The place ‘Packers End’ is described in several different ways. Firstly being seen by small children, as being the place for ‘witches, wolves and tigers’. But as the children grow up, more real stories come about like, ‘Girl attacked’, ‘Hunted rapist’ and of course, the actual truth about ‘Packers End’, the story about the German plane. During ‘The Darkness Out There’ the character, Sandra walks past the wood, thoughts play her mind and she imagines the ‘crumbling, rusty scraps of metal, cloth…bones?’ This thought helps tension come about because as Sandra questions all these possibilities the reader too is pondering all these ideas.
All throughout the short story Sandra builds further and further on the tension surrounding ‘Packers End’ by continuously being frightened by this place for unclear reasons.
When Sandra finally meets Mrs Rutter, she describes her as a stereotypical old lady, ‘She seemed composed of circles, a cottage loaf of a woman, a creamy smiling pool of a face in which her eyes snapped and darted.’ Whilst being a stereotypical description just the metaphors used make it appear sinister.
The story carries on with very little tension showing until Sandra and Kerry are talking about Mrs Rutter,
Kerry says: I don’t go much on her.
Sandra says: Who?
Kerry says: (waves his hand towards the cottage, where Mrs Rutter is)
Sandra says: What’s wrong with her then?
Kerry says: I dunno. The way she talks and that.
This is the first indication to the reader that Mrs Rutter is not just the old lady she’s made out to be. From here on tension and suspense is being built especially when Mrs Rutter begins her story about the German plane crash and the young men she and her sister left to die there. She tells the story in such a casual manner it adds extra creepiness in the already abhorrent story. The way Mrs Rutter justifies allowing the men to die is because the war took the life of her husband, ‘Tit for tat, I said to Dot (her sister)’, its scary that she can justify something so wrong. Also she is totally oblivious to her wrong doing as she just doesn’t seem to sense Kerry’s disgusted reactions, this leads to Kerry being short to Mrs Rutter and then getting up abruptly to leave. His parting words are not to Mrs Rutter but to Sandra, ‘I’m going. Dunno about you, but I’m gong.’ You can just hear the disgust as you read that line and Mrs Rutter’s either intentional or unintentional ignorance becomes more and more blatant as she says nothing. Tension is also created by Mrs Rutter’s hypocrisy because she says how ‘she has sympathy with young people’ but this is after her sinister story of leaving two young men to die in a burning plane for two days.
The horror of this incident is intensified when Mrs Rutter talks about people wanting souvenirs from the crash. This is especially sad (not to mention sick, twisted and creepy) because the families of the young German men probably wouldn’t have any idea what had happened to them and the only people who did know casually ‘mislaid’ the evidence they collected.
Tension and suspense all comes together at the end when Sandra sees the world in a whole different way, sees the world for what it really is and people for who they really are. She learnt not to judge people on first impressions as she can be very wrong, like thinking Mrs Rutter was innocent and Kerry was a bad boy but at the end she learnt the truth that people aren’t always as they seem. ‘[He had grown, he had got older and larger… you could get people all wrong and there was a darkness.’ This makes tension as a psychological thriller as it shows the realness of the world, which can be one of the scariest things.
‘The Signalman’
Tension is built through ‘The Signalman’ in many different ways also. The beginning of this story, like ‘The Darkness Out There’ gives no explanation to the story, but it starts with speech from the 19th century which makes it hard to understand for people who aren’t accustomed to this sort of language. I believe if the reader is left trying to understand the text this might achieve their imaginations and common sense to come up with their own ideas, whether being scary ones or not this could be a source of tension building throughout the story.
The location of this short story, helps create suspense because of how it is described, - “The cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitous. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter.” This particular extraction from the story is continuing with building suspense as it uses strange words like ‘precipitous’ which not being a word a lot of people know can lead to wondering and etc and the ‘oozier’ is used and that word just creeps you out. In another description says, - “On either side, a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all but, a strip of sky.” This creates a picture of eeriness and this sentence is broken up with punctuation causing pauses therefore creating tension and suspense.
The following words are also used for describing the underground place: ‘great dungeon’, ‘barbarous’, ‘depressing’, ‘foreboding’, ‘deadly smell’ and ‘as If I had left the natural world.’ All these words and phrases create suspense, as they are all miserable and unsettling for added effect the location is down in a deep tunnel.
The character, the Signalman is so unnerving he is a major cause of tension throughout the story. An example of this is that the Signalman doesn’t speak a word for the first two and a half pages, even though someone is talking to him continuously for those two and a half pages. ‘I repeated my enquiry…he seemed to regard me with fixed attention.’ This means not only is he not talking he is starting intently at this stranger without reason. ‘His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness.’ This gives a weird description of an attitude. ‘He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s mouth, and all about it, as if something were missing from it and then looked at me.’ This compels the reader to wonder what is holding the Signalman’s attention/concentration and makes him seem so distant.
Then the writer gets confused so, blatantly meaning so does the reader, ‘That light was part of his charge, was it not?’ and then the Signalman says his first words of the story, – ‘Don’t you know it is?’ These first words are almost threatening, and the writer must be thinking, ‘how did he know what I was thinking?’ Because the words the Signalman said were as if he was answering the question the writer was thinking, weird. Then the writer thinks a ‘monstrous thought’ that this was a spirit not a man? This part is very ironic because the writer thinks the Signalman is a spirit and that’s exactly what the Signalman is thinking about the stranger (writer) that he is the spirit.
