The Red Room and The Cone by H.G. Wells

The Red Room and The Cone by H.G. Wells

Both stories are Gothic mystery stories and were written around the

late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. These sorts

of stories usually have a setting of a dark, abandoned and scary

place.

The Red Room is about a young man who visits a castle and feels he

must spend a night in a mysterious room that is suspected to be

haunted. The Cone is about a woman having an affair with a man called

Raut. The story is based around the husband who is called Horrocks

seeing Raut with his wife. However it is not known whether or not

Horrocks knows if his wife is having an affair with Raut.

The opening of all three stories start with dialogue and immediately

help to create tension. For example, in The Cone it begins with 'He

does not suspect?' By starting with this, then describing how the man

says it in a nervous manner, it creates tension because it immediately

alerts the reader that the man is nervous, but the reader does not

know what about.

The Red Room also uses this same technique. Again for example the old

women in the room keeps on repeating 'this night of all nights' up to

three times. This makes you think that the main character has just

picked the worst night of all nights to spend an evening sleeping in

the red room. Also one of the old men keeps saying 'this is your own

choosing' makes us feel that the man knows what is in there, but wants

no responsibility in the decision he makes.

Both these lines of dialogue open up certain questions, or bring to

mind a certain idea of uncertainty, which again is another way to

create suspense for the reader. By using this kind of dialogue it

raises questions that may or may not be answered during the...

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...t the very end. In the case of The Cone it has a very detailed

horrific ending for Raut and this is finally the high point of the

story and what the tension in the story has been leading up to. The

same event occurs in The Red Room when the main character is panicking

at the thought of a ghost inside the red room with him.

Overall I believe that both stories use similar techniques to create,

maintain and add tension. I now know that the sentence structure,

descriptions and the language are major players in trying to create

and maintain tension and suspense. Both of the stories I analysed use

all these features of Gothic Fiction to full effect. I personally

enjoyed both stories and was captivated by the suspense in the

stories. I also enjoyed the magnificent death scene in The Cone as

this is very detailed and shows how horrible Raut's death really was.