How Do W.W Jacobs and Charles Dickens Keep The Reader's Interests in The Short Stories "The Monkey's Paw" And "The Signalman" ?

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How Do W.W Jacobs and Charles Dickens Keep The Reader’s Interests in The Short Stories “The Monkey’s Paw” And “The Signalman” ?

‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ are very alike. Both of them have ironic twists and intense mystery.

Charles Dickens wrote ‘The Signalman’ in the middle of the Victorian period. He set the story in a place which would make people think they were there living the story. He sets it in a gloomy railway cutting that would cause a ‘chill’ to most people. It was a very modern setting for Dickens to use, as railways were new to the country and of immediate interest and relevance to most people. Dickens probably chose a real place to set this story. He chose the gloomy setting to make the story particularly mysterious.

There is quite a lot of curiosity in this story. For example, when the narrator calls “Halloa below there!” the Signalman just looks down the line at the danger light. “Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?” asks the narrator, and his reply isn’t verbal. The Signalman just points in a direction at the same height as the narrator. This would make the narrator very curious about why he doesn’t just shout back an answer. The Signalman “had his left hand at his chin, and his left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast.”  This is a curious posture and expression, and, even though he doesn’t say anything, his facial expression is a curious one. When the Signalman asks the narrator why he called “Halloa below there!” the reader, just as curious as the narrator, wonders why he asks. The narrator felt uneasy because of the place the Signalman was stationed. The Signalman’s post “Was in as solitary place as ever I saw”. The Signalman was uneasy when the narrator approached him and the narrator became so close he “Could have touched” the Signalman. The Signalman “stepped back one step, and lifted his hand”. When the narrator was invited into the Signalman’s box, twice the Signalman “Broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut, looked out towards the red danger light near the mouth of the tunnel”. This is a sign of the Signalman feeling uneasy. But also it inevitably arouses the curiosity of the narrator and of the reader. The narrator would ponder why he looked at the bell when it didn’t ring at all. When the Signalman says that he is “troubled” and doesn’t know how to “impart” his trouble, it must mean that the Signalman is uneasy about something, and again this raises our curiosity as well. The Narrator probably wonders why it is so hard to tell him. There are some horrific parts in this story for the reader. Dickens has chosen some very mysterious and scary words for this story. The Narrator has a “Monstrous thought [come] into [his] mind, as [he] perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.” The Narrator feared when the Signalman told him about the ‘figure’ by the red light, and “the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing down [the narrators] spine”. This makes the reader feel the horror and fear of the story and what the narrator is feeling.

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In “The Monkey’s Paw”, the son, Herbert says, “there he is” and Jacobs does a good job of not letting you know who it is for quite a while. He makes you wonder whose “heavy footsteps” come “towards the door”. The Sergeant replies, “Better where you are” when Mr White said he wouldn’t mind going to India, an this makes you want to know why. You want to know who the “mysterious” “man outdid” was. And why the man hesitates to come up the path to the house. The Sergeant had a feel of unease about keeping  the monkey’s paw ...

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