A similar arrogance is displayed by The Red Room’s storyteller as he dispels the myth of the ghost in ‘the red room’. In doing this he places himself above the old people who have gathered to tell him of his future challenge, belittling them to mere gullible believers of an old tale. Yet when this narrator returns from ‘the red room’ he appears humbled by the experience and dreads the fear within himself that has revealed itself. Although the narrator in The Signalman doesn’t directly experience an unnatural event as happens in The Red Room we still feel that the proving of some sort of seer’s existence does have an undesirable effect on him. He proves this with his swift finish not wishing to “dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other”.
The eponymous subject of The Signalman is first misrepresented by the narrator as the spirit of the story, calling him a “dark sallow man with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows” and later on the second page after perusing his face claims “that this was a spirit, not a man.” Later the signalman is described as “a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down and never risen again.” The impression the reader is given by the narrator is one of someone with an overeducated and overactive imagination stuck in a menial job left to ponder his own life as it slips away. The Red Room has its own wise elders knowing much about the journey ahead; they also seem to believe in the paranormal force so evident in the signalman’s mind. All of these characters seem to emphasise the scepticism of the narrators, yet in the end the narrators seem to wish they had listened to these, first described as practically deranged, wise guides.
The location and atmosphere in The Signalman is set on the first page when the cutting in which the railway runs is described as being “unusually precipitous” and made from “clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as he went down”. We get the impression this that the cutting is a very ominous place to spend most, or even any, of your time. Only a few lines later, the reader who is still picturing the damp, depressing cutting has a further description. The narrating visitor presents it as “a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon” and “the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel” We are left in no doubt as to the tone and feel of the area and as if to compound our ideas on the place loosely reminiscent of hell, “in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air”. We might associate such a cheerless desolate place with a horror novel and to reinforce this stereotype Dickens’ narrator describes it as “as solitary and dismal place as ever I saw”.
The Red Room has a similarly typically gothic setting, “long, draughty subterranean passages” and the echoes that “rang up and down the spiral staircase” all assist in setting the ethereal scene at Lorraine Castle. The red room itself is a “large, sombre room, with shadowy window bays, recesses and alcoves” which upon seeing “one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness.” We get the impression it is a castle that holds many dark secrets and that the narrators vigil will be ultimately unsuccessful.
The visual effects in the two stories centre on the appearance of light and dark.
The Signalman is set in a naturally dark surround but every time the narrator encounters the signalman it is on the night shift and therefore the dark is so much more evident in the atmosphere. The light is also used to show the perils and hazards ahead where the “gloomy red light” lies. In The Red Room the dark is used with a more sinister application. The little “tongue” of light in the darkness represents the narrator and we see his pride slowly extinguished like the candles. “The black shadow sprung” is personifying the dark as an animal about to attack and pounce on its victim. The narrator claims “darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye” which explains how the slow hold fear got on him, before choking him when he passes out. One of the old men sums up the effect given by the dark in this story: “A power of darkness.”
The main suspense centres on what might and has happened to the characters when they meet the supernatural. In The Signalman we at first expect the supernatural to be the signalman himself, “a spirit, not a man”, and as the narrator goes to meet him the tension increases. We then learn that it is in fact not he who is the ghost but he has the met the ghost and so once again the readers yearn to learn more of this paranormal force. Then as each encounter is recited we expect another one more and more. This is until the finale of the book where we are told of the fate of the signalman and it emerges that these encounters foresaw the death of the signalman himself. The narrator encapsulates the mood as the anticipation is over, “I started”.
The Red Room again warns you of the supernatural in the first line where the narrator says that “it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” From here we are told about where this ghost is likely to be, the red room. As the narrator learns more and more about the supposed spectre, the suspense grows and when he journeys to the red room we expect the worst. However, when he arrives Wells cleverly draws out the expectations by slowly letting the candles all go out. This actually builds up the suspense more and more until at the story’s climax he just “remembers no more” instead of the anticipated ghost. This then makes the reader wonder what happened and the narrator duly explains it was, “The worst of all things that haunt poor mortal man, and that is in all its nakedness – Fear!”
These two 19th century gothic horror stories both revolve around the appearance ghosts but the building of suspense is done in two very different ways. The Signalman uses visions and foreshadowing to lead the reader into the conclusion before surprising and releasing the tension in the signalman’s death. The Red Room, however, builds up suspense by directing us to a meeting between the supernatural and the narrator, but then this never happens creating a definite anti-climax for the modern reader. The suspense is rebuilt by the slow extinguishing of the candles until it culminates with the passing out of the narrator. Both have unique ways of interesting the reader and fulfilling their purpose as a horror story and this is how they are so effective.
