Setting
The Signalman is set at a station beside a tunnel. It is written in first person, so the narrator is talking to the reader. The Signalman stays in a “manmade cutting which was extremely deep, and unusually precipitous.” “It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.” Already the reader gets a very repellent, dank and wet, thermal and tactile images are thought of creating unpleasant impressions. “A rough zigzag descending path.” So it’s dangerous. Steep descent, leaving natural world far above. “It was as solitary and dismal a place I ever saw.”
Charles has also described this cutting as a “great dungeon.” It is massive; make you feel trapped or restricted, cold, dark, unwelcoming, claustrophobic.
The Red Room is set in Lorraine Castle, which relates back to a typical gothic story. It is written in first person, so the narrator is talking to the reader. The main setting is in the Red Room where the narrator stays over night. H.G.Wells describes the room as “a large sombre room with its shadowy window bys, its recesses and alcoves.” The room is old, shadowy- not being able to see clearly. H.G.Wells describes the atmosphere he wrote “The moonlight picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination.” There is an extreme contrast between black and silver there is no in between. Also he has written “Shadows cower and quiver, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard, but there is absolute silence.”
The Ostler is set in a stable. It is written in third person because it is Landlord who is telling the story. Wilkie Collins has described the inn that Isaac stays in overnight. He has written “He noticed with surprise the strength of the bolts, bars, and iron sheathed shutters.” The landlord is high on security says it’s always better to be on the safe side than get broken into, he is lonely probably feels insecure.
Characters
The main character in the Signalman, we do not find out what his name is but we know he has a dark sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. He seems a bit like a tramp or an old grumpy man who doesn’t have any friends probably because he does not welcome those who do visit. He also seems poor he didn’t go to school so he has educated himself which he enjoys doing. He is not someone you would normally socialise with. Other characters are the Narrator we do not really find out anything about him but he seems like a nice person after all he did become friends with the Signalman and trust him other people would probably just ignore him and think he his crazy. There are other characters like the passengers on the train, the train driver and a couple of police men.
The main character in The Red Room is the narrator, we do not find out what he looks like or his name but we do find out that he is 28 years old and a lot about his personality like on the first page he comes off as very arrogant and self centred he is full of himself saying “I can assure you said I that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” “Eight-and-twenty years, said I, I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.” Other characters are the custodians the narrator is a bit resentful towards them H.G.Wells has described one of them “He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth.” There is another old man and an old lady too.
The main character in the Ostler is the Ostler (Isaac Scatchard) Isaac is 39 but in the story it will be his birthday soon and he will become 40. “He is an old man and has a withered woebegone face, his eyebrows painfully contracted; the mouth fast set, he is prematurely wrinkled; the scanty, grizzled hair, telling weakly its own tale of some past sorrow or suffering.” “He lived in the suburbs of a large sea-port town, on the west coast of England.” “He is a faithful, steady, and honest man.” “But he always got the bad luck, in fact he was famous locally for his misfortunes his own neighbourhood nicknames him ‘Unlucky Isaac’.” “He has no children or wife.” “He hasn’t had a sweetheart since he was 18.” “When he was out of service he lived with his widowed mum (Mrs Scatchard).” “Mrs Scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly station, as to capacities and manners.” “She had seen better days; as the phrase is; but she never referred to them in the presence of curious visitors; and, though perfectly polite to everyone who approached her, never cultivated any intimacies among her neighbours.” “She continued to provide, hardly enough for her simple wants, to keep a decent home for her son whenever his ill-luck made him come home.” Rebecca Murdoch seems to be younger than Isaac but we do not actually find out her age. Wilkie Collins has described her as a “comfortable and happy women, she spoke with a purity of intonation.” “Her slightest actions seemed to have the easy negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman. Her skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort that wealth can purchase. Even her small, finely-shaped hands, gloveless as they were, had not lost their whiteness.” “She has light grey eyes and Flaxen hair with a gold-yellow streak in it.” Other characters are the inn-keeper, the Landlord, the chemist worker, neighbours.
Plot
The Red Room is about the narrator not believing in ghosts and decides to prove this by staying in a haunted room i.e. The Red Room. At the end of the story the narrator has been injured in the room and the custodians find him and aid him. When he wakes up he tells the custodians that there were no ghosts haunting the room. It was the fear of the room that was haunting it. H.G.Wells uses direct speech, first person which makes the reader feel more involved.
H.G.Wells creates suspense by using descriptive language he uses adjectives a lot and very well, the suspense begins when the narrator is on his way to the Red Room and he is describing what the corridors are like at night and the atmosphere, to be alone, what he is feeling, he says things like “Shadows cower and quiver, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard but there is absolute silence.” SHADOWS cower and quiver could be made from live creatures? Ghostly vanished men – ghosts taken men to another world. “I walked down the chilly, echoing passage.” This gives sound and thermal images? “The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty.” Gives the feeling of a long underground passage - makes it harder to walk in, meaning that you would have to be in there for longer. Dusty – No one’s been down there for along time, rundown, derelict. “That large sombre room with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves.” Old window bays, recesses and alcoves old fashioned. Shadowy – not being able to see clearly. The suspense ends at the end of the story when he reveals what was haunting him in the room, that it wasn’t a ghost that haunts the room it was the fear of the room that made it to stimulating for the human mind.
