Suspense Tension And Mystery In Red Room English Literature Essay

Suspense Tension And Mystery In Red room English Literature Es averNorm altogethery when you cerebrate of horror stories you recall of stories with dispositions ilk Werewolves and Dracula in them. Edgar Allen Poe and H G Wells withdraw broken the stereotype with these hapless stories, by telling contrasting tales ripe to a greater extent or less the way throng act when they be excited work forcetally. I dont judge this evidence is very very correctStoker was writing at roughly the same meter as Poe and Wellswrite maybe? Wells explored the estimate of an initially non- deliberater in the former(a)worldly with The Red path and in The verbalise Tale nitty-gritty and The cutting project, Poe explores the humilitary personnel conscience. I energize enjoyed all three of these stories beca employment of the myth composings as well as the way in which the high gear tension is created with a hint of the supernatural in both. All three of these short stories argo n written with the master(prenominal) voice as the vote counter scarcely The Red Room is evoke beca mapping the of import spirit is really the innocent (although fairly arrogant) victim, rather than the manslayer in Poes stories.There are several similar themes that run by these stories and the principal(prenominal) themes in the The recite Tale Heart and The baleful goofball are that of mentally disturbed people organism put into situations that bewilder out the worst in them and get downs them and the indorser very uncomfortable. The chief(prenominal) theme in the The branch Tale Heart and The Black Cat is the consequences of polish off and how human nature weed be affected at its worse and how this bed put up a soul become obsessed and, in the end, preferably mad. In The Red Room, the indorser too feels uncomfortable for a different reason and that is by feeling scared, curiously due to the fact that the main book of facts doesnt believe that there are spots before he enters a spooky castle and then this slowly diversitys when he enters and his b of age(predicate)ness melts outdoor(a) due to st telescope happenings. The main theme of The Red Room is arrogance and this is built up to make the shooters want the lead character to shed a supernatural encounter (the story starts with the line I tail assure you said I, that it will take a very palpable ghost to f justifiedlyen me). I suspect that Wells describes the main character in such a way to make him sound tall and arrogant so that the reader wants the main character to get his just desserts. In all three stories, the main characters as narrator are portrayed as unpleasant persons, although to be fair the character in the Red Room is hardly arrogant, he doesnt actually kill bothoneThe inexperience for the reader starts at right at the runner of all of these stories and right away the reader is in the middle of a story that has already started (a arcsecond like walking into a play or a film where youve missed the beginning). Get rid of every occasion in blue, and replace with as they start in media res. For example, the narrator is speaking right away in The Tell Tale Heart and at starting time he sounds quite a calm and rationale and then this slowly builds in to a bit a bit of a rant by a maniac (as the narrator says himself, You check me mad. Madmen know nonhing). All three stories have a gothic and dark feel to them both of the Edgar Allen Poe stories have the main characters behaving in a closely peculiar way due to them having a troubled rests or backgrounds. In The Tell Tale Heart, the main character is disturbed about an doddering mans eye and as the culture at the clipping was such that people felt that if an individual had a deformity it meant that the individual was evil. The main character thinks that the mans bad eye contained an evil sprit and becomes obsessed by the thought of his evil eye is meant for him. The theme is similar for The Black Cat- this short story has as its main character a ill-doing ridden person who gives himself up due to his overbearing guilty conscience. Interestingly, the deformed or change images come through in The Red Room with the dickens old men universe described as having a withered arm, organism supported by a single crutch and in the main eachthing old, impair or ugly would have the implication of being sinister or creepy and this is a similar to theme to yet a nonher story of the time, The try of Dorian Gray, whereby the main characters evil and wicked industrial plant are not shown on his actual face, but shown on a delineation that he keeps in his attic. Ermthis is a bit of a Victorian thingit would be reform to say that the Victorians believed in physiognomy, which is demonstrated in The Picture of Dorian Gray (give example) and The Red Room, as you explained above.The main character in The Black Cat is a guilt ridden psychopath who in the begi nning of the story is acting as if every thing was satisfactory (I was famed for the docility and humanity of my disposition), but at the end, becomes so obsessed with a flannel and then a black cat that he ruins everything in his life, including the off of his married woman. In the descent to madness, he says that the fury of a demon this instant possessed me. I knew myself no longer. In both of Poes stories, there is an underlying theme implying that the police are a bit stupid and could not figure out who has carried out such a simple crime. I dont see any truth in this pointboth promoters in Poes stories went to great lengths to conceal the bodies in motion, this is shown in the stories. Therefore, one might exc go for the police, It is besides interesting to note that short stories like this were the except form of prevalent entertainment at this time, due to there not being any TV. Ahem, this point, although correct, is hindered by your suggestion that best-selling (predicate) entertainment is TV. You may wish to say something more like there was not a comparable range of media for popular entertainment, of which TV is included. Whilst there would not be such high literacy rates then as there are now with a lot of poor or working class children having to leave inculcate at the earliest opportunity in order to earn a wage, literacy rates were improving and more people were able to read and these actors were change state more popular. Look up Education Reform Acts of the nineteenth century.The Tell Tale Heart has a very sudden tension construct moment, with the atmosphere switching from very calm to sudden excitement and you can feel the adrenalin pumping in the killers body when the narrator / main character saying that he is going to kill the old man. Poe uses quick, short sentences It grew speedy and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old mans terror must have been extreme It grew louder, I say, louder every moment and th is helps build the tension. The story opens with the main character as the narrator of the story and trying to justify wherefore he had to set aside the eye. