The Whole Town's Sleeping and Terribly Strange Bed In this essay I will be comparing two (2) short stories 'The Whole Town's sleeping' by Ray Bradbury (1950) and 'A Terribly Strange Bed' by Wilkie Collins (1856). Both stories are about fear and they make us feel fear or are supposed to; they make the reader scared or frightened. Both stories have the same purpose, which is so scare the reader. I am going to compare the way Ray Bradbury and Wilkie Collins create tension, suspense, mood and tone. In the first few lines of 'The Whole Town's Sleeping', the author describes the setting for the story, "the little town was deep far away from everything, kept to itself by a river and a forest and a ravine", but before that he mentions that it is nighttime. Both stories are set at nighttime. This is because if it were set in the daytime it simply wouldn't be scary. The whole town wouldn't be sleeping and the narrator wouldn't need a terribly strange bed to sleep in. Collins has a different approach for the beginning of 'A Terribly Strange Bed', he describes the characters and what they were doing, which gives a different impression of the story, it doesn't seem like a scary story at first, because there's no obvious signs like in 'The Whole Town's Sleeping'. Ray Bradbury uses recreation to create interest to the story "In the downtown drugstore, fans whispered in the high ceiling air" He also use metaphors and similes such as "There were two moons: a clock moon with four faces" while 'A Terribly Strange Bed' doesn't have any recreation, metaphors or similes in its opening but still manages to maintain interest. Mood and tone are very important in both stories. Using certain adjectives, like "warm summer n... ...appens next. In Collins' story, you are told what happens next, and you finish the story quite pleased, like the narrator would be, instead of still scared like you are in the other story. Both stories are similar and different; the authors use different methods to make the reader scared. The stories have some similarities and others have differences. Ray Bradbury describes the scenery whereas Wilkie Collins describes the characters. Setting seems to be more important in 'The Whole Town's Sleeping' than it is in Collins' story and tension and suspense is used very differently in the both stories, Bradbury uses a sharp shock and then a steady buildup, then a false relief before a final cliffhanger and Collins uses a strange buildup to what seems like somewhat of an anti-climax and then re establishes the tension, for a gentle relief and a settled ending.
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A Look into the Human Mind In his powerful novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut tells of a man named Billy Pilgrim who has become unstuck in time. He walks through a door in 1955 and comes out another in 1941. He crashes in a plane in 1968 and ends up displayed in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore making love to Earth porno-star, Montana Wildhack. He ends up in the cellar of a slaughterhouse when Dresden is bombed to ashes during World War II; Billy, his fellow Americans, and four guards were the only ones to live through the bombing. The Boston Globe best explains the book when it says it is “…poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement†(back cover). Vonnegut looks into the human mind of a man, traumatized by war experiences and poor relations with his father, and determines insanity is the result. Billy’s father is a source of his instability from the beginning. Mr. Pilgrim treats Billy as if he has no feelings and he is a disgrace to him. Unfortunately for Billy, fathers are very influential in a boy’s growing up. In a terrible encounter with his father when Billy was young, Mr. Pilgrim sets the stage for Billy’s insanity: Little Billy was terrified because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim. His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim. It was like an execution. Billy was numb as his father carried him from the shower room to the pool. His eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool and there was beautiful music playing everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music went on. He dimly sensed that someone was rescuing him. Billy resented that. (43-4) Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet. Billy proves throughout the book that he is not mentally stable, yet somehow, he is persuasive in his interpretation of the truth.
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