Compare and contrast the ways in which the writers present

Before 1914, and the First World War, the world was a completely different place. In the 19th Century, there were far fewer people in the world, at just under six billion (and there are now approximately six and a half billion). This meant that there would have been fewer towns and cities, and more people would have lived in the countryside.But as the years went by, the population in towns went up, but the size of towns remained the same, meaning they became more cluttered. Because people were living in close proximity, germs and viruses were spread very easily rapidly. The towns, being so cramped, dirty and foul smelling, lead to diseases going round them like wildfire, such as cholera and plague.

But as microbiology was so primitive, only the cleverest people knew that it was minute creatures that were causing the illness. Others didn't know what it was, and often blamed it on supernatural creatures, and the work of the devil. This may have been why people started writing stories about these supernatural beings torturing them and doing unearthly things. This could have lead to the beginning of the supernatural, horror and gothic genre.I have recently studied four short stories in this genre: The Monkey's Paw, by W.W.

Jacobs, The Red Room, by H.G. Wells, The Signalman, by Charles Dickens, and A Terribly Strange Bed, by Wilkie Collins. I then went back to thoroughly restudy The Red Room and A Terribly Strange Bed.

'A Terribly Strange Bed' and 'The Red Room' are both set in the mid 19th century which is what I believe to be a very dark era. This is because after it went dark, the only way you could see what you were doing, and what was ahead of you was the by the light of a naked flame. Naked flames don't give out a lot of light, and it would be hard to see your way around at night; night-time was a time when a lot of mysterious happenings occurred. A Terribly Strange Story is a dark story about death, deceit and cold-blooded killings. The Red Room concerns the themes of ghosts, ghouls and the supernatural.

In 'The Red Room', a young man has come to investigate strange ghostly happenings in the famous Red Room in gothic castle (Lorraine Castle). Three odd pensioners, simply known as 'the man with the withered arm', 'the old women' and 'the man with the shade', look after the castle. Wells describes them so well, that it can make the reader feel as if they have actually seen them. He describes 'the man with the shade' as 'more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself with a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pal and pink from his decaying yellow teeth'. I think this is a wonderful quote, as it gives you all you need to know about what the young man can see of him (his shaded face), and how disgusting he actually is.

As well as the characters being described as being old, disgusting and decaying people, Wells used another language technique: anonymity; as all the characters remain nameless and are only called by their position, such as 'the man with the shade', and 'the man with the withered arm'. This adds a more gothic feel to the story, because if someone has no name, then you would feel as if they were hiding something from you. This may make you question who they actually are and if they have something dark and mysterious about them.Wilkie Collins uses this technique in 'A Terribly Strange Bed'.

This is a story about a man ('the hero'), an adventurous, yet reckless, person who visits a gambling den in 19th Century Paris. In the den, there are some very shady, nameless people, who are described in a very realistic way. The characters in the den are 'the thin, haggard, long-haired young man', 'the flabby, fat faced, pimply player', and 'the dirty, wrinkled old man'.As well as character description, both Collins and Wells use a technique called place description. In A Terribly Strange Bed, Collins describes the room in which the Bed is by saying: '..

.there was the marble-topped wash-handstand, from which the water I had spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping...Then two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung over them. Then a large elbow-chair.

..' The room makes me think of old fashioned antique furniture, which I think, is very gothic as it reminds you of all the people who may have owned it and the ghosts that may be contained within the wood.In The Red Room, the room at Lorraine Castle is where a young duke had dies, or actually had began to die, and so the ghosts are said to have haunted the room.

That is why the young man is there, because he is there to investigate the paranormal happenings in the room (a Paranormal Investigator if you will). As this, the young man has to go to some very dire places. The Red Room is probably not as nasty as some, but it's not really the really the place where you would like to live, or even come to visit as a one-off; but Wells describes it as if you know where every minute detail, and crack in the wall is, although you have never been there. 'Looking around that large sombre room, with it's shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves..

.its black corners, its germinating darkness.' The room would be an extremely scary place to be, let alone trying to catch a ghost.But the young man didn't just have to get rid of the ghost; he had to do it with on eof the worst light sources ever - the candle. The young man describes his candle as 'a little tongue of light', which was probably derived from the term: 'a lick of flame'. I think is a very fitting description, as, like a flame, a lick doesn't go very far (before your tongue dries out, like in licking stamps!), and the young man says, 'in it's vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left a vast ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light.

' This makes being in the Red Room at Lorraine Castle a very bad place to be, as there would be no way of telling what was only a few feet away.Although being in the Red Room would have been a bad experience; being in the gambling den in A Terribly Strange Bed would have been truly terrifying. This is because the sole purpose of the gambling den is so that you will die at the hands of the people there. Because of that, I believe that the audience of this story must have been a lot older and more mature, so that they would not be overly scared be the themes raised, such as ghosts and death.

In the Victorian era, death, and therefore the mentioning of it was frowned upon (also, in those days, death was known as 'passing on', and 'going to a better place'). This is unlike the subtleties of The Red Room, where death is only hinted at, like ghosts, and the three odd pensioners (which may have been a symbol of death, and three is a significant religious number (the father, the son and the holy ghost!), so the audience could have been of a younger, and less mature age.In both of the stories, there is a difference in the language that is used then, to the English, which we speak today. The language that is used in the stories would have been normal to everyone, and could be described as Victorian English, because of the period. This type of language went out a long time ago, and is rarely used in today's modern language.

In The Red Room, the old woman repeats the phrase 'Eight-and-twenty years', which nowadays would be would simply be twenty-eight years old. Wilkie Collins uses this style of language in A Terribly Strange Bed, such as 'hitherto', and 'imperturbable croupier'. They may still be in the dictionary, but the language used in these stories may have been common in those days, but they are not anymore.To make the reader carry on the reading the stories, and read others by the same authors, both writers use tense or dramatic moments in the stories.

H.G. Wells uses candles going out and re-lighting to add tension. 'I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it'. In those days darkness was one of the scariest things, and when it was unforeseen, it would have been petrifying, because you can never be sure what is happening in the dark.

Wilkie Collins uses a different method to build up tension. In A Terribly Strange Bed, a common sensation is used to add tension - being drunk. Collins describes the time the hero is drunk so well, that it can actually make you start to feel like the hero is feeling. After the hero is drugged, the hero explains what he is going through. 'The room whirled round and round furiously; the odd soldier seemed to be.

..bobbing up and down..

.I was half deafened...

bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me'. You feel as if you are the one who is drunk, like you can do nothing to help yourself, like what the hero would have been feeling. And, as most writers will know, if the reader is 'there', it will be more 'real' and if the character is feeling tense, so will the reader.In conclusion, both stories have similarities, such as: both are short stories which use tension to draw the reader in, and they both have a dark inner story.

But they also have differences, like they are set in completely different places, contain different types of characters and have opposite types of stories, although they both contain themes of death.Lastly, in my opinion, they are both extremely good views on what the world was like before 1914, and now it will never be anything like it was back in the 19th Century. It's almost as if it was completely different culture where The Red Room and A Terribly Strange Bed are set.