A comparison of The Whole Town Sleeping by Ray Bradbury and The Red Room by HG Wells Essay Example For Students

A comparison of The Whole Town Sleeping by Ray Bradbury and The Red Room by HG Wells Essay Fear is the primary focus in both The Whole Town Sleeping and The Red Room. It revolves around the central character in each story and is used to help you empathise with the characters and what they are experiencing. The purpose of both stories, however, is not just to make you afraid but to make you understand more about what fear is and what makes people fearful. The Red Room was written in the 1890s at a time when science and philosophy were progressing at great speed and the world was slowly being rationalised. This led to people having a fascination with anything supernatural or unusual that could not be explained and is the reason why Gothic Horror stories such as The Red Room became popular. The narrator of The Red Room is a man who thinks he does not believe in anything supernatural. He goes to an old castle that apparently withholds a haunted room and attempts to spend a night in the room to prove that there is nothing unusual in it. His plan is unsuccessful and he ends up injured and very afraid. The events that take place within the four walls of haunted room and the Gothic setting are why the story fits so well into the Gothic Horror genre. The Whole Town Sleeping was written in the second half of the twentieth century, but set in the late nineteen twenties. It is typical of a modern horror story, located in a small secluded town with an unidentified killed deemed The Lonely One stalking the streets. Three vulnerable maiden ladies go out for an evening despite the knowledge of this killer and a number of events throughout the night lead to the headstrong main character, Lavinia Nebbs, loosing her confidence on her journey home. The story resembles a horror film in many respects and is similar to the films that were popular around the time the story was written. A number of false climaxes are included to help build up the suspense and Lavinia imagines pounding music as she runs through the ravine, like that heard in the tense, frightening scenes in horror films. And she realised as she ran, as she ran in panic and terror, that some part of her mind was dramatising, borrowing from the turbulent score of some private film. These similarities to horror films make the reader relate the story to successful horror films that they have seen and so experience the fear that they felt when watching the films. The first noticeable difference between The Red Room and The Whole Town Sleeping is that the stories are written in a different person. The Red Room is written in first person past tense. This immediately implies that the narrator can not die in the story for he must be alive to be able to retell it. It lulls the reader into a false sense of security as they know that the events in the story can not be so horrific that the main character is killed. In comparison The Whole Town Sleeping is written in third person past and this does not leave the reader with any idea of what to expect of the forthcoming story. H. G. Wells has written The Red Room in first person as it encourages the reader to empathise with the central character. The reader hears the thoughts of the narrator and the continual use of I and Me My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the match box forces the reader to put themselves in the position of this central character. Thus, the reader reads the story as if they themselves are the central character, and so empathise with the fears and uncertainties of them. The Whole Town Sleeping has been written in third person and the reader feels more like an audience watching the events of a film unfold than a participant in the story. However, towards the end of the story in the scenes where Lavinia, and the reader, are meant to feel most afraid, there is a shift in the person that the story is written in. Ray Bradbury uses a mixture of first, second and third person to make the reader understand how Lavinia is feeling. Hes following. Dont turn. Dont look. If you see him youll not be able to move. As in The Red Room, the reader of The Whole Town Sleeping hears the thoughts of Lavinia when she is at her most scared and this allows reader an insight into Lavinias brain and thought processes making the reader empathise with her fears and uncertainties. Wells is very vague about the history behind The Red Room. The reader has to wait until they are a substantial way through the story before they learn anything, and even when they do, it is limited. The most important and suggestive sentence is Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found. The use of the word Predecessor shows that someone has previously attempted to prove, as the central character attempts to do, that the haunted room is, in fact, not haunted. The use of the word found suggests that his predecessor was not successful and died in the process. This important sentence is an insight into what the central character is thinking but more importantly worrying about. The concern will be passed on to the reader who will feel apprehensive for the central character and fearful about the forthcoming vigil. It will not only make the reader empathise with the narrator, but feel afraid themselves. Similarly, little history and background information is given in The Whole Town Sleeping. The only real mention of the past is within the first few pages, when the reader learns about The Lonely One; Hattie McDollis was killed a month ago. And Roberta Fellis the one before. And now Eliza Ramsell has disappeared. Death and pain are incredible sources of fear and there is good reason for people to be fearful of a killer, who causes both. The knowledge of a killer will make the reader fearful for Lavinia and they will be able to understand any fears and uncertainties Lavinia might be feeling. The vague background and minimal amounts of information about the past in both stories are one of many factors that increase the feeling of uncertainty in the audience. The feeling of isolation is one of the key similarities between The Red Room and The Whole Town Sleeping. Both writers have played on the fact that the majority of people are afraid of being alone. It means that there is no one there to offer assistance should something undesirable happen and it leaves fears to grow of there own accord with nobody to dismiss them. The Red Room is set in an old deserted castle with only three old, practically immobile residents in the building. Wells makes a point of showing how secluded The Red Room is, and what a distance there is between the room and the occupied area of the castle. How Does Alan Bennett Reveal The Speaker in A Lady of Letters EssayH. