The Red Room Lesson

The Red Room
Do Now: Attracting your reader's

attention!
• What positive/negative connotations do you associate
with this title 'The Red Room'?
• How does 'The Red Room' invoke curiosity in the
reader? What imagery comes to mind?
• If you were to choose a title for your Gothic Creative

Writing piece- what would you choose and why? Support: What is a connotation?
• Challenge: How could you as a writer interest Connotation refers to an implied

meaning that's associated with a
your target audience? Write a four line blurb word in addition to its literal
that will catch your reader's interest instantly. meaning. This association can be
cultural or emotional. For
example, the word “stingy”
promotes a negative image.
Title: The Red Room
LO: Can I review the concept of fear and suspense in the gothic
tale ‘The Red Room’
Step to Success 1
• I can identify and define a gothic character.
Step to Success 2
• I can illustrate my own gothic character.
Step to Success 3
• I can devise a short narrative based on my gothic
character
Keywords: Villain Damsel in Distress Hero
We know about
creative writing…
But what about
creative reading?
Summary of ‘The Red Room’
• The Red Room is a short horror story written by H.G. Wells and published
in 1894. It follows a confident young sceptic-the unnamed narrator of the
story-as he attempts to spend the night in an infamously haunted room in a
castle.
• Owing to the black and red décor of the room the narrator finds it necessary
to light several candles to see his way around, but a draft keeps
extinguishing the candles faster than he can keep them lit. Eventually, the
candles go out, he loses his sense of direction and trips over the furniture.
He freaks out, falls down, and knocks himself out.
• In the morning, the narrator concludes that the room is haunted by no ghost,
but by fear itself. The ambiguity of the narrators ending is the story's
enduring legacy-is the room haunted by a supernatural force of pure fear, or
did the narrator simply spook himself in the dark?
Let's read these excerpts of 'The Red Room‘
Full story uploaded to Google Classroom
WRITE DOWN FOUR QUOTATIONS IN Challenge:
YOUR BOOK THAT CONVEYS
FEAR/APPREHENSION:
1. How does Wells (author) create
a sense of fear of the unknown?
2. Words from ‘The Red Room’:
• Superstition- a widely held but irrational belief in

supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad
3. luck, or a practice based on such a belief.
• Pallid - pale
• Germinating- to develop/grow
4. • Impalpable- unable to be felt by touch
• Apoplexy- either unconsciousness or anger
• Ponderous – slow/heavy/dull
Fear in ‘The Red Room’- Human
Psychology
What is fear?
Fear is a natural, powerful,

At the end, the narrator tells the caretakers that
the Red Room is haunted by fear. and primitive human
emotion. According to
Why fear? Why not just say he was scared of the psychology research, it
dark? Furthermore, one of the caretakers calls involves a universal
fear a ''Power of Darkness,'' and ''a curse upon biochemical response and
this world!'' He concludes, ''Fear is in that room.
Black Fear. . . And there it will be. . . so long as a high individual
this house of sin endures.'' What is the caretaker emotional response. Fear
talking about? How has the world been cursed? alerts us to the presence of
What is the ''house of sin'' that he mentions? danger or the threat of
Challenge: How does the ‘unknown’ generate more harm, whether that danger
fear and apprehension than showing the audience is physical or psychological.
the monster?
Darkness- a symbol
of the unknown
Whenever the narrator is afraid, there's
usually a description of darkness. He initially
feels uneasy around the caretakers, and
describes one as having ''a monstrous
shadow. . . crouched upon the wall.'' As the
narrator makes his way through the spooky
corridor to the Red Room, his tension and
fear begin to grow. So do the descriptions The Hounds of Baskerville- you will study
of darkness. A shadow on the tunnel wall this later in the unit:
seemed like ''one crouching to waylay me.'' When Sherlock and Henry arrive at the
Since darkness does not have a physical form hollow, they see the hound. At a local inn,
in which it can ''crouch,'' and because Sherlock is visibly shaken and confesses he
darkness does not have the consciousness to saw the hound. John tries calming him,
plot to attack someone, these uses of suggesting he imagines things. Sherlock
personification make it seem more menacing. reacts with anger, denying there is
The darkness is described as a ''a lurking something wrong with him.
living thing.''
So, how do we create suspense in our gothic
writing pieces?
Step 1: HIGHLIGHT how Wells has described ‘The Red Room’. Challenge: HOW WILL YOU CREATE
Adjectives, description of furniture etc.
SUSPENSE IN ‘THE RED ROOM’?
Write down a few ways you could do
Step 2: You will now CREATE your own Red Room. Which gothic tropes this…
that have studied so far will you use? What kind of emotions/mood
will you illustrate?
•
•
Step 3: Write 2-3 paragraphs on your Red Room. S
Success criteria: •
• Use three gothic tropes •
• You include a range of adjectives
• You use one of these words: superstition, impalpable, ponderous •
darkness, pallid, desolation in the right context- it needs to make
sense!

• First person narrative
• A fair balance between dialogue and description
• You need to employ a range of literary devices such as
Create your own 'Red Room' based on the
narrative. You must use gothic tropes:
Let's create a vivid image of this 'Red

Room' together as a class:
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The Red Room

Do Now: Attracting your reader's

• If you were to choose a title for your Gothic Creative

• Challenge: How could you as a writer interest Connotation refers to an implied

• Superstition- a widely held but irrational belief in

Fear is a natural, powerful,

Let's create a vivid image of this 'Red

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