‘The Signalman’ is a first person narrative and the narrator is the man who called the signalman and listened to his story. This shows us that the narrator experienced this and he can express his true feelings and emotions to us creating a more effective story about his experience. This also allows the reader to get a clearer picture in their mind and imagine what it would be like in his shoes.
Dickens uses delaying tactics in order to keep up the suspense in the story. Lines 121 and 122 show this. It says that he has to visit the signalman again the next day to find out what’s troubling him. This keeps up the suspense effectively as it makes the reader read on and want to find out what seems to be troubling him. Using the word ‘trouble’ portrays that something bad is about to occur. Also, in lines 116 and 117, the repetition of the word ‘troubled’ also makes you want to read on and emphasise that something bad is going to happen. As the Signalman tells us his story, Dickens uses lots of pauses and this is also effective as it makes the reader more anxious and forces us to read on and this builds up suspense. His story is very shocking as he describes what happened the one time he ignored the bell and the story has a very tense ending, leaving us with unanswered questions and a great mysterious feeling. Also Dickens use of painful personification, like ‘angry sunset’ and ‘violent pulsation’ contributes greatly to the story’s impact. Short sentences and repetition also make us feel tense. I think the story is very effective at keeping the reader reading on, interested in the story and suspense is constantly built up throughout the story.
‘The Darkness out There’ by Penelope Lively is different to ‘The Signalman’ in the way suspense is built up. The title straight away portrays a sense of mystery by using the word ‘darkness’ which gives the reader a sense of insecurity and mystery to what is going to happen.
The story starts off peacefully and calm as it introduces the girl, Sandra, walking through the flowers and this helps put the reader in a relaxed state of mind. Lively then introduces the spinney to us, her description, ‘The dark reach of the spinney’, immediately tells the reader that there is something wrong with the spinney and that this mysterious place should be left alone. Line 29, has the name of the spinney, ‘Packer’s End’, as a sentence on its own portraying to the reader that this is a place of isolation.
Later on, Sandra meets up with a boy called Kerry Stevens as they are part of a club which help old people do some house jobs which they themselves may find difficult. The two of them go and visit an elderly woman called Mrs. Rutter. Lively describes Mrs Rutter as a ‘cottage loaf of a women’, which gives us the image of a warm, comforting old lady. Mrs Rutter uses affectionate language in the way she talks and refers to the two of them as ‘Ducks’, which gives the reader the image of a kind friendly person.
Again, later on in the story, Packer’s End is mentioned and Lively uses personification to do this. Lively describes the spinney as ‘reaching up over the fence’, she describes the spinney as moving, reaching and trying to grab Sandra, which adds to the readers’ suspense and tension. Lively also describes the place, Packer’s End, as ‘no man’s land’, this suggests to us that no one wants it and no man dares to go there, which also gives a sense of something paranormal.
More suspense starts to build up in the story when Kerry asks Mrs Rutter about the story of the German plane that everyone talks about and associates with Packer’s End and also if she had seen it. She replies to Kerry that she had and begins to describe to the children the experience when she and her sister discovered a German aircraft in Packer’s End. She then says how they approached the wreckage and noticed that a soldier was still alive and crying, ‘Mutter, Mutter,’ meaning in English, ‘Mother’. This shows the readers the desperation of the full-grown man crying for his mother and how scared he must have been, thinking he was going to die. This makes us feel sympathetic towards the man. She then tells the children that instead of helping the man crying for his life, they instead left him to die. As we read the story, we then realise that Mrs Rutter is not the sweet, old, caring lady we once saw her as. Mrs Rutter tells the story with no shame or regret, this increases the tension and our confusion. This makes the reader feel disgusted how the both of them could be so cruel and unholy, to leave the helpless man and not even tell anyone. Mrs Rutter then tries to make an excuse for her actions by saying ’It was bucketing it down cats and dogs,’ so they went back inside and also that it was to far away to get help because and her sister had a punctured bicycle. This is a way that Lively uses to make us start to dislike Mrs Rutter. Mrs. Rutter did this evil thing as she was grieving the loss of her husband, and the fact she would never have children. She took this pain out on the innocent soldier. This showed that during the war there was a lot of hatred and prejudice towards the Germans because of so many people were losing loved ones even though the Germans were feeling and experiencing that as well. Mrs Rutter should have never have done that evil thing, as she wouldn’t of wanted any one in Germany to do the same thing to her husband.
Lively also uses delaying tactics as Dickens did. She describes Mrs Rutter and her sister seeing one man still alive, but they went back without helping him. Then later, after it had stopped raining, Mrs Rutter returns to find that the man is still alive but becoming weaker. She describes the man as a ‘tough bastard’, showing us that she actually wanted the man to die. This builds up more disgust towards Mrs Rutter within the reader. Again she refuses to help him. Then finally, she returns the next morning, to find him dead. This delaying tactic is an effective way of keeping us interested and reading on.
The story ends with the short sentence ‘Oh no’, this makes the reader feel a sense of tension even after the story ends.
