The Red Room

A detailed Summary of The Red Room

Short stories usually have to start well to attract a reader's attention and keep it throughout. The best way to do this is to begin with an enticing level of tension and keep building up throughout the story. Wells uses literary techniques such as short clauses and good word choice to build up the tension. By doing so, he had written a story that is gripping and filled with tension.

The title immediately attracts the reader's attention, and impresses upon readers as something sinister, as the color red is associated with fear and danger. A reader who read the title might ask, "What is so sinister about the Red Room?" The title raises so much curiosity that it has an overwhelming effect, wanting the reader to read on and find answers. The title suggests that the story is about a red room, and something fearful or sinister happens.

The first line of any story is very important, as it has a very strong influence and should reflect the mood of the entire story. The narrator successfully sets the mood with the opening statement of "I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me." The statement is bold, and leaves an impact that the narrator feels no fear at all; in fact, it can be inferred that the na

Tension mounts as he begun to make up rhymes to himself, but after listening to the eerie echoes, he was more frightened than before. The tension was increasing all the time. His mind wondered back to the topic of fear, but this time concerning the old man and woman. Remembering that there were more candles in the corridor, he promptly "lefts the door open" and returned with 10 candles. Earlier on, when the narrator entered the Red Room, he had hastily locked the door to prevent something from coming in, as though the Red Room was his sanctuary. When he left the room to get more candles, why did he leave the door open? Why was he afraid to close it? Could it be that he feared what is outside in the corridor more than what he feared is inside the room? He had not yet examined the corridor, and to him it remained a black void that could harbor a ghost or an unnatural being. After setting up all the candles, and assured that every inch of the room had been lit up, he began to pass idle time again. At this point, he probably had less fear than he did at the beginning, as he had already inspected the whole room and had very brightly illuminated it. However, as he described the candles producing "cheery and reassuring little streaming flames," he was getting nervous and he joked about how he should warn any ghost about tripping over a candle on the floor.

Thus the narrator had encountered his fear and understood it. The fear was analogous to the tension in the story; an increase in the narrator's fear corresponded with an increase in tension. This is a technique that Wells used to make the story more interesting and to keep the reader's attention. Language usage played an important part and changed with the characters. Around the epiphany of the story, the narrator's experience was described in short sentences and included lots of punctuation, which signified a sense of fear. Through the young man's experience, The Red Room shows that fear is what we make of it.

rrator makes fun and jokes with the notion of the existence of ghosts. It is also important in the fact that it tells us that there is a ghost involved in the story (which builds up tension), and that the narrator is an educated man. This immediately poses a conflict, educated men do not believe in ghosts. He seems very self centered and indifferent towards the woman and the two old men. The three elderly people are opposites of the young narrator. Opposites build drama, and drama builds tension. It is also the young against the old, the inexperienced against the wise. Repetition is also a device used by Wells to build tension. One of the most obvious examples in the whole story is on the first page: "It's your own choosing." It was a warning from the old woman, but a warning that the young narrator does not heed. Here we find another conflict: the elderly's often-right advice, and the stubbornness of t

Some common words found in the essay are:
, reader's attention, builds tension, build tension, relight candles, frantic actions relight, actions relight, actions relight candles, story set castle, frantic actions, feared unknown, tangible ghost, tension fear, locked door,

Approximate Word count = 1944
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English