Compare The Whole Towns Sleeping with A Terribly Strange Bed Essay Example For Students

Compare The Whole Towns Sleeping with A Terribly Strange Bed Essay There are many similarities between the two stories The Whole Towns Sleeping and A Terribly Strange Bed. The most noticeable of these being the thriller genre which they both share, and in the way they both create a feeling of tension and suspense throughout, especially towards the climax. They also both deal with the subject of murder or attempted murder, and the main characters of both stories are quite similar, as they both find themselves in these strange situations through a certain degree of their own doing; with The Whole Towns Sleeping main character, Lavinia Nebbs, this is because she had refused the help of her friends and decided to walk home on her own, and with A Terribly Strange Beds main character, it is because of his consistent luck in gambling, which flares up the jealousy of on-lookers. However, there are differences as well as similarities, as while TWTS is a third-person narrative which features a female main character and a cliff-hanger ending, ATSB is the complete opposite; a story told through the first-person, with a male character and all the loose ends tied up at the end of the story we can tell this from the very beginning as the narrator is obviously looking back on something he has experienced a long time ago. Also, while they both do successfully build up tension and suspense, they achieve this in different ways. The Whole Towns Sleeping uses repetition and short descriptions, safe, safe, safe, where as A Terribly Strange Bed uses long descriptions to increase the drama. Also, the pace of The Whole Towns Sleeping is fast and furious, unlike A Terribly Strange Bed, where the pace of the story is slow and frustrating as more and more tension is built up. There is also different feelings of tension and suspense from the readers part right from the beginning, as in TWTS, the tension and suspense is built up around if Lavinia survives, and in ATSB, as we already know the main character makes is out alive, the tension is based more upon how he escapes that if he escapes. The Whole Towns Sleeping begins to build up tension from the very beginning by describing a barren location, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, to set the scene of fright that the story is based upon. It was a warm summer night in the middle of Illinois country. The little town was deep far away from everything, kept to itself by a river and a forest and a ravine. This creates the feeling of isolation that Lavinia feels herself later on in the story, and that the name The Lonely One suggests. The scene continues to be set in the next few lines; The stores were closing and the streets were turning dark. There were two moons: a clock moon with four faces in four night directions above the solemn black courthouse, and the real moon that was slowly rising in vanilla whiteness from the dark east. This emphasises the slow change of day to night that is occurring, and sets the scene for this quaint little town to become the scene of terror, fear and murder. A Terribly Strange Bed begins completely differently in that instead of setting the scene for the events that will happen, it begins almost biographically as the narrator describes his life around the time the story is set, in order to give as a clearer indication as to how the main character gets himself into this situation that is about to befall him. As opposed to TWTS, the tension and drama of A Terribly Strange Bed does not begin until well into the story. However, despite there being a feeling of fear and suspense from the very beginning of The Whole Towns Sleeping, it only really begins to have a strong effect when Lavinia beings to walk home on her own. Lavinia Nebbs walked down the midnight street, down the late summer night silence. She saw the houses with their dark and far away she heard a dog barking. The fact that she is clearly hearing noises from afar gives the reader a clear indication of how quiet and deserted the little town really is, and the isolation that Lavinia must be feeling as she takes the long walk home. However, Lavinia gives the impression that it does not bother her to be on her own walking through a pitch black street. In five minutes, she thought, Ill be safe home. In five minutes Ill be phoning silly little Francine. But she is clearly nervy when she hears a male voice, as it cuts her off mid-sentence, and forces her to walk faster. Ill -. She heard a mans voice singing far away among the trees. She walked a little faster. Later on, the writer uses suspense to build tension. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine steps, she whispered. She felt she was running, but she was not running. From this you can tell that the writer is trying to give the impression that Lavinia just wants the whole ordeal to be over with, hence the fact she feels she is running down the stairs when she is actually only walking. The suspense in continued in the next few lines. Mr. Collins: Character Review EssaySafe, oh safe, safe, home, so good, so good, safe. Safe inside, the door locked. There is a lot of repetition of the word safe here, perhaps an indication that, as before, Lavinia is trying to convince herself that she is something shes not. Finally, in the last paragraph, it seems that both Lavinia and the reader are assured of safety. Wait. Look out the window. She looked. She gazed out of the window for a full half-minute. Why theres nothing there at all! Nobody! There was no one following at all. Nobody running after me. She caught her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to reason. If a man had been following me, hed have caught me. Im not a fast runner. Theres no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me. I wasnt running from anything except me. That ravine was safer than safe. Just the same, though, its nice to be home. Homes the really good warm safe place, the only place to be. The amount of tension in the story has finally calmed down, as soon as Lavinia felt safe, she studied the facts and made the conclusion that her fear was for no reason whatsoever, she was being paranoid and even saw the funny side of it. Then comes the climax. She put her hand put to the light switch and stopped. What? she asked. What? What? Behind her, in the black living-room, someone cleared his throat After all the build up to the climax, all the fear and terror that Lavinia described she was suffering, after all that, very little is explained. However, having read how Lavinia has felt on her frightful journey, the reader has their own ideas as to who the person clearing their throat is perhaps the most popular idea being that it is indeed the Lonely One but who is the Lonely one? Officer Kennedy? Tom? It is this cliff-hanger ending that will leave the reader making conclusions for days as to what happens next, so despite the whole story being well written, it is perhaps the final line that contributes to it being remembered for a long time more than the rest of the story put together. As mentioned above a few times, there are many differences between the two stories, but there are also similarities. For instance, when the bed begins descending and Faulkner cannot move in A Terribly Strange Bed, he begins, in a way, to talk to himself, just as Lavinia had done in TWTS. Was the bed moving? I turned on my back and looked up. Was I mad? Drunk? Dreaming? Giddy again? Or was the top of the bed really moving down-sinking slowly, regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its length and breadth-right down upon me, as I lay underneath? He obviously cannot believe what is happening, which is the reason he is asking himself all of these questions an attempt to shed light on the situation. The pace of the story is generally a lot quicker that that of The Whole Towns Sleeping, this is evident in the many short, fragmented sentences; I looked up, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle, fully spent, went out; but the moonlight still brightened the room. Down and down, without pausing and without sounding, came the bed-top, and still my panic-terror seemed to bind me faster and faster to the mattress on which I lay-down and down it sank, till the dusty odour from the lining of the canopy came stealing into my nostrils There is a total of ten commas and full-stops in that short piece of text, the short sentences created by these really build up the readers tension quickly and powerfully, in the same way that Faulkners fear must be building up. So, its obvious that the biggest difference between the two texts is how different sentence lengths are used to create two different speeds, A Terribly Strange Bed being the quicker of the two stories. The biggest similarity between the two will have to be the situations that the two main characters find themselves in. They are both situations of fear, suspense and anxiety as neither of the two characters know what is around the corner, or what is about to happen to them. Overall, I think I preferred A Terribly Strange Bed to The Whole Towns Sleeping. The main reason being that I think TWTS tended to drag on a bit too much when describing a situation. As detailed as this was, I felt it was needless, and felt the situations in A Terribly Strange Bed were described well enough is short, sharp sentences. I also felt the quick pace if ATSB made it more exciting than TWTS.