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold and so by degrees I make up my mind to take the life of the old man. He also tries to make it expire that he is not mad by stating you fancy me mad-mad men know nothing. This indicates to me to you? What an absurd ideaas I explained in one of your early(a) essays, you and I have no place in an academic essay. Get. Rid. Phrase in the passive insteadthis may be indicating that the author is trying to show that the character is quite arrogant and that the character wants us to think that he is fighting evil and the fact of him being able to think of slipway to defeat it .He is saying that mad people are not well educated Im sorry? Nietzsche, one of the cleverest men to have lived, was mad. I myself am hardly the sanest of people (OCD, anorexia, perfectionism, anxiety, emotional inst ability) and am simultaneously well educated. In a more contextual manner, it is draw in (especially in The Black Cat) that the mad men are clever, and the fact that any sane person would have acted the same way as he did. At the end of the short story, when the police come round to the house, the spirit beat that the narrator hears becomes quicker and quicker (but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder -louder -louder). This is supposed supposed? Why isnt it? I think you could have better phrased thisThis represents the guilt building. to represent the guilt building up in the main characters head it also represents the supernatural element found in each of Poes stories. The smell beat can also be seen as the old mans spirit or soul calling out to the police, to make sure that the main character / murderer is caught. In this story Poe has vie on the fact of the character imaging that he is hearing the heart beat because the police can not hear it. Th e final sentence, Villains I shrieked, dissemble no more I admit the deed -tear up the planks here, here -It is the beating of his hideous heart, I think, has a really tortured ring to it and the reader almost feels sorry for the madness of the narrator.The Black Cat also has a very similar plot turn in building up tension everything appears to be calm and alright with the main character explaining his situation (just like The Tell Tale Heart), For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit look. The writer also builds up the tension when he explains that he was always described as My tenderness of heart was compensate so conspicuous as to make me the facetiousness of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great physique of pets. Also, the fact that I married early, and was happy to find in my married woman a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Makes us believe that he is a normal happy man and we would be shocked to tell on anything bad about him. However, this suddenly changes when he recalls that one evening when he returned home drunk, he took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and designedly cut one of its eyes from the socket He actually deliberately cuts out an eye from his pet cat. This leads us to believe that the main character is actually mad and has something wrong with him. The tension reaches its height when the main character not only tries to kill another cat, but actually kills his wife by burying the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan. Now we know that he is actually a madman and especially as the torment of what he has done leads him to showing the police the trunk of his wife through his conscience playing on his mind and him finally knocking down the wall and exposing the body. Another strong tension point is when the cat reappears and has the gall ows shaved into its fur. For both of the stories the main characters feelings do not change until the end, when the mad man in The Tell Tale Heart is ridden with guilt and the mad man in The Black Cat feels that he has to clear himself of the deeds he has committed. This is shown by the quote today I would unburden my soul.I think that the author of The Tell Tale Heart lets the reader think that the main character is very clever because he allows him to use a lot of intelligent language, as well as allowing him to use a lot of argumentative language as though he is desperately trying to plead his case. Ah ha Youre being inconsistentthe protagonist of this story is as mad if not madder than the protagonist of TBC, but this one is clever and educated? See my earlier point. For example, when he says, I think it was his eye Yes his eye This is to try and shift the blame and make the reader feel that the main character is trying to persuade them that he had no choice and that the reader would have done the same in the circumstances. Saying, Yes his eye is intended to show that he had figured out a motive for killing the old man and that in fact that he must have been provoked in the first instance. I think that the main character comes across as being very equivocal because he is always trying to explain or justify why he acted why he did, and is also trying to persuade the reader that he is not mad and that he is in fact a strong person. This is shown because he always explains his actions after detailing what he did in the story. I love the old man I had no want for his gold. This can be understood in one of two ways by the reader firstly, the reader can see him as being absolutely mad or secondly, he could be seen as individual who was disturbed and who needed help and sympathy. By saying that he loved the old man shows that he didnt