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Firstly, dramatic tension is a literary device designed to provoke fear, suspense or excitement in a reader. Both Bradbury and Wells use it in their respective texts however they do not use it in identical ways. Many similarities can be drawn between the texts but there are crucial differences in the use of this device that are not so evident. Characterisation is used by Bradbury to bring many different profiles to the reader we have the emotional bordering on hysterical Francine, Helen who appears cautious to the point of paranoia, and Lavinia who appears to be an uncaring free spirit. The fundamental differences in these characters when juxtaposed with each other subtly throw a reader off balance we start to wonder why Francine is so desperate for Lavinia not to walk home I dont want you dead (Pg 16) is she The Lonely One or does she know when he / she will strike next? which provokes a series of questions which is the actual cause of the unease in this device.
Wells however uses characterisation but lets us build our own perspective of his characters through his conveyed images such as the man with the withered arm (Pg 2). From these we gain a sense of foreboding from these characters as Wells plays on the stereotypes of age decay and death which makes us uneasy in the prescience of such truly disgusting people his lower lip hung half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth, and again we have the question that what is an apparently healthy 28 year old man doing there anyway? Bradbury uses empathy particularly with Lavinia by firstly letting a reader get inside her head and experience her thoughts and by doing so experience the actual story by Lavinia speaking aloud, such as Someones following me, she whispered to the ravine, and since she is eventually terrified we experience this terror through her actions. This is coupled with real time how we experience it is decided by the use of Lavinia counting such as One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps so we dont become an impartial observer in her head but become someone with her in supposed reality, and this instantly lets us feel fear from the supposed assailant pursuing Lavinia. Wells also creates empathy for the character by letting a reader get inside his head but by the use of first person narration throughout as we read the constant Is Wells puts us in the position of the character and conjures a mental image of what is happening in the text and in that we can experience the anxiety and fear of the character which sustains the tension.
Bradbury only develops his main characters Lavinia, Helen and Francine, but constantly introduces new ones, such as A porch swing creaked in the darkness and there was Mr There. They have a two pronged effect firstly we are kept constantly off balance and uneasy with so many unknown quantities in the text which provoke us into thinking that they might be the Lonely One throughout, and also the introduction of new characters puts the story into a sort of three-dimensional construct we have uncertainty from all sides in the building up of tension and not emanating from one source which makes us feel more insecure, which builds up tension throughout. Wells uses the effect of un development in a crucially different way which deepens the suspense he never actually names his characters but gives them labels such as the man with the withered arm. This gives an almost inhuman aura from these characters as they are forbidding objects that speak premonitions of doom, which Bradbury does not use. The only mentioned name is Lorraine Castle, which fits in with the gothic style mood of the text, and itself is a forbidding blank statement, but is primarily a pace device which I will explain later. Bradbury reveals the setting of his text by using relative examples in actual time and history for us to relate to such as Im paying forty one cents to see Charlie Chaplin, which firstly gives us an indication of a twenties / thirties setting.
Language wise we have numerous Americanisms throughout the text such as chocolate soda, which gives us the image of small town mid-west American setting. Bradbury is therefore continually building up tension throughout the story as it is in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar culture that does not provoke fear but an underlying unease with it, because again we have presented to us ideas we cant understand and what we cant understand we cant control so anything could happen. Wells also has the distancing effect of the text from the audience but it is more pronounced. Firstly we have no timeframe markers we only have our own perspective on when the story is set and although we have Lorraine Castle we dont know where that is either.
Wells therefore leaves a readers imagination to run wild, and drawing from other tension building devices lets us create the classic gothic haunted castle from which nobody returns, yet the fact that we do this ourselves is unnerving for a reader as if Wells was to place such references we would not feel the same tension as this convention is somewhat a grand clich now (but not in the time Wells was writing, I may add), yet it is still effective as each reader has built their own unsettling image. The influence of the past is brought through by anachronisms such as candlesticks, and archaic language in the words themselves and word order, such as askance, and eight and twenty years. Coupled with this is the overriding feeling of age in this text and though the decay such as the grotesque custodians of the castle and the long, draughty, subterranean passage was chilly and dusty. This is a far more distant setting from the reader today who cant fathom such events and through that tension is created.
Bradbury uses an atmosphere that links into his convention in that it is overriding l...
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