Red Room

Red Room

The Red room

The Red room is a gothic horror story written by H.G. Wells in 1894. When Wells wrote the story society was evolving fast leaving many people in the dark. This relates back to the story as the main feature is darkness and we don’t really know what is there or what’s going on. The story is about a man that is determined to spend the night in a room that is believed to be haunted, although he has been warned several times about what goes on in the room. The man says “I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me”, he then enters the room and begins to feel frightened. He stumbles banging his head and knocking himself out, when he awakes the next day the 3 old people are standing around him. The descriptive build up makes us believe that the room is haunted, but at the end the man says the only thing in the room is ones fear.
To begin with Wells uses Genre to build up tension. Gothic horror is a combined mixture of romance and horror; it contains a lot of mystery and suspense. Wells adds many features into his story such as the spiral staircase and subterranean passage. He also mentions the shadows and darkness a lot. The word “subterranean” suggests an enclosed darkness, this could relate to a coffin and death. The word “echo” may also relate to emptiness creating tension as you can’t see anybody but the deep description sounds as if there is. Wells also builds tension as he says “"and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon“, this sounds as if there is something out of the ordinary in the room, something very unexpected.
Herbert structures his story in a specific way to build up tension. To begin with he opens his story with a description of the characters and as he is writing in first person its as if you are looking at the characters through your own two eyes creating more of a visual image of what’s around, this begins to build up the tension. Wells then...

Similar Essays