The start of each passage creates an air of mystery and unawareness that bring down the reader’s defences. The author uses ideas that put these emotions inside the reader’s head, which is demonstrated mainly by the Landlady because the entire story is based on suspicion and is generally seen as something sinister when it could also be considered to be quite innocent. The openings also draw the reader into the story so as they become more involved, therefore making the stories appear more shocking as the reader progresses.
Each of the stories is set at night creating a sensation of uncertainty because we cannot see things, which could be a danger to us. They are also quite isolated because in the main flow of the story there are only the two main characters and nobody to witness any of the strange happenings that may, and do, happen. The Signalman and the Landlady both have points to pick up on when the setting is being described, as some of the descriptions can be associated with death and murder. In The Signalman, the cutting can be seen as a grave as we are told that it is “deep, wet and grimy and has a stale, musty smell”. The Landlady demonstrates this at the end of the opening paragraph by telling us that “the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks”, giving us the impression of death and a murder weapon.
Both of the stories seem to evolve around the effects of isolation and loneliness on people permanently suffering from them because we are given the impression that it is the isolation that causes the main people in the two stories to have their distorted view on life. For example the signalman and his hallucinations and the landlady and the way she supposedly kills and stuffs all of her guests, the idea of which is actually quite ridiculous. The authors both seem to be pointing out that we should always be aware of what is going on around us and not to be naive. Roald Dahl uses Billy’s naivety to draw the reader into his situation so the reader can see the trap that Billy is falling into and be able to think “No!! Don’t do that”
The Signalman is a very weary kind of person who is suspicious of the narrator. He is also very knowledgeable of his work and gives the impression of knowing it off by heart. He acts in a very peculiar fashion and the way he positions his arms when he first speaks to the narrator is as if he is expecting someone else and is observing him. The Landlady, when Billy met her, seemed very overly friendly. Although Billy noticed it, he chose to ignore it, which would appear to have been the wrong decision. There was also something in the way she spoke. It seemed like she was saying something abnormal when it was not really, such as when Billy opened the Guest Book “Haven’t there been any other guests in all this time?” The woman replies, “No my dear, only you”. The similarities between the two characters are mainly that they both seem to be expecting somebody. In The Signalman, he looked down the line expecting the voice to come from somewhere else. In The Landlady, she already had a room with a hot water bottle in the bed already prepared.
We respond to the signalman to begin with in a sympathetic manner, as he seems to be distracted. But with The Landlady, we feel as if she is being overly friendly – as if luring Billy into the boarding house. We also notice that she is the menace in this story, whereas the Signalman is a victim of a menace. The Landlady appears to be quite unrealistic when we consider that a little old lady, who seems to be slightly senile, could be a murderer who is so vicious that she stuffs her victims bodies and keeps them on the third floor, though the Signalman can be seen as believable because we could think that he is hallucinating the spectre that he sees.
In The Signalman, the author uses a first-person narrative style. This brings us further into the story, as if we are actually there or reading a genuine person’s experience. For a short story there is a lot of description though it does not actually give away the ideas of the cutting being a grave and the train perhaps moving as if it were a ghost. It merely suggests ideas that lead the reader to picture the scene outside of the storyline in symbolistic terms. The Landlady has a third-person narrative that gives us the impression that we understand the passage as if from a distance. It uses slightly less description, leaving more to the imagination. It does use certain words that can create an outer air of mystery leading the reader to see it as something sinister rather than innocent.
Dialogue only seems to be used in The Landlady where they use typical familiar phrases such as when she speaks to Billy she ends many sentences with “my dear”.
Charles Dickens creates suspense by the signalman telling the narrator that he has something important to tell him the next night. It begins at the end of the first night where the narrator and the Signalman have spoken and it finishes where the signalman tells the narrator of his experiences on the second night. A different kind of suspense is created by Roald Dahl as when we follow the story, we are expecting something drastic to happen and it does not, which ends the story on a very mysterious note because we are left to imagine the ending.
Neither of the two stories ended in the way I expected them to. I imagined both of them would have come to a solid conclusion, whereas The Landlady was left unsolved and we were left to our own assumptions. I did not expect the signalman to die. Therefore I found it quite surprising, especially when we discover that the gesticulation and words that the spectre was presenting were in fact the manoeuvres that the driver of the train used in the signalman’s death. I considered this to be the scariest point of the story as I felt that the signalman was haunted by his own death.
I preferred The Signalman overall as it came to a clear ending and there was a lot to look for and notice about the way the settings were described and I also found it more eerie than The Landlady as a person did actually appear to be haunted and did eventually die. I felt quite aggravated in a way by The Landlady due to the fact that it did not come to a clear conclusion, as I would have liked to have known what eventually happened.
