The Narrative Structure of The Red Room

The Narrative Structure of The Red Room

In the beginning of the story, as we know the narrator is very cocky

and confident. When the narrator is in the sitting room, we can see

that tension starts to build up when he meets the weird and daunting

old people. The description of the old people in the sitting room

builds up tension, due to the gruesome description of the almost

terrifying old people. They also act strange, which also adds to the

amount of tension. While the narrator is on his way to the sitting

room, we can see that more tension is being built at this stage, due

to the explicit description of the surroundings, this increases the

amount of tension by ten times, terrifying the reader, keeping the

reader on the edge of their seats. Whilst the narrator is in the

hallway, it has a typical gothic setting, a full moon, eerie statues,

this all adds depth and character to the story. When the narrator

enters the red room, the suspense and tension reaches its climax.

Everything that is in the room appears to horrify the narrator; the

tension reaches such a climax that the narrator experiences extreme

inner fear. But at the end there is a total change of character and

setting, it is totally different from how it was in the beginning.

The narrative structure in the signal man is quite different from that

of the red room. The tensions builds up slowly throughout the story,

even though the beginning is fairly dramatic, tension starts building

on from there onwards. When the narrator meets the signal man, more

tension is built due to the certain deaths. Each time the signal man

tries to stop the death in the same tunnel, someone ended up dying.

The narrator got fairly scared when the signal man told him this, as

you can see this was due to the increase of tension. The third time

that the signal man saw the spectre, this was when it reached its

climax, this was the last of the signal man, and he ended up dying.