A Comparison Of ‘The Whole Town’s Sleeping’ And ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ Focusing On The Techniques Used By Each Author To Create Suspense

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‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ and ‘The Whole Town’s Sleeping’, two different stories written in different centuries, yet very similar. I am going to compare these two stories focusing on the techniques used by each writer to create an atmosphere of suspense. Both stories are in the horror genre, which allows the author to explore the concept of fear. The horror genre ranges from tales of psychopathic murders, to supernatural ghost tales. Any story where the characters feel scared and threatened.
Wilkie Collins wrote ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ in 1856. Wilkie Collins was an English man though he travelled extensively, particularly in France and Italy, often with his companion the English author Charles Dickens. Collins is well known for developing the detective story genre, into what we now know it as. He was very critical of his own class, as is reflected in ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ where the Narrator says, ‘let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s to a house where they don’t mind letting in a man with a ragged coat.’ This shows that Collins Narrator thinks of the lower class and their poverty as a bit of fun not something serious. This is not a reflection of Collins, who, as he grew older took a more and more socialist view. Collins could relate to his Narrator though, as he knew what it was to be intoxicated, he was addicted to laudanum, which probably helped him to be more graphic while writing ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’. He also stayed in France; where he discovered an appetite for dry champagne, French cuisine and prostitutes. He is also similar in the sense that they are both well-educated, well travelled, upper/middle class young men.
Ray Bradbury wrote ‘The Whole Town’s Sleeping’ in 1950. ‘The Whole Town’s Sleeping’ has a lot more visual imagery, as a film director may use, in it than ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’, ‘back among a clump of bushes-half hidden, but laid out as thoug...