The Red Room by H.G. Wells

The Red Room by H.G. Wells

This essay will be based on gothic techniques that H.G Wells used and

will also explain how gothic features can be identified in a play. The

gothic elements in ‘The Red Room’ are used frequently but often in a

very subtle way.

One key gothic element of the story lies in the way Wells wrote.

Firstly his style is old- fashioned and formal, for example he uses

phrases such as, ‘eight and twenty years,’ this technique suggests

that the play was written at the start of the nineteenth century. His

word order also contributes to the dating of the play, for instance,

‘said I,’ is used recurrently and was very common in the nineteenth

century. Another example of Wells’ gothic style resides in the

descriptive language he used to depict characters and settings,

towards the start of the passage he introduces the residents of the

castle and uses description to identify them as, ‘the man with the

withered arm,’ and, ‘the man with the shade.’ Not only does it help

the reader to visualise the characters, but it also leaves an element

of mystery around who the character really is. Through the imagery the

reader is given they can make judgements about personalities and make

assumptions about the importance of the individual. Because Wells

writes in the first person the description is more effective as the

reader feels that they are in the mind of the narrator and are

experiencing things at the same time as the narrator. This causes

great tension because the reader is feeling the same emotions as the

narrator.

The story is portrayed as gothic from the very start of the extract,

in the very first line ghosts are mentioned and then three very

unnatural residents are introduced. These main aspects indicate a

gothic piece of writing almost before the end of the first paragraph.

Because of the era that the story was written in the reader gets a

good idea of how the characters should behave, so to see three very