Does the author not just mean that the curtains are red?

Although red can be a purely aesthetic description, we must remember that this is a fictive space created by an author to evoke particular emotions, which help us respond to the story they're trying to tell. Different words have different connotations: in a Western vocabularly, red has connotations of -invite discussion-. In a Chinese vocabularly, red has strong associations with luck -encourage discussion-. Suggest different ways in which the author may have described the room, and investigate with the student how each one changes how we read the events that take place.