The story opens very quickly the stranger shouts out a simple sentence.
‘Halloa below there’
This short and simple line would plunge the reader straight into the short story instead of a long and sometimes boring introduction that is usually found in full-length books. The language that is used would be the language of the time, it would be written in a way that would cause suspense and fear in the story. The story is being told through the eyes of the stranger, when you first read this you may not realise from who’s perspective the story is being read, very little is known about the stranger we don’t even know his name. This gives the story a mysterious feel. The first few sentences are written from the view of the stranger; because we only see things from his point of view we only get one side of the story. During this early stage of the story we don’t know which of them is the ghost if any.
Dickens manages to confuse people very easily; the way the stranger thinks that the Signalman is a spirit because he hasn’t said a word to him, the narrator later thinks that the Signalman had an infection in his mind.
‘The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit not a man. I have later speculated since, whether they may have been infection in his mind.’
The Signalman thinks that the stranger is a ghost, the way the Signalman for some unknown reason is scared of the stranger perhaps fearing that he is ghost.
‘You look at me,’ I said, forcing a smile, ‘as if you had dread of me.’
When the stranger calls the Signalman, the Signalman turns to face the warning light as if something were to happen, even though it is quite obvious from where the narrator is shouting. When the Signalman looked up he saw the strangers figure standing above him, when the stranger asked for a way down the Signalman pointed the way down without making a sound. The fact that the Signalman hasn’t spoken gives an air of mystery. There seems to be some sort of tension between the two men, perhaps because of the lack of speech from the Signalman.
The story is set during the nineteenth century, which was an era of many great discoveries and many new inventions, most people knew little about these discoveries and inventions so feared it. The story is set on a railway line, there is the Signalman’s box where he communicates with on coming trains and other stations there is also a deep, dark and dank tunnel that is shrouded in mystery. The fact that the story is set along the railway line is made quite obvious from the start; there is a very descriptive paragraph of the area on the first page.
When the two men first meet they do not speak, there is great tension and an awkward silence between them. The Signalman is staring intensively at the stranger with a look of fear upon his face. When the stranger breaks the silence he says to the Signalman.
‘You look at me…as if you had a dread of me.’
What the stranger says seems to make the atmosphere surrounding these two men unbearably tense.
The way Dickens describes the train going past is all quite sudden the train had passed as soon as it had arrived. The sentences too go very quickly the text is written in a bold font. The arrival of the train is written from the point of view of the stranger, it describes the way the sheer power of the train effects him they way it forces him back.
‘A violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that had caused me to start back.’
When Dickens is talking about the trains we don’t actually realise that it is a train until the very last line in the paragraph.
‘I looked down again and saw him refurling the flag he had shown as the train went by.’
The Signalman is going to be an important character; he is one of the first characters introduced in the story. Normally short stories only have a few characters and introduce them early so not to confuse people. In the opening the Signalman doesn’t speak he seems to be very nervous and scared perhaps scared of the stranger or maybe something else. Little is known about the Signalman, but I feel that he has had troubled periods of time during his lifespan. He seems to be over-educated for his job yet he seems dedicated to his job.
The stranger who tells the story is an unusual character we know very little about him and know very little about his past yet he is telling a story that could be quite significant to him. He seems to care for the Signalman as if they were good friends yet they had only recently met; he wants to help the signalman with his problems maybe because the stranger has failed trying to sort out his own problems. He seems to be a well educated man and perhaps upper or middle class but he seems to be a good king hearted man.
After reading through the essay and studying it we can therefore see that Dickens created suspense in most parts of the story, the fact that no one could tell if either of the two men were ghosts or what was going to happen next. I enjoyed this story I don’t usually read short stories but I may have to reconsider as I enjoyed ‘The Signalman’ very much.
