An essay on different genres including the Ghost genre and the Fantasy

An essay on different genres including the Ghost genre and the Fantasy & Adventure genre I have chosen two completely different genres to base my essay on. Firstly, I have the mysterious and gripping Ghost Genre; the books I have studied are â€Å"The Woman in Black†, â€Å"The Langoliers† and the spooky film, â€Å"The Others†. The second genre is Fantasy & Adventure. The book I am studying is â€Å"Lirael†, a recent book written by Australian author Garth Nix. â€Å"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring†, directed by Peter Jackson is the film that I am analysing. There are many, definite trends to ghost stories, no matter what the novel is about. They are all usually set in remote areas and are about haunting. Death is usually common in scary stories also. Dense fog creates mysteriousness in the ghost genre and scary stories. It is not just used in books, but is a frequent trick displayed in films. The Langoliers is a gripping novel about a flight from L.A. to Boston, where the passengers somehow disappear when the plane is caught in a time warp, and pilot Brian Engle is left on his own, attempting to land the stray flight. â€Å"Brian peered out of the cockpit window. Outside, all that was visible were peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which were engulfed in a dense, dark fog.† The above quote is used by writer Stephen King to make the reader believe that the plane is now completely lost as the pilot cannot see any landmarks to pinpoint where he is! In the film â€Å"The Others† mist is constantly used when snapshots of the outside of the house are shown to create an eerie atmosphere. This works very well as it looks like the mansion is in the middle of nowhere and that the inhabitants are trapped inside, because if... ...the â€Å"L.O.T.R.† Merry and Pippin (two hobbits) are captured, Boromir is slain by an Orc and Frodo and Sam leave and decide to complete their task alone. In â€Å"Lirael† Sameth realizes that his friend Nicholas has been captured by Hedge and sets off to find him, ending the book on a cliff-hanger! I have found that, like Ghost stories, the Fantasy Genre has certain trends too. There are two sides, good and evil, the main characters are usually on quests and have a companion, and the weather matches the mood of people involved in the story. Also, in both â€Å"Lirael† of course the â€Å"L.O.T.R.† magic is used frequently. ‘Train of thought’ is not used often though as so much is happening in the novel. To summarise although all stories within a certain Genre are totally contrasting, they are similar in their sentence structure, characters, and of course†¦ storyline.