Tension in Well's Stories

In the short stories Wells creates tension (a sense of expectancy) by using: personification dramatic irony and vivid imagery. Many of these techniques recur through the stories and there are also certain values and moral viewpoints which are frequently referred to. Many of the values Wells expresses through his writing were advanced for the times that he lived in.

Tension in Well’s stories is initially created through titles in both the “Redroom” and “the Cone.” Unlike “Treasure in the Forest” in which the content of the story is immediately made clear, these two titles leave more about the content of the story to the imagination of the reader, creating both mystery and tension. The name “Redroom” also builds tension because red is a very strong colour which can be associated with blood; it gives the reader an idea that something bad is going to happen. In “the Cone” what the title is actually referring to is not revealed right until the end. As things begin to get more difficult for the character Raut the reader can begin to guess that the discovery of what “the Cone” is, is not going to be pleasant creating a building sense of tension as we reach the end of the story.

In the stories the characters are created with very little detail. In “the Cone” and “Treasure in the Forest” the main character is called by their surname. In “Redroom” no name or description is offered for the character. However in “Redroom” less important characters are described in more detail, usually by a prominent and often grotesque feature, for example “the man with the withered arm” this causes you to begin to think of this character as being in some way subhuman. The characters lose their humanity because no name is given, with the grotesque feat...

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...out of all of the stories was “Redroom” and the one that I liked least was “Treasure in the Forest.” I liked “Redroom” because it has all of the features of a ghost story, it has a number of believable characters some of whom are exaggerated to make them seem more horrible than they really are. I particularly enjoyed the air of mystery created by the title and the words Wells uses “walked down the chilly, echoing passage.” To give a feeling of temperature and of the sounds being heard by the character. I liked “Treasure in the Forest” the least because of the way that Evans betrays Hooker even though he’s about to die.

Wells uses a number of techniques to create tension in his stories, relying on an understanding of human psychology and using human senses as his tool. He uses them across all three of the stories most of the time though he does it in varying ways.