Which is the Better Suspense Story, "The Red Room" or "The Landlady"

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Which is the Better Suspense Story,

“The Red Room” or “The Landlady”

In this essay I will be comparing the two gothic horror stories, The Red Room and The Landlady. H.G.Wells wrote the Red Room in 1896 and Roald Dahl wrote The Landlady in 1960.

        The Red Room is about a man who goes to an old Victorian castle to go into the red room. He wants to spend the night in the red room to prove that there are no such things as ghosts.

        The Landlady is about a boy called Mr. Billy Weaver who comes to Bath from London and needs a place to stay. He has a choice between staying in a pub or a bed and breakfast, so he chooses the bed and breakfast. When he goes there he thinks that the lady is nice but a bit mad. As he looks around the bed and breakfast he discovers that there hasn’t been anyone staying since the past two years and begins to get suspicious. The Landlady of the bed and breakfast is trying to poison Mr. Weaver so she can stuff him like she did with last two guests that had lived there before.

        When I first heard the title of H.G.Wells ‘ story The Red Room, I immediately thought it was a horror story about a room filled with red blood. Whereas compared to The Landlady I thought that this story was about a lady who rents out rooms for people who need a place to stay for a while. I think that The Red Room is a more interesting title compared to The Landlady because it gives the effect of it being a scary horror story, which would make the readers think what the story is about so they would want to read the book.

        The opening of The Red Room is a little confusing to me because you don’t quite know what’s happening (in the beginning of the story). The story starts off by the narrator saying to the old people “it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” This suggests that the narrator isn’t afraid of anything especially not ghosts. This also suggests that the narrator is very confident about himself, this is because in Victorian times the men didn’t really express their feelings, which meant they were always brave and confident. In the opening of the Red Room the old people keep repeating phrases such as “It’s your own choosing,” this quote suggests that the old people are trying to scare the narrator and are trying to change his mind from going into the Red Room. The old woman in the story is “staring hard” in to the fire, which gives the effect of the woman being creepy and weird. The narrator is standing “before the fire,” which makes you think that he means business as fire is related with serious business. When the second man arrives into the room it made me think that the man was very very old and had some problems with his walking. The quote that suggested this to me was “more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first.” This is because when people get older and older they tend to bend more as they walk and they are also more wrinkled. Another quote that suggested that the old man had problems with his walking was “he supported himself by a single crutch …”

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        The Red Room has a slow beginning, which helps to create a lot of tension in the start. This is good for the Red Room because it makes the reader want to find out what happens next, whether he goes into the Red Room or not. While the old people are trying to change the narrators mind, all he keeps thinking is that he is going to go into the Red Room whether they like it or not.

        In the opening of The Landlady it starts off by Roald Dahl describing the weather and begins to set the scene. ...

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