bend it like beckham
...heir language is very much part of their era. Readers in the present will find the language quite unfamiliar in places, such as in 'The Red Room', "said I" would in modern English language "I said". However, the language takes the reader back to the time when people believed in haunting and this belief in superstition in turn helps to build an atmosphere of tension. Whilst both stories, The Red Room and The Signalman share common objective which is to hold the reader in suspense and tension, the settings chosen by the writers to help achieve their purpose are very different. The location is important in a short story. Both authors enhanced tension and suspense through the location chosen, and settings in time and language. In The Red Room, H.G Wells set the story in a castle. A ghost story in a castle isn’t a new idea but it is very appropriate. A castle is known for its lots of room and long corridors, stairs, and hidden rooms. It enhances the supernatural. Makes us prefigure that ghosts and specters will appear or the mystic will occur. A castle in this story is a gothic element. The gothic enhances superstitions increasing story's suspense and tension. What made the story pressurize the readers at that time was that in the 18th century and in the Victorian era, there had been some interest in the medieval styles and architects really became interested in medieval buildings. Therefore most buildings were built in styles based on medieval background. So people who read this story and lived in castles built in a medieval style got a great impact of suspense and tension from this story. ''Along the passage…comes to a door…a spiral staircase…another door….long corridor… up to the steps.'' This makes the castle seem very big expressing room isolation and suspense because a pupil can't see every aspect of house thus creating fear. '' The Red Room is totally revolving around the red room which is an old bed room in which the duke, who is the narrator, proposed to sleep in for the one reason that his predecessor had died in that very room. "Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen down the steps". The setting in The Red Room is totally revolving around the red room which is an old bed room in which the duke, who is the narrator, proposed to sleep in for the one reason that his predecessor had died in that very room. "Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen down the steps" The red room is full of "shadowy window bays," "recesses and alcoves" which the people which had slept in there had been so very afraid of or the object that lurks in them. The spiral staircases, large windows, long corridors, door covered in baize and statues makes the place more dangerous and no one can help if someone is in trouble. Spiral staircases shows that they would not know what is coming round the corner. Long corridors and a door covered with baize shows that sound cannot travel a lot, so there is no escape. In Wells story I like the idea of the spiral staircases that keeps you in suspense, therefore you do not know what will happen. Makes us prefigure that something supernatural will occur. ''The long draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty''. This expresses neglection of place making it seem endless and making me want to find out what's waiting at the end; supernatural or the natural? Good or bad? This is how suspense is created. Unlike Dickens, wells did not want this story to be closely related in the period in which he wrote it, so that he could explore the ageless nature of fear itself. There are very few references that the story was written in the 1890's. This created a sense of timelessness and made history seem repeating itself. Dissimilar to H.G wells method in The Red Room, Dickens decided to link the story with the time it was written in. “The Signalman” is set in a dark railway cutting with a signal box at one side of the railway track. Dickens chose the railways as the story's main setting just as railways were still a new invention beginning to spread across the nation. Here dickens was to combine the ancient extreme with modern railways to create the unexpected and startling theme full of suspense and tension. Dickens's description of the tunnel and the cutting is very detailed, and is expressed through use of onomatopoeia words. For instance; 'zigzag' and 'gloomy' these words make a clear image of the cutting of the tunnel, resulting in us feeling we are involved in the story. Both stories are set in the dark. This is effective because darkness enhances the supernatural, fear and horror. Darkness is the exact opposite of light (safety) ''Very little sunlight ever reached this place. It had a strange, dead smell. I felt its cold wind in my bones. I felt I had left the natural world.' This darkness creates the suspended mood. Enhances narrator is entering a supernatural world full of fear, supernatural, horror and specters. It is also described as being "Extremely deep and unusually precipitous" and "Solitary and dismal". It seems like the place is very isolated and cut off from the real world, the perfect place for supernatural events "Great dungeon". The tunnel also creates suspension, why he looked down there in this first place and what could be down there It is described as "Barbarous, depressing and forbidding". The smells and surroundings make him a little bit reluctant to descend "Air of reluctance". The walls were made of clammy stones. “It was made of wet clammy stone”. This too adds suspense because expresses land is nervous. Very strange and unreal. Personifies the land and stones. Narrator made railway tunnel seem gothic by use of description. Dickens did that by applying terminology to tunnel. ''Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation''. This alliteration of vibration is strange, shows what the narrator thinks of trains. Maybe when Dickens wrote this story, he was still influenced by the train's crash he had experienced in 1865 while returning from France. This shows he hates trains and thinks that they are dangerous machines. In both stories, the narrator references to the supernatural when describing characters. This description adds to the elements of gothic genre and is important because adds visualization to the place and atmosphere. This supernatural reference to these characters adds tension and suspense. In both stories, authors created relationships between the characters to add more suspense and tension In The signalman, Dickens gives us the impression that signalman has an attitude of anticipation and alertness. This makes the reader think why the signalman is so observant. Makes us prefigure that he is an unusual man, maybe supernatural creature or maybe has a sixth sense, sensing the supernatural. The description given to the signalman is associated with the gothic genre given by the narrator.' He was a dark and sallow man, with a dark beard and heavy eyebrows' this shows that his features are quite dark and have a similarity to the dark which in this genre of stories which is usually associated with the unknown and the supernatural. Also signalman seems intelligent and very routine but had limited education, too intelligent to be working at the cuttings controlling railway lines. This makes us prefigure that something wrong has happened in his life and maybe whatever that happened may effect his present and future life. Making us predict that perhaps history will be repeating itself adding mystery, suspense and tension. 'He replied to my remarks with readiness.' 'He touched me on the arm….giving a ghastly nod each time.' This enhances the signalman is giving the narrator part of his fear by touching him and telling him stories. Whereas in The Red Room, The description of the 3 deformed, distorted old characters is referenced to the gothic genre. . They are very important as they set the abnormal, eerie background full of suspense, tension and fear to the story and let us and the narrator know that, he is going to be haunted 'On this night of all nights.' Still they seem so strange and eerie; he does not decide to listen to their warning and believes there is no ghost. The three ancient people living the old Lorraine castle are, a man who has a withered arm, a woman, which the story doesn't't say much about other than that she was continually looking into the fire, and lastly the most horrible of them all is the old man, with a hunchback, with a lip "half averted," hanging "pale and pink" he also wore ...