“The Tower” is a masterwork of suspense, claustrophobia, and slow-burn horror. Initially, this atmosphere makes itself known through subtle cues: the guidebook’s ominous historical context on the tower, Niccolo di Ferramano’s potential dealings with the occult, and Giovanna’s possible damnation. It comes as no surprise that the tower itself is a wretched, claustrophobic place with only a precarious staircase leading to the top. And yet, despite this ideal setting for a haunting tale, most of the story’s horror actually comes from Caroline’s internal psychological torment.
Out on a solitary day trip, Caroline’s isolation provides fertile ground for the psychological torment she experiences within the tower’s walls. Alone at the top of the tower, a voice in Caroline’s head tells her to jump. There is a sense that this is the tower’s sinister method of achieving its “sacrifice”: it masquerades as one’s own voice of reason. Caroline manages to override the voice’s suggestion, but her fear repeatedly paralyzes her as she climbs down the stairs. Inching forward in fits and starts, the reader’s perspective narrows to occupy the same claustrophobic space as Caroline as she haltingly descends. Even when a bat frightens Caroline into movement, there is no reprieve from the building dread—and then, in a subtle but very disconcerting way, the story ends with Caroline counting the 504th step even though readers know there should only be 470 steps. The terror in her head has seemingly made its way into a physical reality. No reason is given for the existence of these extra steps—whether Caroline miscounted or died or is trapped in some sort of purgatorial space is left up to the reader’s speculation. By leaving Caroline’s fate ambiguous, Laski forces readers to inhabit the same liminal space as her character, fully immersing them in a tormenting and frightening sense of uncertainty.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Fear, Psychological Torment, and Uncertainty ThemeTracker
Fear, Psychological Torment, and Uncertainty Quotes in The Tower
Caroline shivered, ‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘Let’s look at Giovanna again,’ and they had moved back to the first portrait, and Neville had said casually, ‘Do you know, she’s rather like you.’
Caroline knew that she wanted to take the fork to the left, to Florence and home and Neville and—said an urgent voice inside her—for safety.
‘It would be so silly to give up,’ she told herself, desperately trying to rationalize what drove her on. ‘Just because one’s afraid—’ and then she had to stifle that thought too, and there was nothing left in her brain but the steadily mounting tally of steps.
All her being was suddenly absorbed in the single impulse to hurl herself from the sloping platform. ‘I cannot go down any other way,’ she said, and then she heard what she said and stepped back, frenziedly clutching the soft rotten wood of the doorway with hands sodden with sweat. There is no other way, said the voice in her brain, there is no other way.
She could not move. It was not possible that she should dare to go down, step by step down the unprotected stairs into the dark below. It would be much easier to fall, said the voice in her head, to take one step to the left and fall and it would all be over. You cannot climb down.
So Caroline came down the dark tower. She could not think. She could know nothing but fear. Only her brain remorselessly recorded the tally. ‘Five hundred and one,’ it counted, ‘five hundred and two—and three and four—'
