The Landlady and Signalman Comparison

In this assignment, I am going to be looking at two stories from this century and the last and examine them for similarities and differences in content, style and language.

The first I instantly notice is in the setting of the stories; the big difference in the settings is in the locations. ‘The Signalman’ is set in a desolate trench in a railway tunnel, where there is no houses or people for miles. Whereas ‘The Landlady’ is set in a small town in Bath. There is a large contrast in the atmosphere of the stories, and in the way, the writers wish to build up tension although both environments are capable to produce a horror elements in the stories.

The main characters are both very different in looks and the way that the writers describe them. Their appearances are different, both characters names remain revealed to the reader. Dickens describes his the signalman as:
“ A dark sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows”
Apart from this Dickens does not give much more detail on the signalman, leaving his character shrouded in mystery.
The Landlady’s appearance is completely different to this as Dahl describes.
“She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes”.
The settings of the stories vary; the big difference in the settings is in the locations. ‘The Signalman’ is set in a frighteningly steep cutting in signal box. Whereas ‘The Landlady’ is set in a warm suburban living room. There is a large difference in contrast in the atmosphere of the stories, and in the way, the writers try to build up tension although both environments are capable to produce a horror elements in the stories.
Both writers are very descriptive and give detailed accounts of the characters, surroundings and the environment; therefore, it builds up a detailed image of the characters and their settings. For example, the way, in which Dahl spends a lot of time setting the scene and trying to create suspense.

“ The room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture…”

Dickens story is longer, more descriptive and gives us a hint that something supernatural will happen.

“ On either side a dripping wet wall jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky”.

A spectre or a ghost is mentioned at the beginning but it leaves us in suspense, as we do not know how things end.

Both writers use direct and reported speech in the stories. I noticed the varied vocabulary in both of the stories. Dickens used ...

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“ The room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture…”

Dickens story is longer, more descriptive and gives us a hint that something supernatural will happen.

“ On either side a dripping wet wall jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky”.

A spectre or a ghost is mentioned at the beginning but it leaves us in suspense, as we do not know how things end.

Both writers use direct and reported speech in the stories. I noticed the varied vocabulary in both of the stories. Dickens used a much more varied and sophisticated vocabulary. For example, ‘sallow, precipitous, saturnine, vehemence, abhorrence.’

This story tends to be a lot harder than ‘The Landlady’ to understand as the story was written in 1880. Dickens tends to use a lot of detail when he is describing the scene to the reader whereas the descriptive language in the landlady is very vague.

They were both written in different periods in time and therefore this is why the language and style of the two differ a great deal.

In 1866, England was going through and industrial revolution when factories and mines were growing at a phenomenal rate changing the landscape and peoples attitudes. Dickens was not in support of all this new technology of which railways were an example. His story is his way of expressing his doubts about this new technology and how it is going to affect the people.

In addition, when this story was written, railways were new to the people at the time so it may of seemed exciting to them, as they did not have radios or televisions. Therefore, dickens wrote this book for that audience.

Dahl is a more modern writer who’s writing style is more ‘economical’ than Dickens. He does not use a tremendous amount of description because he wants the reader to use their imagination. Dahl had written his story so that he knew that it would appeal to the audience of 1950.

To sum this all up I can say that ‘The signalman is a supernatural story with a meaning related to the industrial revolution at the time it was written. Whereas ‘The Landlady’ was not a supernatural story and really has no purpose apart from to entertain the audience at the time it was written.

Both of the stories involve the central character coming to a violent death.

One of the stories is written in first person and the other story is written in third person. Both of the stories also had a type of twist to it, personally I thought that ‘The Landlady’ was a better story overall.

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