WW Jacobs and HG wells have both written in the pre twentieth century and based their stories on a haunted theme. The red room has been based on a haunted place, while Monkey's paw is based on a haunted object being the monkey's paw. Both stories build and sustain tension throughout. They use the same devices setting, characters and atmosphere. Being stories based on supernatural occurrences it is easier to create tension and sustain it, the difficulty comes with doing this in such short stories.To create a sense of tension in the Monkey's paw Jacobs uses a contrast between the outdoors and inside of the house, to show that evil being outside is so close to the house and soon it will be coming inside.
"without the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly" This is great example of the contrast because it is cold and wet outside, a really dingy day while inside they have got a warm fire burning and they have almost tried to shut the evil out by closing the blinds but as we know the evil does get in when they open the door.Wells creates tension using setting a lot differently in Red Room he creates the tension by using very effective adjectives to describe everything that may be scary inside the house. "The spiritual terrors of their house" the word spiritual makes the terrors sound a lot worse because it has an air of the unknown about it, which can build tension. The difference between the two stories using tension is that Monkey's paw is more subtle about using setting to create tension.
Using the adjectives in Red Room is making it obvious that the author is trying to scare you by thorough description. HG Wells throughout the story describes everything thoroughly that may be the least bit scary " The door creaked on it's hinges" also " I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. " These detailed descriptions increase tension by creating a picture for the reader to build in his/her mind.Monkey's Paw has a quite similar style to it but I don't feel the basis of the tension is on description.
as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came towards the door" words like loudly and heavy are quite spooky in the sense that one would feel that something big and mean are related to this. Also the word 'towards' creates a lot of tension in this situation because it sustains the tension leaving us the readers on the edge of our seats. The different between the two is that HG Wells puts more emphasis of character while WW Jacobs puts more emphasis on objects.In Monkey's Paw and Red Room the authors create a conflict between characters over the fact that some believe in the supernatural while other just think that it is ignorant to believe this. In the Red Room it was the narrator who didn't believe in the phenomenon that possessed the room and had arguments over the subject with the tenants in the house. He says "it would take a very tangible ghost to frighten me" Remarks like this create tension but the comments create conflict and conflict creates tension.
In Monkey's paw the son is the sceptic because he doesn't believe that the paw could possibly hold magical powers, this tension creates conflict here is between the man who brought the paw and him. The son uses sarcasm to try and embarrass the man "well why don't you have three then, sir" There is tension created here because this small boy has embarrassed this man and the man has ignored. We see that the something has somehow broken this man's spirit and because of the title we think it is the monkey's paw. The atmosphere of the stories creates a lot of tension because tension can be sensed through atmosphere.In Monkey's Paw they use words in a normal sentence to create tension.
"Well, it's just a bit of what you might call magic. " At this point the tension began to really build because the thought of magic being in the story is now known to the reader. Magic can build tension because from other stories we find that magic does not always go to plan. In Red Room HG Wells has a slightly different style he describes an object to show the amount of tension being created in the atmosphere "small, bright and inflamed" with each word more tension is being built.
