Both 'The Signalman' and 'The Darkness Out There' have unexpected endings. Compare the way tension is built up in both stories so that the reader is surprised by how the stories end.

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Both ‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Darkness Out There’ have unexpected endings.  Compare the way tension is built up in both stories so that the reader is surprised by how the stories end.

This is an essay concerned with how both ‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Darkness Out There’ both build up tension to make their readers anticipate what is going to happen during and throughout the stories.

        They are both similar in the way they both speak about death and have death incidents during the stories.  The two stories have unexpected endings.  The writers of the two short stories are Charles Dickens for ‘The Signalman’ and Penelope Lively for ‘The Darkness Out There’ both experts when it comes to suspenseful writing.

        One of the reasons for the differences between the stories is that they are written in different times, different centuries.  ‘The Signalman’ is written pre-twentieth century for a Victorian audience interested in the supernatural i.e. ghosts.  Two supernatural horrors/thrillers-‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ both written late 19th century had sparked people’s fascination in the ‘Gothic’.  Since there was no proof that in the ‘Gothic’ or lack of it, it lets people’s imagination play with the thought of mythological creatures.  But the author of ‘The Darkness Out There’ Penelope Lively is writing nearly one hundred years later, when peoples’ horror and fascination has moved to a higher level, one of a psychological approach.  This means the exploration of how people’s behaviour is affected by their past and the past of others.  I find a psychological approach to be more scary as it relates to people and the real reactions they have, it makes the horror more real because knowing this could all happen and people were to blame and nothing else is a scary thought that people don’t like to focus on.

‘The Darkness Out There’

Tension throughout this story is built up in many different ways.

        The beginning for example starts suddenly and with no explanation, nor does it give the reader an introduction as to what the story entails.

        In the first paragraph tension begins to build with a description of the little old Mrs Rutter from a lady called Pat, ‘She’s a dear old thing, all on her own, of course we try and keep an eye on her.’  This could imply that there is more to the ‘dear old’ Mrs Rutter than meets the eye and that she needs be watched at all times.  The structure of this speech also helps build the tensions as it is broken up with commas, which creates pauses.

        Another reason why Pat’s description of Mrs Rutter is quite unnerving is because of the description of Pat herself which is just as odd.  She is described as having ‘a funny eye, a squint, so that her glance swerved away from you as she talked.’  This sentence does not give you much confidence in Pat and the words she says, as she can’t even look you straight in the eye.

        The very first insight the reader is given to the hidden horrors of ‘Packers End’ also adds tension.  ‘Packers End’ is a space of woodland with many stories to its name.  The first part describing ‘Packers End’ is as a picturesque walk through the country and then out of the blue…’The light suddenly shutting off the bare wide sky of the field.  Packers End.’  This shows the reader that ‘Packers End’ is shrouded in darkness, which instantly causes tension in the readers mind because the thought of darkness means the unexpected.  Again Lively has used the use of punctuation in the small description to emphasize ‘Packers End’.

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 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 ...

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