Charles Dickens was born in 1812 on the south coast of England. At the age of ten, he and his family moved to London where times were very hard. He was forced to leave school and work in a warehouse at the age of fourteen. Being very lonely in the warehouse, he felt strongly about neglect of the poor and this influenced many of his stories. E.g. the Signalman, A Christmas Carol etc.)
Ambrose Bierce was born in Ohio in 1842 and also came from a very poor background. He fought in the American Civil war and soon became an officer. He had a very unhappy personal life and so his stories are often bitter and horrific. ‘An Arrest’ is a typical Bierce story, with his type of approach.
Both of these authors play on the society’s fascination with mystery in the nineteenth century.
‘The Signalman’ is about a lonely signalman who sees an apparition. This intriguing and supernatural story took complete advantage of the British public as they were in the phase of mystery. The story slowly releases itself, which creates a tense feeling of mystery as each fact is released.
The Signalman tells of a railway worker whose job, in a deep cutting, is to attend to the signals. This man, isolated in the course of his work, sees visions – men crying 'halloa! below there!' and trying to warn him away from something.
Dickens creates mystery effectively and economically. The story starts straight away with the narrator calling down to the signalman and showing the signalman’s response. To begin with, the reader does not know why the signalman should respond so strangely when he explains his disturbance by unfolding the happenings, making the scientific explanations less and less simple until it cannot be explained at all.
The reader suspects a supernatural agent but the fact that the tale is set on the railway only in the relatively modern 1860s. Rather than in a stereo type expected scene for such happenings (such as a mouldy old shack) makes people expect less of a ghost story.
As the story comes to an end with the death of the signalman reported, supernatural atmosphere suspense is increased vastly.
Points
Language - Descriptive words, Don’t know when somthings gona happen,
an arrest