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Suspense and Mystery in 'The Monkey's Paw' and
'The Red Room'
by Barry Wright
Essay: Suspense and Mystery in 'The Monkey's Paw' and 'The Red Room'
Pages: 10
Rating: 3 stars
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In this essay, I am going to compare ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ by W.W Jacobs with ‘The Red Room’ by H.G Wells. I am
going to examine how both the writers create suspense and mystery in the stories. ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is basically
about a paw which can be used to grant wishes for its owner. In humour, the White family make their first wish
without considering what had happened to the people before them, also they are ignoring that the consequences
will be disastrous. ‘The Red Room’ is about a man determined to prove that there are no ghosts in Lorraine Castle.
In order to do so, he had to spend the night in the red room, ultimately a once in a life time experience. The two
stories are only similar in the fact that they are both of the gothic horror genres and were both set before the 20th
century.
‘The Monkey’s Paw’ has a setting typical of the gothic horror genre, ‘’the night was cold and wet’’, this
automatically draws the reader’s attention. This writing technique is very common when building suspense from
the beginning of the story because it gains the reader’s attention then it makes the reader want to read on. Also,
W.W Jacobs makes a point of setting the start of the story at night because most people are scared of the dark
and the fact that they do not know what is lurking behind the darkness makes the reader ask more questions as
their fear grows stronger.
The other factor that creates suspense through the setting is that the house is ‘’out-of-the-way’’. This is important
because isolation is key to a horror story, this is because if you are faced with danger and you are isolated then
nobody will hear your scream, nobody can help. Also the reader starts to build an image of what the place is like
and this is when fear really st...