The red room’, ‘Confession found in a prison’ and ‘The Superstitious man’s story’ Essay Example

'cower and quiver' and the echoes rang up and down the staircase. In the red room when he first enters it, it is really dark red and black. He then began to look around to see if there was anything in the room, but because of the dark he lights candles around to see clearly.

By now he begins to feel safe until the lights blow out at the same time. Even the fire which the old woman put on goes out. By now the narrator begins to feel fear and begins to believe something really exists in the room because all the candles went out at the same time and left no smoke. The narrator experiences a troubled childhood about which he states "I will set down the naked truth without disguise. I was never a brave man, and had always been my childhood of a secret sullen distrustful nature". The narrator experiences a period of time in the army. He served abroad in the campaigns of 1677 and 1678 before retiring from East London.

Soon after he returned to England, he experiences the loss of his brother about which he fells no pain, as he explains "my only brother was seized with mortal illness . this circumstance gave me slight or no pain". He also experiences hatred towards his brother's wife and her son. Before she died giving birth, he had it in his head that she was evil and that she could see the evil in him. He became wary of her. "I never raised my eye at such times but found her eyes fixed upon me. I never bent them on the ground

or locked another way but I felt she overlooked me".

This led to happiness when they quarrelled. "It was an inexpressible relief when we quarrelled". After he's brothers wife died the narrator's wife felt she almost supplied the place of a mother to the boy who was attached to her. The narrator began to experience uneasiness with the child, because he thought he had the evil eye as his mother had. he felt he always overlooked him. "I can sacely fix the date when the feeling first came upon me. But I soon began to be uneasy uneasy when this child when he's wife was away from home. After the killing he experiences fear and periods where he doesn't sleep.

He just keeps a firm eye on where he buried the child. As it was the fear of getting caught. In which he got caught when he's old friend visiting him from the army passed by. Where he's secret came out when two bloodhound dogs came sniffing around the part where he had buried the child and the dogs started to bark and that led to his old friends finding the bodies and the narrator finally getting caught. Betty Pivet in story three was staying up late ironing, because she was doing the washing for mr and Mrs Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before.

Whilst doing the ironing, she heard her husband come downstairs put his boots on, walk past her and go out the door. Betty left a note on the door, "mind and do the door", because he was a forgetful man. By now

Betty is experiencing nothing unusual until she gets to the foot of the stairs where she see's hes boots. To greater surprise her husband is fast asleep. She then begins to feel puzzled, shocked and wonders what is going on. Betty didn't want to bother him until the morning. When she woke, he had already gone to work, so she waited for him to return for breakfast tom question him.

She said when he arrived, Where was you going the night before? " William said that he had not left the room but infact undressed, laid down and fallen asleep directly. Betty was even more puzzled and confused to how she could not seem him go past her, because the only way out was past her! Betty explained how she "was certain in her own mind that he did go out as she was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not return". To avoid and argue with him she dropped the subject. Later on she met Nancy and got to know her husband was out that night.

He had entered the church and had not come back out. She accepts that her husband is likely to die soon, because of local superstition regarding spirits entering and leaving the church on Michaelmas night. The way that the author makes the story strange and frightening to me as the reader in story one is the way he uses tension to build the story up when the tree servants try to scare the narrator, building tension between them. The setting helps to make this an effective story by using a castle a traditional place

for a ghost story. Also the use of such as red and black for the 'Red Room'.

In this story it is also effective the way the people in the castle act strangely to the narrator and themselves and how they look. In story two the author makes the story interesting to me, by the way the setting of the story has a beginning and an end. It's set in a prison and the narrator is waiting to be hung. Also how he see's 'the evil eye' in his brothers wife and their son and how he has got the evil spirit in him to kill the child. In story three the author makes the story interesting by the way he has used folklore in this story. Country people are closer to their surroundings so this has a good affect upon the story.

It is also interesting how superstitions are used. Spirits leaving bodies in another form which makes this story extraordinary. I preferred 'The Red Room', because the author uses various skills to explain a point. It takes us through the stages of what's going on and to the red room. Slowly with good effect. Tension is used to build up the story between the narrator and the servants try to scare the narrator which makes the narrator feel uneasy about going to the room. It makes the reader feel as if we are there with the man. H. G Wells provides small details of what the narrator feels, see's, does, and what happens to him.