The narrative styles in the two stories are very similar, but both suit there genre of story perfectly. ‘The Red Room’, is written in the first person narrative, with the main character being the narrator himself. This gives a very personal and detailed account and the reader sees everything that the character sees. This is an effective method, as it maintains suspense throughout the story. In ‘The Signalman’, the story is also written in the first person narrative, except with the narrator being an unnamed person. This ‘person’ gives the views and accounts rather than it all coming from a direct character. Even though this is a different and more complicated way of narrating a story, it is still very affective, as it gives detailed and personal views. The narrators in both stories give very detailed descriptions of the main characters; this was effective as it kept high levels of suspense throughout each story. The rest of the characters in the stories, as in ‘The Red Room’ were gradually introduced, with pieces of information about them being slowly introduced.
The suspense in each story was gradually built up, and maintained throughout. Examples of this can be seen in ‘The Signalman’ especially in the first part of the story where the narrator leaves the reader on a cliff-hanger; ‘hallo! below there’. This type of suspense is also in ‘The Red Room’, except with different levels, as the suspense is gradually added. This gives a slow climbing build to a huge climax. To build on the general suspense, the writer added repetitive words throughout, which is affective as it keeps reminding the reader of previous events in the story. This gradually built the tension, and this keeps the reader alert and interested throughout the story. Furthermore the narrators use irony especially the narrator in ‘The Signalman’, as he used irony to fear the main character by using a ghost.
We can concur that both endings in the stories were satisfactory, as they both had a good ‘summing up’ last paragraph that kept the reader interested right through to the end. As for twists in the endings, there is a well written line which gives a totally different prospective to the whole story, this happens to be in ‘The Signalman’, when the phrase ‘hallo below there’ was used. This closing sentence brings together and summarises the story very well by bringing back a past event or phrase. In ‘The Red Room’ on the other hand, it gives a totally different aspect, as this closing paragraph really reinforces the Victorian beliefs in supernatural beings. The writer does this exceedingly well by giving many ghosts and ghouls to keep the readers interest and to keep them engaged right through to the end.
The writer’s interests are brought back together in the aspect of ‘themes’. In ‘The Signalman’, Dickens raises concerns about fate and the after life which the Victorians believed very strongly about. One of the sentences which he wrote reflects this view and he did this by having one of the main characters in the story being interlinked with a dark and spooky tunnel in the middle of one of the scenes, and by also having the character believing that there is active life form from dead humans in the tunnel. This suggests afterlife. Another theme that the story introduces is the Victorians worries with new transport, such as the train, so the writer brings in a death caused by a train collision to keep the readers interest. ‘The Red Room’ gives a more full on view to supernatural beings, by having the main action in the story surrounded by ghosts. In the modern day though, people aren’t as worried about ghosts and the after life, which suggests they are a lot more sceptical towards it.
To conclude, I think that each story has a very strong and emotional line of events which is very effective to all readers; especially to the Victorians. Also I would think that they saw the two stories as more of a scary horror book which contained recent worries and events which they could personally relate to. Each author had very different stories in mind, but one thing remained in both and that was the aim to keep a rich level of suspense throughout. As a modern reader though, I think that the stories would be seen as more of adventure books rather than horrors and that each story comes across with its own personal mood. To summarise, I can see that there are many similarities between the two stories especially ones that would relate to the Victorians beliefs.
