The Red Room symbolises imprisonment and death in the novel I'm the King of the Castle. Firstly, the red room was a prison for Joseph Hooper. He was "lectured and instructed", and "forced to watch" the insects that his father had collected, while Joseph Hooper "hated it violently". The diction "violently" exacerbates Joseph Hooper's disgust of the moths and exaggerates the tediousness that Joseph Hooper would have felt while being forced to watch the moths. The red room was also a prison for Charles Kingshaw, when he was locked in the room by Edmund Hooper. Edmund Hooper "whipped around ... turning the key sharply in the lock". Kingshaw, locked in the red room, feels frightened and horrified at the moths and dead animals hanging on the wall. The red room also symbolises death. The colour red represents blood, and the moths laid out in the room are dead.
Intertextuality - Jane Eyre: Jane gets locked in the room as a punishment for revolting against Mrs. Reed. Also, Mr. Reed died in the red room.
Moreover, the red room represents the conflict in the Hooper family. Hooper's grandfather was preoccupied with wealth and fame, thus his interests were all about his properties, and nothing more. As a result, Joseph Hooper avoided being in the house with his father, and spent "all of his holidays away from the house". This shows his uncomfortable feelings towards the family and Warings, which implies that the family could never become closer. Even though Joseph Hooper hated being forced to watch the moths in the red room, he does similar thing to his own son, and tells Edmund to be proud of his grandfather's work. Joseph Hooper, grown up with the absence of care and interest from his father, obviously doesn't know how to keep a relationship with Edmund, and causes further conflict with Edmund Hooper, in similar ways as Hooper's grandfather did to Joseph Hooper.
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