The Signalman isn’t described very well but the description you have of him is pretty creepy and unsettling, - “…he was a dark sallow man with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.’ None of the words in that sentence show the Signalman to be very attractive rather the opposite since they use words like heavy and they repeat dark, quite unnerving hence building tension.
Some main keys of tension and suspense are the supernatural elements of ghosts and death. These are scary elements in stories because people do not know for sure if they are real or not. “You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in supernatural way?”
Even at the end when everything points to the supernatural he still believes in the coincidence of it all.
Also the writer helps create tension because he’s so sceptical about all the eerie happenings. “…That this was remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind.” It is only tension building when the writer and the Signalman are compared because they create such a contrast.
The lack of explanation at the beginning and end of the story both builds tension. At the beginning the use of confusion is introduced creating suspense because confusion must obviously be leading up to something. At the end there is no explanation we are not told what is going on we are left in the dark.
And how the story is stretched out. The plot of the Signalman is very short yet it is stretched out for over twelve pages this adds tension because more describing can be done in more pages.
Also the repetitive language and behaviour of the ghost, which appears to warn the Signalman, help add tension because if the reader is led to believe there is something wrong and if it is repeated it will become more and more suspicious and they’ll know something is going to happen.
The end to this story isn’t very good in my opinion because the ending is too unexpected and doesn’t explain the actions that happen in the last page or two and if even the main character doesn’t believe the abhorrence of it, this makes it harder for the reader to believe.
Comparing The Two
The similarities between the two short stories are they both have eerie locations. In the ‘Signalman’ the whole location is creepy and isolated as it is in a cutting way below the surface, having an isolated location is very suspenseful because there is always that notion in your head, saying no-one can hear you or find you if anything happened. The eerier location is ‘The darkness out there’ is the woods called ‘Packers End’ the unnerving place that has the history of scaring children, of all ages, with stories of wolves, rapists and German planes.
They both have unexplanitary beginnings, which both bewilder and give no clues to the story ahead. I believe this is a good way to start a suspenseful story.
Both have characters that are unsettling and in many ways intimidating, the signalman is intimidating in the way he is very quiet, but when he does speak the author listens to him with respect and interest. Mrs Rutter is intimidating in the same way, when she speaks the children are compelled to pay attention and plus she is an elderly woman, and old people easily frighten children. The signalman is uncomforting because he is eccentric to the extent he lives underground, in a hut, alone. Also during the story the signalman appears so unnerved by himself, he acts peculiar and unsettled all the way through. In ‘the darkness out there’ the old lady Mrs Rutter is just too stereotypical, when something is overdone it often creates the thoughts, ‘what is she hiding and why?’ Mrs Rutter too appears eccentric but I just put that down to her being old.
The stories have chance encounters. The chance encounter during ‘the Signalman’ is the spectre (or ghost). This adds to the suspense of the story as it makes you wonder why the spectre chose the signalman, an eccentric man who lives deep in a tunnel alone. In ‘the darkness out there’ if Mrs Rutter and her sister (Dot) hadn’t been in Packer’s End that day, then Mrs Rutter wouldn’t have been able to have the chance to leave the young man to die.
Last but not least, both stories have unexpected endings, who would have guessed the signalman would die during the end pages in the exact way he was trying to prevent, the irony! Mrs Rutter is found out to be two-faced due to the fact she says how much she loves young people but the she contradicts herself with her story of watching a young man die, slowly. This brings tension because of the abruptness of the happenings.
The two stories have numerous similarities even though they are written in different centuries by unlike authors.
The differences between these two stories are as follows. The endings are dissimilar due to the fact that once at the end of ‘the darkness out there’ the character ‘Sandra’ learns something, realises the world isn’t as rose coloured as she first assumed. In ‘the Signalman’ though, the character doesn’t and can’t explain what has happened, as he is just as confounded as the readers. When the author leaves the story he is more bewildered than what he started off.
The way the two stories are written. ‘The Signalman’ was written for a Victorian audience so reading it nowadays doesn’t make for great reading unless you’re into that sort of written story.
Also the two writers come from different backgrounds and cultures making the stories even more diverse from one another.
The characters even though similar in ways, have their differences. For example, Mrs Rutter starts off pretty normal, but gradually gets more and more disturbing; unlike the signalman who starts by being disconcerting but towards the end of the story you can see he has a legitimate reasons as to why he acts so peculiar.
‘The Signalman’ is a supernatural fear story due to the time period it was written, ‘The darkness out there’ is a psychological fear also due to the time it was written.
Conclusion
My conclusion is based on my opinion of the two stories. They both build up tension and suspense brilliantly in their own ways but they had slightly different ways in which the built it up. When I read ‘The Signalman’ it was an all right story it just took too much to understand it so by the time I did, it had lost my enthral in it. I enjoyed ‘The darkness out there’ far better as it didn’t take as much attentiveness to keep with the story it was simple yet convincing, the language was simple to read and the characters were easier to follow. The endings were both out of the blue, but I enjoyed how Mrs Rutter was portrayed as an innocent old woman and not with the horrible history she kept to herself.
My reasons for not enjoying ‘the Signalman’ as much were because the language was difficult to make sense of most of the time. Plus spectres and ghosts don’t hold my thought as much as psychological fear/horror, which makes reading more intriguing. When it comes down to it, it’s a matter of opinion as to the better suspenseful thriller.
By Katrina Spiteri