In ‘The Signalman’, Dickens makes the readers eager to read on and curious and anxious to know what is going to happen next and is not very exciting till half the story, while ‘The Red Room’ is exciting all the way through but just gets more exciting at some parts. An example of a very curious action that became clearer and more exciting towards the middle of the story was when at the very beginning of the story the narrator calls out to the signalman but instead of him looking at the narrator, he looked at the Line. The quote from the story is, ‘but instead of looking up to where I stood on top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about and looked down the Line.’ But there was another part of ‘The Signalman’ that was not explained and was very thrilling was when the signalman read the narrator’s mind by answering the question the narrator asked himself the quote from the story is: ‘The light was a part of his charge? Was it not? He answered in a low voice, “Don’t you know it is?”.’ One may think that he is ghost or a spirit from this and actually the narrator did for a second but then shot it out of 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.’) Actually in ‘The Signalman’ there were many parts where the narrator lost reason but regained it almost instantaneously like when the signalman tells him about the Appearance and he describes his feelings of fear as ‘ the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine.’ But regains his reason when he starts saying that the signalman’s eyes were playing tricks on him, and that the cry from his imagination and was caused by the wind; ‘the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye.’, ‘imginary cry’ and ‘the wind in this unnatural valley’. And again when the signalman talked about how only six hours after the Appearance, there was a train accident. The narrator loses reason when he describes it as ‘a disagreeable shudder crept over me’, but regained his reason when he said, ‘that this was a remarkable coincidence.’ This shows that the narrator thinks he is very sure that the supernatural doesn’t exist but when he hears of these very unusual events, he loses all his reason but regains it again and that he may not be as sure as he thinks. And sometimes the narrator thought the signalman was crazy (‘infection of the mind’). I think this is related to the signalman’s appearance since he was dark and had black hair shows that he was a foreigner, and at that time, the English people were not very fond of foreigners and they did not trust them, which shows that the narrator was bias. Now back to the narrator losing reason, in ‘The Red Room’ it was not that much different because the narrator in ‘The Red Room’ was showing signs of losing reason but when he was in the red room, he said, ‘and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain.’ This showed that he completely lost his reason but he actually regains it at the end of story when he describes as fear to be haunting the red room. Also suspense and fear is created at the very end of the story when the plot is revealed because it is a twist and is very exciting. Also when the signalman is describing the Appearances and their unfortunate results (train wrecks), is a very exciting and suspenseful part of the story because it raises so many questions and answers questions that the reader would develop at the very beginning of the story( Why the signalman looked at the Line? Why did the signalman look at the bell twice in the middle of his conversation with the narrator? Why did the signalman look at the red light twice during his talk with the narrator?). And the way ,at the beginning of the story, when the signalman was pointing in a zombie-like fashion also adds to whether or not the signalman is a spirit, which of course creates fear and suspense. In ‘The Red Room’, Wells uses a similar technique with the swaying of side to side and the staring at the fire of the old woman is a typical element of Gothic horror stories used to create suspense and fear.
The setting of ‘The Red Room’ is a typical setting of a Gothic horror story, with almost all of the elements. It is set in a dark castle which is very popular for Gothic horror stories, with long, subterranean passages, a dark and gloomy spiral staircase, many dark corridors and of course the supernatural are all features of Gothic horror stories used in this story. The story is also set at nighttime which is used a lot in Gothic horror stories, horror stories and any other story that wants to build suspense. Long subterranean passages are a typical feature to put in a Gothic horror story in the 19th century. The subterranean passage in this story is described as ‘chilly and dusty’. This adds to the fear of a long, dark passage leading the narrator to the unknown. Also in the story, the narrator hears echoes when on the spiral staircase which would be scary if anyone was in his position because firstly spiral staircases have a unique, dark and unusual feel to them because of their shape and since there were echoes, it would give the impression that another being is with you and you don’t what that being is which also builds up fear and suspense. People might think have a typical elements will make the story a boring and corny one but the story is suspenseful as it is and these elements make the story a lot more scary and entertaining.
The setting of ‘The Signalman’ is different to the one of ‘The Red Room’ in many unique ways. The major one is that ‘The Signalman’ is outside ,as oppose to a castle like in ‘The Red Room’. Being outside in a forestry area is one of the elements always used in Gothic horror stories because when in a deserted place with trees and dark surroundings, feelings of loneliness and no one to help with what is after you are created. One difference that stood out and was startling for Gothic horror readers at this time was the train and railway. This was a feature not many writers used in Gothic horror stories because the train was invented no long before this story was produced so some didn’t use it in case it would be rejected by readers. But when Charles Dickens got involved in train accident, he decided to use it in ‘The Signalman’ ,which was written the year after his accident. It is an element that adds to the fear because of its darkness and evil feel when near a train tunnel. There were many quotes from the story about the tunnel that built up a lot of the fear created like, ‘massive architecture was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.’ And ‘as if I had left the natural world’. The second quote is one of the most important phrases used in this story that creates a tremendous amount of suspense and fear. Another part of the setting that was gloomy and scary, was the red light. It is a symbol of warning and danger in the story and since it was where the spectre was sighted, it adds to the suspense and fear.
The narrator in ‘The Red Room’ is a young man who at the beginning of the story gives readers the impression that he is a very confident and even so confident, is cocky. That is proved when he says such things like’ it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’ and ‘Eight and twenty years I have lived and never a ghost I have seen’. But you can tell that he is developing fear throughout the story. He firstly proves that when he mentions that the thought of ‘vanished men which still haunted rather than participated in the world of today’. Then after he says that he says that he blocked that thought which proves he didn’t like the thought of ghosts and the supernatural, which shows he is afraid. Another part of the story is when he reaches for his revolver, which he says ‘restored my nerve’ which shows he was afraid but it wouldn’t hurt to hold a weapon to protect my self in case a ghost comes. Another phrase is when he says, ‘the shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude’. The fact that he said that proves that somewhere in the corner of his mind, he is unsure whether or not the supernatural exists. And then he proves he is afraid when he is in the red room when he describes his talking as a ‘half-hysterical facetiousness’, when he describes him striking a match in ‘quivering haste’, when he cries with terror and when he says ‘I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness’. But the one phrase that proves he has lost all his confidence is when he says ‘crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain’. But at the end of the story he regains his reason when he figures out that fear haunted the room, because he is sure of himself and is not afraid anymore.
The language of these two stories are typical of each of their times and I emphasize on ‘each’ because I find that the language in ‘The Signalman’ is a lot older that the language in ‘The Red Room’ which is correct since ‘The Signalman’ was before ‘The Red Room’. To be precise, I find the language in ‘The Signalman’ to be a little like the language used in Shakespearean time. For example the phrase, ‘what quarter the voice came’ is a lot more old fashioned than ‘The Red Room’ where Wells could have said ‘where the voice came from’ which is a lot more modern. But each of the stories share the long descriptive sentences, which is the norm for Victorian times. But the main difference in language that creates suspense in different ways is how the speed of the story is different for each. ‘The Signalman’ is a lot slower than ‘The Red Room’ that jumps right into the excitement and suspense. Although the technique Dickens used also creates suspense because he makes the reader want to read on from the beginning to know the answers to enquiries created at the beginning of the story.
In conclusion, I feel that suspense is mainly created through the dark and scary settings, awkwardness of the characters and the descriptions of the nerve wrecking situations that excite readers a lot. I think that ‘The Signalman’ is the most suspenseful story because ‘The Red Room’ is more exciting and thrilling than suspenseful and ‘The Signalman’ again I mention has so many questions that even people who finish the story still can’t answer like how we are not sure whether or not the spectre actually exists or was it a vision.