As I have already touched upon, The Call” opens with the narrator speaking in 3rd person. He heard the story through other people and never actually experienced the story or even was a character in it. However he does know the main characters well and therefore the integrity of his story can be questioned,” The rest is hearsay, from the log’s they kept”. The exposition in this story is of the narrator telling the background of the story and explaining why the circumstances of Christmas Eve came to. The Signalman is narrated in first person. It is a man’s (who’s identity we never gain knowledge of) story of how he encountered a poltergeist. There is no exposition or beginning at all in this tale. It dives straight into the narrator being curious and asking the question, “Halloa! Below there!”. The reader becomes curious over who this person is, as we have no description of him or how he arrived at that place. The exposition is much more condensed than the call, as we do not even get a description of how it all began.
In the call, the first sign of the peculiarities to come arises when Harry the Samaritan who is sick is determined to make his Christmas eve call, one in which he has made for decades on end without problem. This begs the question- why is he so eager to get there? “He tried dosing himself with all kinds of things; swore he was still coming. Was desperate to come”, another complication also arises in that when Meg answers the first call, it confirms the death of the woman-she is sure of her imminent murder, “He’s going to kill me. I know he’s going to kill me” this is the first sign of death in the story, and this is important because they are typical in ghost stories. Also the sudden change in mood is another indication of problems. Before the first call both Meg and Geoff are happy and jolly because of it being Christmas Eve,” It was just happiness”, but after the call, the cold monotone of the woman spreads into Meg and Geoff, “Meg put the phone down wearily, and suddenly shivered”. In the signalman, the first sign of problems arise right at the start, where he asks the question “Halloa Below! There!”-there is no answer by the signalman, even though he is isolated and by himself, he should of easily heard the call but instead stares down the train line, “..But instead of looking up where I stood….he stared down the line”. This scene is an eerie one as the atmosphere is also spooky created by lack of light and cold temperature. Another early sign is where the signalman explains that he is “Troubled” to the narrator.
The plot development in the call arises after every call; they get more and more detailed and also the inevitability of her death is stressed and cemented by the lone woman.” Geoff heard the line go dead again. He thought Meg looked like a corpse herself” the characters get more and more scared because after the first call they were assured by Tom Brett(the loyal duty-director) that the call was a hoax as the integrity of the lone woman is in doubt because she describes surroundings being foggy-when they infact are not. After each call Meg slowly turns on her husband and their relationship becomes more and more distant. This is because her conversations with the lone woman make her think that her husband and infact all men are a danger to her. The plot thickens when Geoff goes to find the lone woman in her house, when he gets there he meets an old couple who tell him the true story of what happened many years ago with the lone woman, “I’ve sort of got a memory of a lock keeper wi’ a lame wife-this was years ago mind…something not nice”, this makes the story more interesting as we now realise that the calls are indeed from a ghost. In the Signalman the plot thickens when the he tells him of the eerie story,”Halloa Below There!...he cried …I ran towards the figure”, we learn that this figure vanished and when he shouted out ‘Halloa Below There’ at the beginning of the story the signalman could not help but feel a sense of deja-vous.
Both of these stories climax by enticing the reader into it and then makes them want to read on. The call climaxes when Geoff saves Meg falling into the river after a flurry across the forest. His wife is enchanted by the ghost of the lone woman-who is leading her into the lake, but just as Meg is about to set foot into it, her husband saves her from an inevitable death, “They caught her on the very brink”. The Signalman climaxes by the sign of the ghost-who is showing that death will be inevitable, also the mystery of the Signalman being enchanted like Meg is a climactic end to the story, however this story does not have a spectacular or ‘edge of the seat’ type of ending like the call has.
The resolution of the call is once we realise that Harry-the leader of the Samaritans who had been listening to the lone woman every year for decades passes away. And he will be with her. So he is a Good Samaritan after death as well as during life. The Signalman on the other hand is not superbly resolved; it is typical of a ghost story in that it leaves the reader to wonder about many details. It is only one paragraph!
To conclude these two stories have similarities and differences between them. However the differences outweigh the similarities and this can be justified because of the social and historical scene at the time these respective stories were written. One difference is that the call has a good and effective solution to the story, all is resolved and it leaves the reader asking little questions, on the other hand the signalman does not resolve very well and most readers will want more of an explanation to the story. Another difference is that there is a good introduction to the call with the narrator explaining the situation at the Samaritans and how the story came about, in complete contrast the signalman dives straight into the tale with the words ‘Halloa Below! There!’. The Call was written more than a century after the signalman, and you cans see this by the way Westall tries to enhance the integrity of his story to a much more sceptical reader. By reading the Signalman it is apparent that Dickens is trying to portray a message to the reader using this story. He was worried about the affect new technology like trains would have upon the public and so stresses in this story the danger of trains. On the issue of which story I prefer personally, I would have to say I preferred the call. This is probably so because that the story is written for the modern person and also the fact that the Signalman is a hard story to understand does not suit the modern reader.