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury both include a journey to the specific feared place in their stories to help build up a feeling of tension and anticipation in the reader. In The Red Room, the journey is the narrators walk to the haunted room. The intense descriptions of the spooky gothic setting and the shadows that followed him as he walked; my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver, force the reader to feel the tension building up inside the narrator. The use of the words cower and quiver describing the shadows represent the actions that the narrator felt inclined to do. Both are actions that you would experience if you were incredibly frightened, and these increase the atmosphere of suspense, as the reader anticipates the room that has had such a build up. Bradbury uses alliteration to help build up the journey to the Red Room. He describes the spiral staircase, and a shadow the came sweeping. The repetition of the letter s echoes the sound of the rustling described further on in the passage and helps the reader create an image of the setting. This forces the reader to put themselves in the position of the narrator and so helps them empathise with his fears. There is one, very small false climax during the journey that forces an increase in the pace of the writing, as well as heightening the feeling of suspense. With my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening in the moonlight. The key mention of the revolver carried by the narrator shows to the reader just how much danger the narrator feels he may be in. The image of him advancing creates a feeling of a battle or war, which in turn indicates blood shed, something that will intensify the anticipation in the reader ever further. The Journey in The Whole Town Sleeping can be interpreted to begin from a number of different places. It can be seen that the journey starts when the three women leave the cinema, but it is also possible that the whole story is the journey that builds up to the point where Lavinia reaches the ravine. Unlike The Red Room, there are many false climaxes throughout The Whole Town Sleeping that play with the readers emotions, making them feel the suspense and fear of the shock, and the decreasing the intensity of the emotion almost immediately. For example there is the false climax with the children playing the Lonely One in the ravine, theres the discovery of Elizas body, Tom Dillon jumping out of the bushes, and the incident in the cinema where Helen fears the Lonely One has followed them in; Helen turned slowly and glanced back. Im calling the manager! she cried, amongst others. Bradbury forces the reader onto an emotional rollercoaster, which builds up the anticipation of the final and ultimate climax at the very end. It will make the reader increasingly jumpy and this build up of fear within the reader increases their feeling of empathy with Lavinia as they are feeling a similar emotion to the central character. Darkness plays a key role in both The Red Room and The Whole Town Sleeping. The darkness in the Red Room is described as an Ocean of mystery and suggestion when the narrator first enters the room and the candle is described as a little tongue of light that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room. The Light is representative of safety in this story. Where there is light, vision is not obscured and you can be fairly certain that everything you see is there. A clear image of your surroundings is processed so that you are aware of the presence of anything unusual. In contrast, in the dark the imagination is left to run wild and to create its own images of what is surrounding you. The dark provides a cover for anything unusual to hide behind and represents uncertainties; in the dark you become vulnerable. Making the reader realise the central characters vulnerability is one of the key ways in which both Bradbury and Wells gets the reader to empathise with the fears of the central character. The boundaries separating fear and darkness in The Red Room often become extremely hazy and almost merge into one thing. The narrator says things such as darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye and I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness. As the pace of the story increases and the candles in the Red Room are extinguished the narrator becomes more and more fearful and it seems ever increasingly to be of the darkness as opposed to anything else. The reader realises the characters vulnerability in the darkness and are likely to empathise with the narrators fear because they have experienced or been associated with unpleasant things that have happened in the dark. Images of the dark are used frequently to describe the ravine; The ravine was deep, deep and black, black. Both of the feared places are personified in relation to the darkness. In The Whole Town Sleeping when Lavinia is entering the ravine on her own at the dead of night Bradbury writes Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge about her. The narrator of The Red Room describes the germinating darkness in the haunted room as if it too is living. The reader will relate to the fear of the dark that is felt by the central characters and these descriptions of the dark as a living thing will also scare the readers so that they worry for the safety of the main characters. Uncertainty is one of the main methods used by Wells and Bradbury to create something the central characters are fearful of, and the dark is a fine example of this. In The Red Room the narrator is fearful of the haunted room because there is something unknown, something unidentified within it. He is scared because he does not know what is there. Even after the events in The Red Room, there is no direct explanation. The ending is left very much open to the interpretation of the reader. Fear in The Whole Town Sleeping is a little different as it is of something specific, a killer, but still, the identity of this killer is unknown. This makes the story resemble a whodunit, as the reader knows that there is a killer but the identity of this killer is not known. It becomes almost a whowilldoit, a guessing game as to who will end up as the Lonely One, as the reader anticipates that something will