How is the Atmosphere of Mystery and Suspense built up in the two short stories? 'The Signal Man' and Napoleon and the Spectre?

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How is the Atmosphere of Mystery and Suspense built up in the two short stories? ‘The Signal Man’ and Napoleon and the Spectre?

Both of the stories are very gripping and keep you in apprehension throughout When it comes to ghost stories, both hold the general key to a first-class story, mystery. They both take a slow approach to getting to the main climax, which encourages you to keep reading. When making a scary film, it is a lot easier to make a viewer scared as you can use music, sound effects, surprise elements and many other attributions, however, when writing a book the whole approach seems to be completely different. The writers have no special effects or music to entice the reader, so they use very strong expressions and describe the scenery enough for you to feel you are actually there and have a picture of the scene in your mind. This also gives your imagination the chance to play a part which can sometimes be the more elaborate and chilling in design then the original description.

 

          The stories have similarities between them in many areas. A main Joining point between the two is the fact that they both only have a small number of characters. This is better as you can follow the stories easily and pay more attention to the detail given. You are also able to understand the characters more deeply and get to know the surroundings described better. As opposed to trying to figure out whose whom and what’s what.

 

 Both of the stories have a twist at the end, which gives each a sense of individuality. In The Signalman the twist is all that the people say and in their actions, as there seems to be a mysterious connection between the spectre and all the other characters which I personally found to be very disturbing. However the most significant connection appears to be between the narrator and the spectre in that the narrator repeats the words that the signalman hears from the Spectre. The clue that there is a connection is given at the beginning of the story when the narrator and signalman first meet. The narrator, when he first saw the signalman shouted down to him the words, ‘halloa below there’, and in departing the signalman asked him what made him say those exact words.

‘You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?’

This shows that there must have been some connection between the Spectre and the narrator as on their first meeting the signalman senses something strange or even ghostly about the narrator’s manor and words, and clearly feels a connection or else he would not have asked. The signalman also says at one point that he mistook the narrator for someone else, the Spectre. Also when the signalman tells the narrator of his troubles with the Spectre, he shows him the action that he makes every time he appears, In the narrators mind he thought of the action as saying ‘for God’s sake, clear the way’. Now what may seem as a coincidence, but is really the connection between the characters is the fact that the warnings of the driver to the signalman before he was cut down were the exact words that had haunted the signalman and the narrator’s thoughts of what the actions of the spectre meant.

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Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake clear the way’.

The Spectre also seemed to have warned the Signalman in a way that something would happen to him. As before he was cut down by a train, there were two large accidents previously where the Spectre had been at the scene giving a warning sign of danger. It seems very strange as if the Spectre is not bad, but just wants to warn the Signalman of danger.

 

In Napoleon and the Spectre the twist is that the Emperor does not realise that he is sleep walking in a ...

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