In both novels the writer creates the main setting where all of the events take place to have the same effect on the reader. In ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ the main setting is on Dartmoor (Grimpen Mire) which always seems to be dismal, shadowy and perspirating with huge boggy pits which will almost certainly asphyxiate anyone who mistakes the boggy pits for firm ground. Grimpen Mire is a place where “A false step yonder means death to man or beast” compared to ‘The Signalman’ which is set in the same place the whole way through the text. This leads the reader to think that the writer has created a character which is lonely and therefore might be going mad as a consequence. ‘The Signalman’ is a partially gothic tale which deals with strange, ghostly appearances whilst the main body of the story is being narrated by the traveller who is involved by Dickens only tell the reader the story by questioning the signalman the whole way through which is the only purpose for the traveller being there.
The three main settings in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ are Baker Street which is Sherlock Holmes’ place of residence, Dartmoor and Baskerville Hall whereas in ‘The Signalman’ the main setting is the signal box and the entrance to the tunnel. The writers don’t seem to vary the settings in both novels which convey to the reader that the writer is keeping the setting in the same place so that the reader gets to know the characteristics of the setting in detail.
Conan Doyle’s creation of Sherlock Holmes is very important to the detective-horror story genre because he satisfies most readers in terms of the personality of Sherlock Holmes by the way that he is a brilliant detective but also has a dark side whereby he takes injections of heroin at regular intervals during the novel; much to Dr. Watson’s displeasure.
Every novel consists of characters, plot and setting but in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, setting does not appear to be very important to Conan Doyle at certain points in the novel. This is because Conan Doyle concentrates on getting the plot across to the reader like in chapters one and two.
Conan Doyle uses Dartmoor to his advantage when creating setting and atmosphere in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by describing Dartmoor to the reader as if it was a supernatural world of mystery “like some fantastic landscape in a dream”
When Sir Henry Baskerville is walking upon the moor; “Soldierly men with rifles glanced at them” suggests to the reader that there is potential violence to occur later on in the story. Conan Doyle uses this quote to describe setting in this way because he is trying to add mystery to the novel which keeps the reader in suspense to stop them from feeling uninvolved in what is happening in the novel. Dartmoor is described by Conan Doyle as having a “gloomy curve with jagged, sinister hills”, which gives the idea that Conan Doyle wants to make the reader feel slightly crestfallen at this stage of the novel. He does this by stopping the story from flowing which greatly confuses the reader which adds to the overall suspense as the reader is pondering about other things which might crop up later in the novel.
Selden, the convicted murderer who escapes from Dartmoor Prison was created not as a character, but a device for the writer to build up the atmosphere of Dartmoor to make it more scary and menacing to the reader because now Dartmoor is a gloomy, precipitous place which has huge beasts roaming around it which now has an escaped convict roaming around the moors as well. Sadly this extra sparkle which Conan Doyle brought to Dartmoor was short lived when Selden turned up dead on the moor after being attacked by the hound. At point the writer shocks the reader into thinking Sir Henry Baskerville has been murdered because Selden is found wearing one of Sir Henry’s tweed suits.
In ‘The Signalman’ Dickens is just as determined, if not more to create a heavy meaningful atmosphere using setting, just as Conan Doyle does in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’
Dickens sets a rather strange atmosphere by the situation that he has given to the story in the form of setting because ‘The Signalman’ is set in an isolated valley where lots of fog, mist and dampness gather which obscure the view of a place where echoes are free to ring through the tunnel “The cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitous”, “It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as it went down”.
The weather in ‘The Signalman’ was created by Dickens to imitate what the characters are feeling in terms of emotion. This happened at several points during ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and is called pathetic fallacy.
Overall I have concluded that both writers use the same devices to create the same type of atmosphere through setting in both novels; ‘The signalman’ and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles'. As well as this, both writers use the different settings to explain various parts of the plot throughout ‘The signalman’ and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles'. I think that the setting is most important in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ because the whole setting of Dartmoor gives it, it’s menacing atmosphere which makes it the ideal place for a horror story to occur. In ‘The Signalman’ I don’t think that using setting to create atmosphere was terribly important to Dickens because the traveller is there to tell the main body of the plot to the reader.
I believe that when both books were published in Victorian times, the Victorian readers who read ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and ‘The Signalman’ were greatly impacted by the ghost and horror stories into actually believing that the ghost in ‘The Signalman’ and the huge beast in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ actually existed compared to today where most modern-day people don’t believe in these things, which means that the impact of each story is much less on the reader.
