Comparison of rocking horse winner and the signalman.

Comparison of rocking horse winner and the signalman

Both stories in their own way show strongly of the existence of the paranormal and convey how innocent individuals can be affected by such powers that are beyond their control. They both explore the pressure and tensions of everyday life and how time at sometimes seems as irrelevant as a puff of dust. However, the written style also differs because of the time's they were both written in. Both writers flourish in taking ordinary people, building up their characters then destroying them in the puff of spiritual procession.

The clear differences are obvious from beginning although these two stories can be regarded as ghost stories, their use of language and expression is strikingly unlike. The Rocking Horse Winner seems to have been written for a wider age group including children.
'There was a woman…' is the fragment of sentence used to begin the story like a fairytale even though the ending is not so. The style of language is also very modern when compared to the time it was written in.
The Signalman however, is clearly written for a much older age group and unlike The Rocking Horse Winner it is using language familiar and likened to that of the early 1900's.
All or the majority of stories pose a principal problem or question to the reader. The Signalman introduces this problem and question very early on whereas The Rocking Horse Winner has left this problem well into the story, with some part of it left to the readers own interpretation. It is set in the late 1800's during the driving age of the steam engine when new technology is seen as questionable and dubious, maybe dangerous? The story is only really set in the contemporary abode of the signalman and briefly mentions the cliff top above.
The narrator is speculating why the signalman is acting in this bizarre and drawn out manner and what instinctive impulse is drawing him towards the solitary signalman. The Signalman on the other hand is wondering why the spectre is warning him in particular, should the narrator have any need to be present at this specific time and what he can do to prevent any other foreseen accidents or deaths.
The Rocking Horse Winner poses a much more intimate issue, the fact that Paul alone feels isolated and distant from everyone else, he feels a need to save his family for destruction. He is worrying about how he can piece together his family, by destroying
'The secret whisper all over the house: There must be more money!'
The Rocking Horse Winner has a supernatural idea that is gradually and delicately edged in. It is not however obvious that it is a ghost story and gives the impression that the unnatural force originates from a social/personal background of the character.
The Signalman isn't that terrifying in any way but it does show clearly that it is supposed to be a paranormal genre.

The setting of The Rocking Horse Winner begins with the description of the main characters, which is the Mother.
'There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love but the love had turned to dust.' She had bonny children, yet she could not love them.'
These quotations are in the past tense, it immediately sets a bitter tone with an interpretation that the Mother's life is a downward spiral as the years passed,
she had it all but now it's gone. It is beginning the story from a period of time before.
The beginning of The Signalman is written in a way that is immediately tells us that the narrator is also one of the main characters, this helps us to interpret what is happening. There is no mention of the past unlike the other, within the first paragraph there is verbal communication on the narrator's part and specific details paid upon the Signalman's actions.

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'…She had bonny children, yet she could not love them ……when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard……she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody said of her: She is such a good mother. She adores her children. Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.'
The Mother is first introduced as a woman who is feeling empty because of the maternal feelings that should come natural to her as a Mother aren't there. She is compensating this guilt by believing that if she lavishes her children in materialism then this will bring these feelings to her. The children although innocent can sense some wrong as 'They looked at her coldly as if finding fault with their Mother.'
It mentions the heart and the eyes several times because this is where the true soul and true emotions of a person lies. The heart feels the love but the if the expression on ones face is that of happiness when it isn't so then the eyes will clearly tell the truth.
'Mother…why don't we keep a car of our own? Why do we always use uncles or else a taxi?' 'Because we are the poor members of the family,'
'But why are we, Mother?'
'Well - I suppose…it's because your Father has no luck.'
Although Paul is just a young boy, he is curious and realises that his Mother and Father keep secrets from each other and his Mother quite bitterly but finely tells her son that she does not love his Father. For a boy of this age, the family is the only support system during his years of primary socialisation and the shock of knowing that the family unit on which you depend is slowly braking down can damage ones purity and virtue as a child.
The writer of The Rocking Horse Winner tries to convey that it doesn't necessary have to be a 'ghost' in a sense to shatter what one would believe as normal. As the story clearly bears the fact that what happens in this enigmatic household can happen to any of us. The faults turned evils that society itself has created: obsession, curiosity and addiction can destroy our sanity.
The 'house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase' continually because the Mother and Father lived a lavish lifestyle but were unable to fund this habit without money worries, they struggle to maintain their position in the defiant class system of the 1920s. However, it isn't recent news that most people who are wealthy or come into wealth, then want to build on their fortune and become even richer.
Most of the family's money originated from an inheritance, which is of course, luck but in sad circumstances. Their belief is that advantages in life are nothing if you don't have luck.
If you are rich, you can lose your money but if you are lucky, you will always have money.

