Charles Dickins the signal man

This essay hasn't yet been marked by one of our teachers

You can view all our essays on The Signalman that have been Marked by Teachers

The first 200 words of this essay...

Literature coursework

Mieke Gadd

How does Charles Dickens use the ghost story genre to provoke fear in both the Victorian and modern reader of "the Signalman"?

"The Signalman" is a short ghost story written by Charles Dickens and published in 1866. The story is about a signalman that works at a railway station. It explores many areas of fear including: the paranormal, the unknown, and darkness. I enjoyed the stories un-nerving and alluring structure. I feel this added to the tension and fear of the story.

In a typical sense a ghost story is a novel that is based around the afterlife and paranormal, but through time the word ghost has been replaced with the word scary. They began with stereotypical chilling atmospheres and bloodcurdling settings such as graveyards and old houses, but what Dickens achieved is making a known scene, a railway station, scary and unknown.

Ghost stories for Victorians were good as they could explore subjects that the Victorians were not too educated in, or maybe subjects that were being tested by society. For example, ghost stories tested the afterlife theory, and in turn tested the bible. Darwin was testing