want to kill the old man and the fact that his obsession with the evil eye made him do it or that the man isnt the problem, i ts his eye. Interestingly, all of the other characters in The Tell Tale Heart do not really play a major representative in the story and this is also true of The Black Cat the only other character is the wife because she gets murdered by the main character. This builds up a lot of tension when he does this due to the wife did not commit any offence to the man it was just the man cute to kill. This is true to a certain extent in The Red Room, although the other characters do add to the story telling.The use of language in the two Poe short stories is very complex, which could make the readers think that, if the characters are speaking after they have committed such evil deeds, this would lead us to believe that they would be some kind of evil genius, which would be a popular stereotype of the time. Give an exampleI think Professor Moriarty would be a good choice. The stories are written in common literary language of the nineteenth century. For example, in The Tell Tale Heart the author uses language such as he had never wronged me, never attached me an insult. This shows that he is well educated and well spoken and I think, as the reader, clear at getting his views and descriptions across. In The Black Cat, the language and the idiomatic expression is the same, with the use of fairly old words and or quotes such as conspicuous and unburden my soul. I use the word conspicuous with lurid frequencysay the style is old, not the words. As far as I remember, there are no archaic words in TBC or TTH. These are fairly old linguistic terms and a man who uses them must be well educated. But this point makes no sense. Old, indeed. And if a modern man were to use them one could consider his tuition list to be classic literature, indeed. Howeverif the man in motility is oldhes just speaking? And reading contemporary literaturelike if you were to speak how Stephenie Meyer or Terry Pratchett does. This can show us that he is well educated in his plans and schemes. It s fair to say that the characters both use complex language, and that this demonstrates their intelligence. Equally, in The Red Room, the dialect used by the narrator is fairly complex, Eight-and-twenty geezerhood, said I, I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet and the dialect of the others shows that they are poorer and of a lower class the old woman replies Ay, she broke in and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. All three of these stories were written and read by Victorians to entertain them, you can tell this by the amount of old words that have been put into these stories and the syntax. Obsession, the link to madness and ghost stories in general, were very popular and highly entertaining because of the links to the supernatural world. It was as entertaining to so many Victorians due to the fact of Victorians being more prone to belief in the supernatural as institutions that relied on belief over reason, most not ably the Church, were more popular in this time than currently.There was also a very deterrent example point of view with these stories by showing that evil deeds will always be found out and if people do any bad deeds then they will avenged by the dead persons spirit or by the power of God. Another communicate within The Black Cat was the moral message that the evils of alcohol can destroy a good man and make him into some kind of monster (But my complaint grew upon me for what disease is like Alcohol), which the Temperance (or anti-alcohol) Societies that were popular at that time would have found a good, moral message.The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat have very similar themes as each other however they have very different themes to The Red Room. The common theme between all of these stories is that they are all connected to the supernatural. The common themes of the The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat are firstly that the main character is an evil person but that that pe rson narrates the story and tries to entice the reader of his sanity and that what he did was justifiable and indeed right. Secondly, both stories have the common theme that the main characters have not got a legal reason for the crime they committed the motive is all in their heads and it is simply the creepy differences which disturbed them both to kill. Thirdly, both murderers get caught and therefore do not get away with the crime they committed. This also leads the reader to the moral that crime never pays no matter if youre ridden with guilt or even if youre over confident you will still get caught. The main message of The Tell Tale Heart is the fact that a guilty conscience will always give you away in the end, even if in theory you are not actually caught by police or anyone else, you will give yourself away.The tension in the stories is built up by the use of narrative and short, quick paced sentences that reflect the mood of the three main characters. I think that the heart beat at the end of The Tell Tale Heart is very effective at mimicking the build-up of guilt in the main characters mind and it is not clear whether he can actually hear the dead mans heart beating (the supernatural side of the story) or if it is actually his own heart beating so fast because he is decent increasingly tense and nervous about the dreadful deed that he has committed (the moral side of the story). In The Black Cat, once more the lead character hears what he believes to be the muffled cries of his dead wife but as fate would have it, it is the actual cries of a live cat (by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, suddenly anomalous and inhuman a howl a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell ). The Red Room has the lead character talk to himself to try and control his fear This wont do said I, and first one and t hen another candle on the mantelshelf followed. Whats up? I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the bay tree followed. Of the three stories, I think that The Black Cat is the scariest because it has such a normal everyday husband and general nice man becoming an axe-wielding maniac, but ultimately being found out through guilt.