The Red Room Essay
How does H.G Wells create and sustain tension in “The Red Room”? Rob Brooks
In the story, “The Red Room” H.G Wells has written about a man who believes he knows no fear who goes to spend a night in the feared red room. H.G Wells uses a number of different techniques to create and sustain tension throughout his writing, for example writing the story in first person. In this essay I will try to explore these techniques and explain them.
The title is the first technique noticed by readers. The word “Red” in the title has a lot of implications. The first that springs to mind is blood. Immediately, this creates tension in the fact that blood is associated with death and violence. Also, the colour red is a very busy colour; it’s usually used as a “warning” or “stop” colour making us think that the room is out of bounds to all. The actual title of 'The Red Room' is significant to its genre. It immediately creates mystery and in a sense, suspense, as the reader does not find out what the Red Room is like until a way into the story. The title creates questions too.
The first line of the story also gets inside our heads and sustains suspense. The word “ghost” is used in the first line. “I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” This creates reams of suspense because the fact that it has jumped straight in with the word ghost implies that there is some sort of the unknown, somewhere in this story. Also the word tangible suggests that the ghost must have some power to hurt, or even kill. We are immediately frightened of the unknown, creating tension. The fact that it starts mid-way through conversation creates tension too. This is because it makes you think that something, possibly terrible, has happened before the start of the story to get them onto the conversation of ghosts.
As 'The Red Room' is told in the first person, the reader is able to emphasize with him, increasing the tension further. The reader seems to go on...
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