Atmosphere In A Haunted House

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Saki is a renown story writer, widely known for his macabre storylines. Saki builds and maintains an eerie and tense atmosphere throughout the story with the help of various techniques and devices. The effective atmosphere of the story hooks the reader on to the story and helps the author create the tension between the characters. The story has many ironic statements and imagery which shape the reader’s image of the story and help the reader feel what Saki tries to convey. The author keeps on building on a situation to let the tension arise in the atmosphere. Saki even enjoys making his reader feel tense about what will happen to the characters and then brings in changes in the story which are least expected. Saki with the help of an isolated setting with dull surroundings moulds the reader’s mind and creates an eerie atmosphere. This is shown when Saki describes the surroundings as, “In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that”. With the description of the setting, the reader can relate to the solitariness and sympathises with the protagonist, Conradin. The author describes Conradin surrounded by many windows which the reader relates to a haunted house and there the eerie atmosphere is created. …show more content…

A clear example of this is when the author says, “Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes”. This happens in during the falling-action of the story and the readers expect a usual resolution of events but the author does not cease the mystery and the readers become tense because they do not know why the character suddenly starts feeling victorious. The tense atmosphere is created by pulling the event and telling how the two characters in the hutch do not come out and a cryptic surrounding is created with tensions arising at each