The Red Room’ and Sandra in ‘The Darkness Out There’ Essay Example

she is hiding, 'her eyes snapped and darted'. This builds up suspense as the reader tries to figure out what possibly the secret could be. There is also suspense built up during Mrs. Rutter telling the story. There are breaks made by the other characters. In the story 'The Red Room' the whole story was filled with suspense. It starts from the beginning, when the reader is intrigued to find out why the young man is at the ancient house, to the end to find out whether there were really ghosts. The character that is referred to as the old woman says repeatedly 'tonight of all nights' this makes the reader asks questions about the timing of the vent, what made that night so special? This helped build up suspense, this made the reader believe that the young man was going to have a very dramatic and twisting tale.

Once the young man has been given directions to The Red Room, Wells explains in detail about the young man's trek to The Red Room. Wells describes the journey to The Red Room seem extremely horrifying as if something was lurking behind every corner. Sandra goes to the elderly's woman's house expecting it to be completely normal but leaves with a precious lesson. Her character is reluctant to think the worse of people.

Mrs. Rutter is a stereotypical 'old fogie'. She lives in a little cottage, in the woods with sweet pictures of babies mounted on the walls. Kerri is Sandra's weird friend, who is suspicious of Mrs. Rutter from the beginning, but Sandra dismissed his judgmental remarks as paranoia. The young man is at the old house

to find out the truth of The Red Room, to see for himself if the rumors were true. He arrives at the house alone, it is placed in a room with a group of people who are described to be quite odd. The gathering of people is very separated from each other, which shows the relationship between them, this is a distant relationship. Although it says that they have been working together for a very long time.

This gives the young man an odd impression of them, using words to refer to the characters such as 'the man with the withered arm'. The character of the young man gives the impression that he has something to prove to himself, to prove that he can do it. Not just to find out the truth. This is shown in the eagerness of his actions and his stubbornness not to leave The Red Room; even after the strange happenings started.

The character was determined to stay. Sandra is very naive, shy, and old fashioned. Sandra doesn't think of boys her age. She has the rest of her life to think about boys, is her attitude. Sandra also believes the stereotypes about boys, that they are 'immature'.

This shows that she is naive, she doesn't see people as who they are. Only what they are. Before Sandra arrives at Mrs. Rutter's home she thinks of Kerri as a stereotypical boy, but when they leave Mrs. Rutter's home her views on Kerri are changed, she sees him as having a personality and sees him as being a full person. This shows that she has matured from the experience. The two stories are both

about how rumors and the truth can get very mixed up. In 'The Red Room' is the story about the ghosts, the rumor was that evil spirits haunted the room. The truth was that there were no evil spirits, but the only thing to fear was fear itself. This showed how the young man had changed and had matured to realise this.

In 'The Darkness Out There' it was the story about the end of the packer. The rumor was that there were evil witches and lions in the wood. The truth was that in the Second World War that a man was left to die there, while a woman watched and waited for him to suffer to death purely because he was from Germany, he was the enemy. It didn't matter that he was still human. In 'The Darkness Out There', during Mrs. Rutter telling the story of the German fighter plane, she seemed very relaxed 'drop of milk dear'.

Mrs. Rutter was quite comfortable talking about the event. This made Sandra uncomfortable and scared. She didn't think that Mrs. Rutter's character would do such a disgusting thing. This was the first event that affected her and made her stop being so closed-minded. She realised that Mrs. Rutter was not as sweet as she looked.

When the young man was in The Red Room and the candles started going out mysteriously, the young man spoke out loud to try and comfort himself. This showed that the young man had doubts and was scared of the mysterious evil spirits. As he sat alone in darkness placed in The Red Room he started comforting himself by attempting to be

funny. Trying to blame himself when really the wind was blowing the candles out.

Packer's End is the wood that since Sandra has been a little child has been scared of. This is caused by the rumors that she heard when she was a child, about witches and tigers lurking in the wood. 'Aren't I lucky, right next to the woods', Mrs. Rutter is talking about her home placed next to Packers End? This makes Sandra uncomfortable, this makes Sandra question what really is in the woods, which shows that she is starting to open her mind to other possibilities. 'The Red Room' was written in the late 19th century early 20th century when a group of writers gathered together to write short stories about old country houses.

This was due to the fact that they were going through a big economic change and lots of people were moving from the country to the city. Big houses started to dwindle, this caused fascination. This was to try and make them more appealing and popular. Penelope Lively likes to write stories that reflect how the past can affect the now. In 'The Darkness Out There' it is Mrs. Rutter leaving the german to die painfully in the Second World War, and how that people find it sickening to hear that a person would do that.

'The Darkness Out There' and 'The Red Room' are both have the themes of death and haunting. In 'The Darkness Out There' it is the fact that the german man dies, and is affecting her with people in the present. In 'The Red Room' there is a story about the occupier of The Red

Room before the young man being found dead at the end of the satirs, this is haunting the young man as it is there in his mind as he is sat in The Red Room with the evil spirits that killed the man. The young man in 'The Red Room' learns that he is not invinsible; he learns that you don't have to be able to feel things that can hurt you.

The young man goes to The Red Room to find one of two things, ghosts or no ghosts. But when he is retreived from The Red Room unconsious he realizes a more beleivable and more important point. This is a very important part of the story as this tells you how he has changed and what he has learned from it. Sandra learned that she should not be so naive and that she should be more careful with the people that she trusts.

Sandra learned that not everyone or everything is what it seems. The two stories although very different in storylines have the same meanings. That you should be careful with what you hear. To try and realize the rumors from the truth, and to be careful that they don't get mixed together. They both tell tales of rumors affecting the truth in a bad way.