The Signalman tells of a man who likes to visit a lonely railroad man who operates a station beside a tunnel. The Signalman jumps at the narrators first words, called down to him, “Halloa! Below there!” Later, the narrator gains the Signalman’s confidence and finds out why the signalman is so nervous. He has seen a spectre beside the tunnel, his face obscured and his arms motioning him to step aside. This ghost has foretold a terrible accident on the track as well as a single lady’s death. The Signalman feared and waited in haunted silence for its 3rd premonition. The narrator promises to return to him but when he does the Signalman is dead, killed by a train, the driver calling out “Halloa! Below there!” and waving his arms. Dickens uses direct speech, in first person and this makes the reader feel more involved. Dickens creates suspense by using descriptive writing and using adjectives like H.G.Wells, the suspense begins right at the beginning when the narrator calls to the Signalman, and the Signalman doesn’t react in the way that most people would, when they have been called to, normally people would look at the person who called to you and respond but the Signalman ignores him, until the narrator has called again. It says “One would of thought, considering the nature of the ground that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came from; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head; he turned himself about and looked down he line.” Dickens uses words such as ‘dreary’, ‘dark’, ‘secluded’, ‘cold’, ‘deserted’, ‘dangerous’, and ‘lonesome’. These words are used to describe the whereabouts of the story in order for you as the reader to think and try to imagine that you are there and are seeing the place first hand. The suspense ends at the end of the story when all is revealed about the spectre warning to the Signalman about the words Halloa! Below there!
The Ostler begins when the inn-keeper finds the Ostler a sleep talking in one of the stables. The landlord tells the inn-keeper that he is dreaming his nightmare again. The Inn-keeper is curious to know what it is and requests to the landlord to tell him the Ostler story. The Ostler is called Isaac Scatchard, he is returning home to his family for his birthday. On the way back it begins to rain so he decides to stay at an inn for the night. Around mid-night he wakes up with this terrible pain in his stomach and finds a women in his bedroom holding a knife and is about to stab him. When he gets home he tells his mum of his experience and she writes notes on it. Isaac marries Rebecca Murdoch, but when he invites his mum round for tea she realises that Rebecca is the women who has been haunting Isaac. Wilkie Collins has written in third person, so that someone in the story is retelling it. Wilkie uses descriptive language in the way he describes the characters like on the first page he describes the Ostler when he is asleep “An old man, with a withered woebegone face. The eyebrows painfully contracted; the mouth fast set, and drawn down at the corners; the hollow cheeks sadly, and, prematurely wrinkled; the scanty, grizzled hair, telling weakly its own tale of some past sorrow or suffering.” The suspense begins at the beginning of the story when the inn-keeper finds the Ostler talking in his sleep about murder. In the Ostler the suspense never really ends because at the end Rebecca disappears and no one know where she is, so she could return to try and kill Isaac again but we don’t know that, that’s part of the suspense.
Ending
The Red Room, at the ending the narrator wakes up the next morning, bandaged up trying to remember what happened the previous in the room. He could not remember who the old people were; they told him that they had found him at the bottom of the stairs in a right mess, cut open, and bleeding. They asked if he believed if the room was haunted and his reply was, “There is no ghost at all in that room it is something far worse, something that haunts men in all its nakedness- FEAR! Fear that will not have light or sound, that will not bear with reason, that defeats and darkness and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor; it fought against me in the room.
So we find out that the rooms history about the young duke falling down the stairs after just exiting the room and the counts wife having been locked in there as a practical joke to prove it wasn’t haunted was found dead, the history has given the room this reputation, and has scared people into believing that it is haunted but the thing that is haunting it is fear, because when people go into the room they expect something to happen and the shire torment that nothing has happened and could happen at any time is to much for the imagination and it can drive you crazy.
I did expect the room to be haunted but, I thought it would be haunted by the custodians, because H.G.Wells creates this gargoyle image about them and makes them seem hundreds of years old.
The Signalman, at the end of the story the narrator is heading back to see the Signalman again like he had promised but he can see a crowd and can feel that something is wrong, he asks the policeman what had happened and he says “He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back towards her, and she cut him down.” “Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir, he said, I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call, I said. Below there! Look out! Look out! For heavens sake clear the way.” The Narrator points out that the words that had been haunting the Signalman were the words the words that the engine driver had used and even he had had said them to him on the there first meeting. Dickens kept the suspense going until the end of the story by not revealing the meaning of the words that haunt the Signalman; this kept me wondering what would happen next.
The Ostler at the end Isaac find out Rebecca Murdoch the women he had married fact the women who had attacked him in the inn. With this in mind he takes the knife off her and Rebecca leaves but she returns in trying to kill him again but Isaac jumps her and takes the knife off her. This time Isaac leaves but every night when it’s his birthday he is tormented by the nightmare of her returning. I was a guess but I did think that Rebecca would have something to do with the women at the inn but I wasn’t 100% sure if it was actually her who had tried to kill Isaac. To me it was given away when we found out the description of Rebecca, because earlier in the story Isaac had described what the women looked like in the inn to his mother and she had taken notes.
Alex Welham 10T