How Does Charles Dickens Create Suspense in The Signalman?

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How Does Charles Dickens Create Suspense in The Signalman?

The structure and way Charles Dickens has set the order of events in the signalman creates a lot of suspense. When The Signalman tells the narrator about the first two accidents you feel and just know a third and final accident will happen in the future with The Signalman playing some vital role in it, but the reader as yet does not know what. This also builds up the tension and the suspense. The number in literature is always three. Something is always repeated three times to have an effect on the reader. So the reader is almost certainly expecting a third accident but does not know when and what will happen.

The story is set in the nineteenth century, a time when Story's supernatural powers were still believable so someone reading this at the time would feel more of the pressure. The scene is set within a deep cutting at twilight and because of the darkness the two men don't get to see each other properly until they are face to face. "I was near enough to have touched him". It makes you feel a spine tingling