Foil

Character Role Analysis

The Narrator and the Custodians

We have a young, brash fellow who doesn’t take superstition seriously on the one hand, and sketchy-looking older people, who are terrified of superstition, on the other. It’s a pretty obvious contrast, but it’s still an important one. This contrast helps frame the story’s central conflict between fear and human reason. In the end, it turns out that the older people were right to be afraid, and that the narrator was wrong to be overly confident in his ability to master his fear. (Although, the custodians were wrong about what haunts the red room.)