Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

12
yellow eyes”, and the owl “holding up its wings like two shrouded arms” all indicate
the first-person perspective of the character writing the letter. These specific
aesthetic choices not only communicate that the story is being told from a character’s
perspective, but they are also designed to elicit a horrified response in the reader. By
condensing this sudden occurrence into the space of three sentences, James
communicates the speed and immediacy of the event. However, by briefly delaying
the revelation of the owl by saying “what in all the world do you think?”, James
attempts to create a sense of tension and suspense, similar to the experience of
gradually taking in one’s surroundings after being woken by a loud scream like the
one mentioned. James, in a short passage manages to convey a sudden shock while
still infusing it with suspense, by connecting the scene to the experience of the
character within the story. The story’s success or failure in eliciting these emotions
largely depends of the effectiveness of these aesthetic choices. This example from
M. R. James very clearly shows the experience of an event shown from the
perspective of a specific character, and this can be seen in the horror stories of many
writers, such as Sheridan LeFanu’s “The Room in The Dragon Volant” (1872),
Daphne Du Maurier’s “Kiss Me Again, Stranger” (1952) and Stephen King’s
“Autopsy Room Four” (2002). But other examples of literature demonstrate the
ability of perspective to highlight the limitations of this form of storytelling and
allow the reader to question how the experience of the individual character who is
telling the story differs from the actual events. This can be seen in the Henry James
novella The Turn of the Screw (1898) in which a governess insists upon seeing
ghosts and although there is no overt confirmation of this, she perceives other
characters’ similar beliefs through her interpretation of their body language. This
ambiguity also becomes a source of tension in Niki Valentine’s recent novel The