“with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver”
“with the hand…” is a quote that I find quite strange. He says he has a gun, feeling in his pocket to reassure himself once again, but how could he shoot at something with no physical body, like a spectre, for instance?
Wells develops the mood in this story by a very rationalised if somewhat facetious beginning, progressing the emotionally traumatic stages of the character; calmness to query, query to worry, worry to stress, stress to fright, and fright to an unconscious amnesia like state of the man who assures us;
“it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me”
The Signalman
The Signalman was written by Charles Dickens in 1860 for the Christmas edition of the magazine “All the year round”. This particular issue was a ghost story special, and subsequently sold very well.
The Signalman is a partially gothic tale dealing with strange apparitions. The narrator of the tale tells of his visit to a strange signal-box where he meets the eponymous character, who explains these hauntings to him.
The narrator describes it as;
“the mental torture of a conscientious man”
Dickens sets a rather strange mood and atmosphere by the situation he has given to the story. It is in an isolated valley where a lot of fog, mist and dampness gathers, obscuring the view, where spooky echoes ring through the tunnel.
“The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitous. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down.”
These weather conditions that Dickens has chosen to use as a method of setting a very uneasy atmosphere, which he manages to do quite successfully at the very beginning of the story, help to create a fearful and strange scenario.
The author also makes use of pathetic fallacy to accentuate the atmospheric conditions;
“steeped in the glow of an angry sunset”
This is a very good example of the author’s use of pathetic fallacy, due the fact that a sunset cannot be angry, as it does not have any ability to be emotional because it is simply a sunset.
Dickens also uses mysterious phrases repetitively. For instance;
“Halloa, bellow there!” whilst waving an arm in the air slowly is used throughout the story triggering a mystical fear in the signalman. This sets another mysterious element in the plot.
The signalman is not under stress because of lack of intelligence to understand;
“I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind?” which the traveller observes and realises, then ponders the potential consequences of what might happen if the man’s stress continues to build, and therefore feels concern for the signalman. This consistent worry for the Signalman’s welfare is another method of how Dickens builds up tension in the story, making the reader constantly feel concerned for him, worried in case this mental strain leads to a nervous breakdown.
We know from when the traveller observes the book collection that the Signalman has in his hut that he is intelligent. He has studied mathematics and literature in his spare time as shown in the text;
“He had taught himself a little language” showing that he knows something of English literature, or possibly a foreign language, and seems to possess a quite overall well-rounded intellect because; “He had also worked at fractions and decimals”, this making the reader wonder why he is a signalman and not something more prestigious. This also adds to the stories strange and mysterious ambience.
Dickens also uses irony in his tale to help create a sense of tension. The most important example of this is when then the visitor, and narrator of the story, offers to stay the night with the Signalman. However his offer is refused. The reader at this point knows that because the Signalman is on his own, something is bound to happen to him.
The narrator has the ability to create a potential scenario that is not actually there due to the events in the story and how he speculates. The author also uses dashes in between statements to add speed and a sense of gripping tension from inside the
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in (year). He was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and died in 1930. He was a very popular author of the time writing stories for magazines, such as (example).
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a much longer and more complexed tale with a far more delicately intricate plot in comparison to the other stories.
This is due to the fact that is a novel of over a hundred pages contrasting with the other stories of approximately twenty pages, therefore the novel has more room to be detailed and feature lots of characters.
The stories main theme is about a curse in which a giant hound kills of a member of the Baskerville family each generation and haunts the moors around the family Hall. The story is similarly written compared with “The Club-Footed Grocer” due to the fact that they are both written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Conan Doyle conveys the mood and atmosphere through using exceptionally detailed descriptions of the surroundings, and much usage of different weather patterns to set a certain ambience, all giving out a fairly tense and mysterious effect. The author also makes use of strange characters to make suspicion arise from within the mind of the reader.
When Sherlock Holmes is having the night of Sir Charles Baskervilles death explained to him, the weather is said to be “damp and raw” giving an image that is quite unnerving. This is using imagery with the word “raw”, relating it to the dead body.
Holmes is portrayed as extremely observant and intelligent. This makes the reader, even in scenes that are frightening and mysterious, feel reassured because they are sure, even though they do not know what is happening, that Sherlock does, which presents a strange “kept on your toes” atmosphere.
(unfinished)
The Club-Footed Grocer
The Club-Footed Grocer is a complicated story that is quite difficult to grasp. The story is mostly told through colloquialised regional dialect, which the author uses to add a mysterious mood to the slowly unfolding scenario. The eponymous character of the tale is a strange man who has a curious problem with his foot and lower leg, and is also the uncle of one of the main characters. His accent, that is difficult to place, and his strange foot help to convey a sense of mystery and uncertainty to the reader, leaving them with probing questions in the back of their mind as to the reasons why.
The atmosphere of the play begins its steady crescendo when the nephew meets his uncle. The lad is very nervous and has an element of scared uncertainty about him, as he has not met his uncle before. This must make him feel very daunted at the prospect of the introduction. Unlike the nephew who is shown as quite on edge to meet his uncle, quite contrarily the uncle is shown as very comfortable to meet his nephew, however has a sense of urgency about talking to the lad as made clear by what he says;
“’So, nephew,’ said he, holding out his hand’ to make the first introductory move “ ‘come in, come in man, quick, and don’t leave the door open.”
This gives the reader the impression that the uncle is on the run from someone, who happen to be a gang of sailors later on as the plot thickens. The fact that Conan Doyle uses diamonds in his tale is due to the fact that in this story’s contemporary era, then, as like now, diamonds were considered as very precious valuable objects, making the motives for the man’s crime obvious. This is what the impression of the uncle not letting something on is, and is also given away by the uncle’s paranoia about security; He insists upon all of the doors and windows being securely fastened, despite the fact that he lives in out a long way into the countryside. The boy would also feel quite out of place.
Conan Doyle
