gentlemen ‘walked with a sick’ he could of done this because he was too feeble to support his own weight.
The narrator describes them in great detail because he feels them to be a key element in his story. Everything that the old people wear and are surrounded by, was designed and made by someone now dead, this reinforces the image of them being ghosts. They are all afraid of what the young man is about to do and do not take any responsibility for his actions.
The old people repeat phrases like
‘It is of your own choosing’ and ‘this night of all nights’
Again, they do not want any responsibility for anything that might happen to the young man. The elderly gentleman is saying thins because he is giving the young man the option to not go in to the Red Room. When the old woman does say ‘this night of all nights’ it is in brackets in the text, this could suggest that she was thinking of this and not necessarily saying it aloud.
When the young man leaves the room they all huddle together and none of them look him in the eye. This could be because they know that he is doomed and do not want him to think that they are responsible for him; also it stops them having to say goodbye to him. Lastly it could be a sign to him that he is on his own. Whenever any one of the three old people speaks they leave sentences unfinished and open to interpretation. Everything about the old people is depressing, dismal, drab and dreary.
As he leaves the company of the other three H.G. Wells describes the journey that he takes in a lot of depth:
The gentleman says:
‘You go alone the passage for a bit… until you come to a
Door and through that door is a spiral staircase ad half
Way up the landing is another door covered with baize.
Go through that and down the long corridor to the end
And the Red Room is on the left up the stairs’
Although this is a very long quote taken from the text, I feel that is builds up tension and creates a slightly scary atmosphere, because of the ‘spiral staircase’, and the ‘door covered with baize’, this gives the reader the impression that the Red Room is very far away from the elderly people. This may be because they are too scared to go anywhere near the room, because they see something frightening. This also gives H.G. Wells the opportunity to develop the journey to the Red Room, and he can go on describing other happening along the way
The young man finds the old people who look after the castle, frightening and depressing. We know this because he refers to them as ‘grotesque custodians’.
The word ‘grotesque’ suggests something that is disgusting and horrible. Possibly he could be referring to them in this way because he feels awkward with them.
Once he has left the room he describes his feelings when he was 'in the company of the old people. He calls them odd and the surroundings that they were ‘ghostly’. He then banishes all thoughts of ghosts from his mind so as not to distract him from the long walk through the ‘chilly, echoing passage.’
This ‘chilly, echoing passage’ is a common factor in a ghost story for it is dark, damp, cold and dusty. It is dimly lit, any sound can be heard and any movement made casts greatly magnified, ‘monstrous’ shadows onto the surrounding walls. When walking through the passage you would probably not be able to see to the other end, which means that anything could be lurking there. The passage has a great effect on both the reader and probably, the young man. It creates fear and suspense and is a tension builder; this passage is contributing to the growing fear that the young man experiences.
Then he moves onto the corridor in which the ‘Red Room’ is situated. The first thing noted about this corridor is the shock it gave him to see moonlight streaming through a window, illuminating everything and making it look black and silvery, which is almost unreal because it is only imaginable in a scary movie. He then notices that it looks untouched and there are thick layers of dust to prove that no one has been there for a long time. As he begins to move around he notices a shadow of what, to him, looked like a figure ‘crouching to waylay’ him. He is very paranoid and is becoming extremely nervous.
Once he finds out that it was only a statue his nerve has restored and even when he passed another statue that moved it ‘scarcely startled’ him. This could have been caused by the influence of the older people, who have put more thoughts in to his head, which he could just be over reacting to. When he arrives at the door of ‘The Red Room’ he remembers that it was just outside the door that the young duke had begun to die.
Once inside the ‘Red Room’ he carries out many acts to make himself feel secure and to reassure himself. Once he has locked himself in he describes the room in great detail so that the reader feels involved in the young man’s ‘systematic examination’. Once the examination was complete he says himself to be ‘in a state of considerable nervous tension’. He then barricades the door as a back up for the lock and lights all of the available candles to flood the room with light. He settles down and recites poems to take his mind of the task, this doesn’t work so he looks for others ways to occupy himself and make the room look more comfortable, he even at one point describes the room as ‘very cheery and reassuring’! I believe that he does this to falsely convince himself that there is nothing to be afraid of. The young man fetches candles from outside to add more light to the room so absolutely nothing can be hiding anywhere. Throughout his time in the room there is an alternating pattern of cheeriness and tension of the narrator.
After midnight he said that ‘the candle in the alcove suddenly went out’. The fact that it was midnight could of contributed to this, because lots of scary happenings happen at midnight, so he could have been thinking about something happening, and possibly his mind was playing tricks on him. If you were looking for a non-superstitious explanation for this event then it could be that the candle had been out for a while but that had simply not noticed it. He then says that:
‘A black shadow sprung back to its place’
This is personification that adds effect to the action of the candle. This could have easily been mistaken for a movement that he did, because the shadow could of moved when he moved with the candle. He tries to relight the candle by strolling ‘leisurely’ over to it; he is doing this so that he doesn’t panic. Then two candles go out behind him; again he tries to find a rational explanation for it and blames it on his ‘absentmindedness’. When the next few candles went out he puts the blame on a draught even though there are no open windows or doors around. When the next one goes out he begins to worry, and says that the flame definitely vanished. Again he uses personification when he says that:
‘The shadows seemed to take another step towards me.’
Here he could be mystified, and looking for possible solutions as to why the shadows appear to be moving towards him. This could suggest that he was in a slight state of panic.
He begins to shout out loud and is so nervous that he cannot light a match first time because of his trembling. He manages to think clearly and instead of using matches he uses a candle to relight the others. However, he is unable to keep up with the extinguishing candles and uses imagery for effect:
‘It was like a ragged storm cloud sweeping out the stars.’
Now he is severely beginning to panic and is injuring himself with his clumsiness. He resorts to the warmth and light of the fire when all of the candles are extinguished but that is soon extinguished also, plunging him into darkness.
Although he was still panicking he tries to light the candle from the ashes of the fire; he will not believe that it has gone out. In a last effort to save him from the darkness he attempts to leave ‘The Red Room’ and enter the moonlit corridor. He has forgotten where the door is and is knocked out.
The paragraph from when the first candle goes out gradually builds in tension and suspense. They involve a lot of short sentences, the is to increase and sustain the tension and suspense you get a good since of this increasing paranoia when he tries to give explanations for the extinguishing candles and his panic starting to creep in to his actions when he is trying to relight the candles, al the while he is trying to give himself explanations, as to why this is happening. Finally the suspense reaches the climax when his fear has over taken his sense of reasoning and he tries to leave the room and accidentally knocks himself out.
When he finally wakes the next morning he realises that there was nothing supernatural about the room but only peoples fear of the unknown.
The elderly people, or custodians as they were called are now taking care of the young man at the end of the poem while he is re-telling the story.
I don’t really think that there was anything in the room at the time; I personally think that this was just his imagination, and there could have been a sudden gust of wind extinguishing all the candles, because it was an old house. Although when he was walking through the house towards the red room, he did comment on how the shadows moved away and around him, I feel that this was just the mystery of the house and that when his candle was flickering it caused lots of objects to move about.
