Within the first quarter of ‘The Signalman’ Charles Dickens creates the atmosphere in four paragraphs with strong effective and descriptive lexis. He uses many other words to describe the atmosphere; he uses ‘gloom’, ‘black’ and ‘dark’ This atmosphere lexis, which is used a lot, describes the darkness of the area as lack of light is essential in ghost stories. “unnatural” creates and adds mystery to the story.
He uses adjectives “earthy” and “clammy stone” to give clear images to describe the visual description of the scene. This lexis grabs the reader and creates the setting.
Just before he goes down the cutting an unknown vibration shakes the ground “vague vibration in the earth and air” He also uses a lot of effective adjectives like “violent pulsation” This appeals to the senses and adds to the atmosphere.
In the “Red Room” the setting is more dependent on the characters than in “The Signalman” .The atmosphere is only created through the character at the beginning of the story and it is not till the journey to and in the Red Room that the atmosphere is seen to be strongly created by H.G. Wells.
The setting of the Red Room is mainly in the red room, apart from the beginning when the narrator is talking to the servants. The narrator says, “Eight and Twenty years I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen yet” which proves he does not believe in ghosts, this information create suspense later in the story as the first ghostly happenings occur.
This is a very different concept to Charles Dickens as H.G. Wells causes the setting in the red room to change shape and form. H.G. Wells uses light cleverly and effectively together with darkness. H.G. Wells using personification creates darkness in a character. He uses verbs like “sprang” to show that dark is controllably moving as it purposely put out the candles.
The characters in the Red Room and in the Signalman are used very differently. The Signalman has two characters, which allows them to build up the tension and fear between them, however the Red Room uses the servants, importantly but only at the beginning of the story, in the rest of the story till the end the only physical character is the narrator.
The narrator in The Signalman is a very mysterious character as we know very little about him; no physical description can create the question does the narrator actually exist. There are unclear, unanswered questions of what is he doing there, is he driving the signalman to his death extremely subtly? There is some evidence in his tone of voice that he has come from a prison or an asylum. He has a large interest in the signal man and his work as he asks what he has to do in his job and he seems to want to know about what is in the signal box, though there is no evidence why he is interested in this.
In the end it is the narrators fault that the signalman dies because if he hadn’t called down to him in the first place, the signalman would have looked up as the train came down the tunnel. “Below there, look out”. The first words of the story are the most decisive words of the story. Could it have been fate? And no matter what had happened between the start of the story and his death, it couldn’t have been prevented. “The words which I myself - not he – had attached”. He obviously feels responsible for his death and you feel that if he hadn’t associated himself with the man none of this would of happened.
The signalman confesses to being wild in his youth so he also could have spent some time in a prison or an institution. He is very susceptible to guilt, because of the disaster on the line, as he feels responsible and that he could have prevented it. From this he sees himself as inevitably doomed and he because he has a vivid imagination he may have though about his own death caused by the pressure of the situation.
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In the Red Room the servants appear very old and extremely exaggerated beyond the point of seriousness. They are, however, very important as they set the abnormal background to the story and let us and the narrator know that, he is going to be haunted “on this night of all nights” Still due to them being so inhuman he does not decide to listen to their warning and believes there is no ghost
In the Signalman each character increases and builds the tension. The narrator builds it up by what he sees down by the railway track at the bottom of the cutting and what he sees the Signalman doing, “while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did not ring”. This tells us that the Signalman is affected mentally and how the original siting has haunted and scared him mentally. The Signalman is being haunted by a ghost who predicts that something is going to happen. The haunting increases as death becomes an effective part in it.
The order in which the signalman first describes the events of the train crash first how he saw them and after how he felt about them, said in this order increases the of effect the fear by constant repetition of “For God’s sake, clear the way”
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The narrator while in the red room first tries to explain the strange events with logical explanations believing it is through natural causes, for example when the candles are blown out he continually believes it is just the draughts are causing it, even at the height of his panic he is still unwilling to concede that he is being haunted. We do not see how the narrator’s views change and what he had learnt from his experiences after the night in the red room and the story is concluded through the servants.
The Signalman and the Red Room are similar with the fact that they are both written in first person so it feels like it is actually happening at the same time you read it. This is evident when he talks with and about the signalman “You look at me as if you had a dread of me”. Neither you nor him knows what the response is going to be.?
With both stories being in the first person no tension can be built up using dramatic irony.
The long beginning in The Signalman generates a tension as the longer the suspense of the reader waiting to see what will happen. The short end generates an intense climax and there is no time for the reader to relax, as the whole story is concluded and completed very quickly.
Similarly the Red Room has long beginning with conversation with the servant then the haunting journey to the red room builds up a large amount of tension. The Climax is longer that The Signalman’s climax however while in the red room the climax is reached very slowly as due to the structure of H.G. Well’s writing the intensity is increasingly built up.
cannot foretell.
In the Red Room then haunting emphasis is all in the mind of the narrator, for the dark that keeps cutting out the light is not seen in any form or living appearance however becomes personified and is created into a mystical creature that is stalking the men and getting even closer.
( not quite finish)
