The two short stories that I am going to compare are "Bang Bang who's dead?" by Jane Gardam and "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens.

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ZARAR MOHAMMED ENGLISH C/W

                                                 

     The two short stories that I am going to compare are “Bang Bang who’s dead?” by Jane Gardam and “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens.

   These two short stories belong to the mystery genre and use some of the typical elements of the mystery and ghost story genre periodically. The four aspects of these ghost stories I am going to investigate and compare between the two stories respectively are;

Plot, Setting, Style and character.

   “Bang Bangs who’s dead?” is a short story about a little girl called Fran who goes to an old house in Kent were an apparition is rumoured to play in the garden and wear the same clothes in winter and summer. “a little ghost girl plays in the garden. She wears the same clothes winter and summer-long black stockings, a white dress with a pinafore, and her hair flying about without a hat, but she never seems either hot or cold.” This statement in the first paragraph straight away reveals the plot, that the story is about a little ghost girl, and straight away makes most of us think that there is going to be an encounter with this ghost girl in some form as the story progresses. This has started to be a typical element in most recent ghost stories and films to straight away jump into the general plot or main part of the story in the first few opening lines, but this does dispel some mystery and throws out all the excuses some people can come up with to explain strange things in some circumstances in the story. But is also quite effective as straight away gives as an almost perfect picture in our minds of what type of setting it is.

 As the story progresses and more is revealed about the ghost and the house we see another rumour that only children can see the apparition, this adds more mystery and more twists and turns in the plot as most children do make up things and say they see “things” but most people just ignore them. “Where’ve you been? They asked when they got back to the house. Playing with the girl in the garden. What girl? There’s no girl here. This house has no children in it. Yes it has. There’s a girl in the garden. She cant half run” .This shows that the rumour that children can only see the sceptre may be true after, but only justifies that the rumour exist and provides support and evidence for it, but doesn’t justify that there is an actual ghost girl that plays in the garden and is only visible by children. This is also one of the typical elements, and is used in both modern and older stories. As most stories and films do use these twists and ideal circumstances for a perfectly good explanation and reason not to believe the people involved when they say they have seen something unusual. Such as the other short story I am studying called The Signalman by Charles Dickens. The narrator didn’t believe the signalman’s statements that he would encounter a sceptre driving a train whenever he heard a bell (that no one else could hear), and he had a good reason not to as the man was isolated seemed never to leave the control centre so, maybe he did see illusions but illusions of the mind, but later we find that is not true.

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   As the story progresses and the plot starts to develop we see that Fran seems very interested in meeting the girl, when her mother tells her that there is one, which is quite unusual for a mother to be this open on such a topic, but her father is quick to try and do the opposite and make her think there isn’t. Which is quite normal for a parent to try to withhold this type of information this adds a little more mystery and twists in the plot as now the adults have started to dispute over it, or ...

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