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Fear In The Hound Of The Baskervilles Fear In The Hound Of The Baskervilles & The Whole Towns Sleeping Fear is present in many different types of literature from the shortest tale tothe longest of novels. Sir Author Conan Doyles The Hound of the Baskervillies and Ray Bradburys The Whole Towns Sleeping are two very different texts which create fear in different ways but also in very similar ways. I am going to explain what these methods are and how they compare. Many things create fear, loneliness, isolation, the supernatural, darkness. all of these things are fears of one things, the unknown. The absence of knowledge or the denial of what may happen.
It is not possible not to fear. No one has done everything and knows everything and more importantly can predict everything because many things are out of their control and cannot be predicted. So everyone fears the only difference between people is who worrysabout their fears and those who ignore them. The Hound of The Baskervillies begins in the Comfort and safety of Holmes Baker Street flat. But soon travels to the dangerous and unknown Dartmoor andthe great Grimpon Mire.
The More and Mire are mysterious places when murders were known to have taken place. But Baskerville hall is safe away from the danger of the moor. From the Beginning of the Novel when we discover of the Mystery and History of the House of the Baskervillies The moor is depicted aside place where the attack is likely to take place and it does indeed take place on he moor. After the Attack Holmes and Watson return to their London apartment where we find out how Holmes solved the mystery of The Hound of The Baskervillies. Holmes revelations are interesting because the novel is told from the point of view of Watson Holmes assistant. Because of this the reader gets a layman's view on the story.
If Holmes told the story then there would little left unsure in our minds, therefore there would be no fear. Telling the novel from watson point of view also gives the sense of Holmes Brilliance Form Holmes point of view we would not feel the full impact of the Genius of Holmes. The Whole Towns Sleepings structure is unusual in the way in which it ends abruptly leaving the story open to be finished, leaving the reader wanting more. Building up tension throughout the story and quickly dispelling it but the end the tension is never explained away making the ending of the story hang in your mind and making you realise how involved with the story you are. The story also has an unusual twist in that the event that the whole story builds up to happens just when you think it will not. Lavinia who you are expecting to get attacked by the lonely one outside in the ravine or as she running to her house infact happens after she reaches the apparent safety other house.
We start the story at her house she is safe and the moo created is a calm relaxed safe mood. It is only as she leaves the house that we learn The Lonely One and the dangers that lie in the ravine and out in the open streets. After the rises and falls in tension including the discovery of the latest victim of the lonely one The structures of the two texts are very different whereas one leaves threaded with full knowledge of what has happened therefore eliminating the fear The Whole Towns Sleeping leaves almost all mystery's unsolved and so fear is present until the end of the story right until the last word. The viewpoint ofthe two storeys is also very important to the creation of fear. With the view Watson we believe that we know everything but infact the reader knows very little but with the third persons view in The Whole Towns Sleeping readers should get the feeling of knowledge but the story is told from only what Lavinia sees If she see something the reader does not see it either.
But often she will see things before the reader creating tension very quickly andale dispelling it equally as quickly. A good example of this is when Lavinia and Francine come across some children pretending to be The lonely one there whispering from the bushes I am the lonely One. I am the Lonely One Ill people. We are initially lead to believe that this voice is indeed the lonely one, we have no method of differentiating between voices in literature unless we are told who is speaking Bradbury uses this to fool the reader into suspecting the unknown voice is a killer. But the sudden outburst by Francine of You there! Children, you nasty children!
tells us that the voice is the voice of a child playing dispelling tension just as fast as it was created. The Whole Towns Sleeping uses the main setting of the ravine that cuts apathy through the middle of the town which itself is situated in the middle of Illinois to create a fearsome place. The ravine is depicted as a harsh isolated place in the middle of an isolated town. The ravine is used towards the end of the story as Lavinia is on her final walk home. She passes through the ravine after her night with her friends after telling her friend Francine that she is not scared of The Lonely One but as she passes down the steepbrambled bank down towards the bottom of the ravine down the one hundred and thirteen steps the number itself is very important as it depicts the number 13 which is unlucky and the number one hundred giving the sense of huge distance. She whispers to herself the number of steps she has travelled down thus heightening the distance she must travel.
As the leaves The locked doors, thrown, the drugstore, the theatre and the lights she becomes more and more isolated. She continues down the ravine she listens out for a stranger but finds silence. Her footsteps start to produce echoes showing how desolate and empty the ravine is. How cold the valley is and how cold The Lonely One is. Just as earlier Francine had never been so cold since winter when they found Eliza Ramsells body in the ravine. Even if the ravine is not infact the place where The Lonely One will strike it is the most likely place in the story andis purposely created to give this false sense of certainty.
Even the name The Great Grimpen mire suggests fear and the addition of fog makes it one of the most fearful places that Doyle could have created for the search for The Hound of the Baskervillies Fog is used because it blocks the human senses therefore the detectives can not sense when the attack will take place. The fog is depicted as drifting slowly across the moor and being solid like a wall another description used throughout this section is the notion that the fog is floating like a strange ship on a sinister sea or that is like a great shimmering ice field To Holmes the fog is the one things which could have disarranged my plans we trust Holmes judgement on this because his is the greatest detective of all time! The moor also contains many other elements that contribute to the fear of it. The monolithic ruins aroused as a hiding place for both the dog, Holmes, and the convict. They are both cold and desolate places and are the last remaining clues that many years ago people once lived on this moor. The fact that a convict is loose on tremor also creates a worry that there may be more then one killer on the loose.
And the suggestion that the Mire could infact kill if you did not know how topics through it also created yet another fear. Both settings are extremely similar. They both contain isolation, both contains killer and both deceive our senses just as Holmes cannot see due to the fog Lavinia cannot see due to the lack of light from the towns street lights. Both places are known but contain many different variables that could be the killer the positions of our main characters in the two texts are very different but the actual story that takes place on these two setting are very similar. Infact both texts are extremely similar both have unknown murderers, both have dangerous places where characters pass through. Both killers are serial killers.
Both storeys rely on the readers missing knowledge to create fear. There are some major differences between their structures. But they are different styles of writing. One is a full length novel and one is a Short story. They are written to achieve different things. I feel that in The Whole Towns Sleeping the actual written story is less important then what you decide to interpret the rest of the story as.
Whereas The Hound Of the Baskervilles is a full novel and is designed to take you comprehensively through the story from start to finish giving you as much detail on what is happening as possible. In that way they are very different pieces of literature.
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