'I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal place as ever I saw. On either side dripping wet wall of jagged stone excluding all view but a strip of sky…
…There was a barbarous and depressing and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its' way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through that it struck a chill to me, as if it had left the natural world.'
The writer here is using depth, he conveys that when he was standing up above the railroad, looking down onto the signalman, he was in a natural environment with unaffected surroundings, he had sunlight to protect him. However, when he had reached the valley basin down below, he was in a different world altogether, pulled into a "darkness" that seemed too unusual, where a destructive and ominous aura would lurk.
The Signalman is a character created to convey true supernatural surroundings where a man is physically and emotionally distraught over this but left to fend for himself. His work is to keep people safe and his work is his life but this haunting has chosen him to send a message which her cannot answer and in doing so, lives are lost.
In this story the writer describes the surroundings in sight, smell, noise and physical sense whereas The Rocking Horse Winner is only using a little sight, a little noise and emotional sense. He is trying to convey how physical depth can be uncomfortable. He mentions the sky so as to show that now he is down there, he is alone with the signalman, absolute, and that he is isolated from the habitual world that he is accustomed to. However, both stories show that this upper middle class family and this working class signalman have much in common.

'Paul! She cried, Whatever are you doing?'
'It's Malabar! He screamed in a powerful, strange voice. It's Malabar!'
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.'
This fragment of the story is explaining the slow lucid mind of this boy dissolving as he carries the immense money worries upon his shoulders. The way he feels this luck and predicts the future is through the essence of this simple wooden horse yet he's behaving all frantic on the horse because the energy has forced him to the floor because it is too strong for him to handle. The energy had been the emanation of the spirit that had invaded their home and possesses his mind. It is a spirit that is of artificial origin and the result of a class corrupted society, the spirit is baneful.
'He was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain fever. He talked and tossed, and his Mother sat stonily by his side.
'Malabar! It's Malabar! Basset, Basset, I know! It's Malabar!
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking horse that gave him his inspiration.
What does he mean by Malabar? Asked the heart frozen Mother.
I don't know,' said the Father stonily…
…They were waiting for a change. The boy with his rather long, curly hair was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness and his eyes were like blue stones. His Mother sat feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.'
His Mother and Father are asking this because they have realised how much of a distance there is between themselves and their son, they are asking his uncle what their son is thinking. There is just no turning back for anyone of the family at this point, it is likened to the ultimate betrayal towards the boy from his parents who couldn't love him at any cost and now the way he's acting is scaring them. His eyes are described as cold and blue, as though the life has been drained out of him.

…How your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open on the bell, and if I am a living man, it did NOT ring at those times…
…The ghost's ring is a strange vibration the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eyes. I don't wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.
An did the spectre seem to be there when you looked out?'
'It WAS there.'
'Both times?'
He repeated firmly: 'Both times.'
Here the conversation between the narrator and the signalman becomes heated. The supernatural has come between the two men and the narrator is witnessing how much this has affected this poor innocent man. The signalman is becoming anxious and uneasy; he realises how much the spectre doesn't want the narrator to know of it and how hard it will be to get the narrator to believe him. The signalman believes there is a ghost but at the same time he feels as though he is losing his rational mind.

Towards the end of The Rocking Horse Winner, there is much to be left to the reader's own interpretation because the ending is left very open-ended. One could satisfy themselves with their own answer to the mystery that had disturbed the narrator, so some individuality is retained for each separate reader.
"What's the narrator going to do now that´s he's this deeply involved."
"Am I going to be lying dead on that track next?"
"How can I stop these tragedies, if the signalman couldn't?"

'…Do you think I'm lucky, Mother? I knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you Basset, you can go as high as you like.
Did you go for all you were worth, Basset?'
'I went a thousand on it, Master Paul.'
'I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!'
'No you never did,' said his Mother.
These are the last words that that Paul says before he dies in the night. It was as though he made one last-ditch effort to bring his family good fortune and prove to then that he is lucky. It is too late but it is as though at this point the Mother realises the true value of her son and how precious ones life is, so as to not bother about class and affluence.
The writer is trying to represent life, as a "horse race" to win - the horse racing is only a small presence of the story. Even if one particular horse wins, it is not the end of the story itself.
'My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.'
The uncle is saying to her sister that Paul as a young boy was losing his innocence as a child to please his parents because his parents can't handle life without material comfort. If Paul's life was going to be like this, then it's better off that he has died because he will be in peace. The writer has written this message in a way that attacks people in society who think like Paul's parents and the flaws of a post-war society which depended upon given estates.
His parents have now got what they wanted, a ticket to the next rung on the social ladder but the cost is the sacrifice of their son. His matured quickly so as to keep the challenge of bringing love to the family by luck and he dies to bring this money - sacrifice. The eighty thousand that Paul had won was for his parent's but now as an inheritance.
The Mother's name is not revealed until towards the end of the story so as to keep something from the reader, one can then create our own picture of the Mother as a name is quite a significant part of a character.

During the final part of The Signalman, parts of the mystery are starting to merge together for the narrator and fearing the worst from a telepathic sensation he runs down towards the signalman's terminal.
'…Signalman killed this morning, sir.'
'Not the man belonging to the box?'
'Yes, sir.'

'…….I called to him as loud as I could.'
'what did you say?'
'I said, Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake clear the way'
'…Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine- driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate signalman had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself - not he - had attached…'
The writer here is pointing out what his social curiosity has caused, he is now too deeply involved in a deadly and sinister haunting to just dismiss it. The problem the signalman had has passed on to him, the narrator has been drawn into a supernatural world. All the confusion and distress that the spectre had given the signalman had finally killed him, just as it did to Paul.