On a railway track is where ‘The Signalman’ is set. A railway track is where a lot of people today go, so you wouldn’t think it could be scary. Right from the start of ‘The Signalman’ you get the impression that it is a dull and solitary place, the quotations “extremely deep”, “oozier and wetter”, “lonesome post to occupy” and “lower shadows” all give out that exact impression. This adds even more tension because you think why is it so dismal? All of this is typical for the genre because it is a mystery and a ghost story, so it needs to be dull and dismal. ‘In The Red Room’ Wells does not describe the setting right from the start, its not until you get to the part in the book when the young man makes his journey to the room that Wells gets descriptive of the setting. But when Wells does start to describe the setting he builds up a lot of tension because just the corridor is frightening, ‘the echo’s rang’ and ‘shadows came sweeping’. The actual Red Room is described very well because Wells makes you visualize what the room is like, ‘shadowy window bays’. Also ‘The Red Room’ is typical for its genre because it gives out a mystery feeling to the reader and a bit scary for the reader as well.
The characters in the book both do different things to the tension and suspense. The signalman in ‘The Signalman’ does not get described at the beginning of the story; he appears to be very mysterious, which adds tension and suspense. The signalman does not talk that much and is very suspicious of the narrator because he doesn’t know whom he is and he doesn’t think that he is real, but thinks he is the spectre. Where as in ‘The Red Room’ the young man appears to be very brave and not scared of anything which eases the tension because it makes you think that he has power and nothing will happen to him, ‘“I can assure you”, said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me”. And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.’ When he stands up in front of the fire it shows he has even more power because the fire is a main vocal point, and also standing up makes him have even more power because he appears to be taller than any one else. In another pre twentieth century story that I have read, ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, the author does not describe the old man, which makes it very mysterious and has the same effect as Charles Dickens done in ‘The Signalman’. When the signalman is around other people, in the beginning, he acts very suspicious, where as in ‘The Red Room’ the young man acts himself around other people. The old people In ‘The Red Room’ all seem to behave like their normal selves, but one of them, the man with the shade, doesn’t say anything and acts as if the young man is not there. This may be because he doesn’t approve of what the young man is doing. Other old people in ‘The Red Room’ tell him it is his own choosing to go up to the room, but really they want him to go up to find out what is in the room, because they are too old and scared to go up themselves. In ‘The Signalman’ the narrator acts very cautious around the signalman in the beginning because, to start with he thinks that he is a ghost and not real, and also he feels that he is frightening the signalman, so the narrator tries not to make the signalman be afraid of him. It is not until later on in the story you find out why the signalman was acting suspicious around the narrator, so this adds tension because you wonder why he looked down the line.
Neither Charles Dickens nor H.G Wells use a lot of similes, metaphors, personification or onomatopoeia, but I don’t think it needs it because both authors have good enough descriptions. If similes, metaphors, personification or onomatopoeia were added to the story it would only ease the tension and wouldn’t give the effect that the author wanted. But In ‘The Red Room’ Wells has used some onomatopoeia, like ‘rang’ and ‘echo’. Both the stories, ‘The Red Room’ and ‘The Signalman’, have complex sentences and rarely have any short sentences. I think it might have been better to use short sentences in parts where it is dramatic to add suspense, because in ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ there is good examples of short sentences. The shorter sentence make the reader read it quicker and gives you the impression that the person in the book is taking quick breaths because they are scared of something. ‘I swore. I raved like a madman. I foamed at the mouth.’
In ‘The Signalman’ there are three main events that happen. The first is when the spectre appears and shouts ‘Halloa! Bellow there’ and then a little while later there is a big train crash. The second event is when the signalman sees the spectre again but this time it does not speak but has a face of mourning, and then later that day a young lady dies on the track. The final event is when the signalman dies and how he dies. All the events slowly build up and enhances more tension to the final event and everything slots together in the end like a jigsaw puzzle. Tension and suspense is built up in ‘The Red Room’ as well by three main events happening. The first event is the young man’s journey to the red room, the second event is what happens in the red room and the actions the young man took, and the final event is when the young man tells the old people what it was in the red room. This all builds up a lot of tension for when you finally find out what it was. The plots of the two stories, ‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Red Room’, are very similar because both of them have three main events and both start with someone speaking.
In the era the stories were set in, the people reading the stories would have been more frightened than we find it today. The modern technology was very daunting for them, so a train was scary, and especially people getting run over by a train! At the end of ‘The Red Room’ ‘fear’ is not scary to us today because there are a lot of horror films that we watch, which are much more frightening. To people in that era, they would have found ‘fear’ scary because there wasn’t all the frightening stuff that there is around today in that era. So from looking at both stories, both of them would have been received more as a horror book then, then we do today.
I think that out of the two short stories that ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens has the best impact on you as a reader because the whole story keeps you thinking about it after you have read it, like why did the signalman receive hints on how he is going to die? Where as in ‘The Red Room’ by H.G Wells it doesn’t have such a big impact on you because I thought ‘fear’ could have been improved. Overall I would say that Dickens builds up tension and suspense the most effectively. I say this because through out the story he builds up tension right to the end, from the first sentence ‘Halloa! Bellow there!’ and the action he made, to the end when the narrator finds out how the signalman died. I thought the technique of repeating the sentence ‘bellow there’ was very effective because you wonder is it the narrator that made it up or the ghost.
In my opinion I think that both of them do well in building suspense and tension, but from all the evidence I have gathered ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens appears to have the best effect on the reader and builds up tension and suspense the most effectively. The book in the pre twentieth century era would have the best impact on the reader because of the thought of modern technology, and today it has the best impact on the reader because of the deaths and the ending, which is a bit like a cliffhanger.
By Sarah Coe