The Red Room

I chose English Gothic Horror to show the darkness that Gregor’s family live within their poor financial situation and within their refusal to understand and except their son/brother.

The Red Room by HG Well is a classic example of Gothic Horror.

The story is about a young man who stays in a room that a young duke died in. When told about the haunting of the room, the young man doesn’t hold back in his disbelief of ghostly creatures and is invited to stay in the room to test his own opinions. Once in the room he starts doubt himself, lighting candles about the room to keep in the light. It is when the candles start to go out without due cause or explanation that his panic grows gradually until he is somehow knocked unconscious and awakes the next day. He announces the next day that it is in fact fear itself that he was afraid of, the darkness surrounding him and the room itself.

The idea that a room can bring about this irrational fear with only imagination thinking that the drafts blowing out the candles are being guided by a malevolent ghostly intelligence is almost appalling, but when a brought to theatre it shows a whole new world. Within the English gothic horror sub-genre, the room becomes a character. The shade of red used, the objects in the room and their placing, where the light is coming from and the shape of the room.

The full story can be read here

http://www.twilightharbor.com/moonmistress/stories/RedRoom.html