Poetry Coursework
Poetry Coursework "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare, and "The Way Through The Woods" by Rudyard Kipling are both pre 1914 poems. "The Listeners" is about a traveller knocking on the door of a building but nobody answers. The poem brings in the theme of ghosts or supernatural beings through out it, "But only a host of phantom listeners", "to that voice from the world of men" suggests that they are not from this world, "from the one man left awake" this suggests that they could be dead. The poem also has an air of mystery this is created in the use of descriptive words on describing and making the reader picture a dark, empty house in the country with a large moon creating huge shadows. Mystery is also created with the plot of the poem. The traveller arrives but throughout the poem we don't find out why he's there. We also don't learn who the "listeners" are. The line "Tell them I came but no one answered, that I kept my word" raises many questions to create the mystery, who did the traveller keep his promise to?, what was the promise, and why weren't they there? The poem also uses alliteration "forest's ferny floor" and sibilance "stillness answering his cry" to create a sense of rhythm of the poem. The poem has an irregular but strong rhyming scheme to create a rhythm. This rhythm affects the way that you read the poem. You read it with a pause at the end of each line,
The Signalman
Chris Burford 27-10-01 Comparisons In the landlady after Billy has left the train station he does not have any verbal contact with any other characters this really highlights the fact that he is alone in an area he doesn't know, therefore generating emotions of uncertainty, gullibility and isolation. We benefit from this because we don't feel thrown in at the deep end. The mood is quiet and the area appears as being quite dead; we are given this impression because of the way the buildings are described. We can also assume that it is dark as we are told that it is late. The Signalman starts with immediate speech " halloa below there" and then launches into a stream of description relative to the signal man himself and the basic surroundings " his figure was foreshortened and shadowed as I made my way into the dark trench" The signalman is considered to be rather peculiar "he could not have doubted from which quarter the voice came" and he still looks around and down the line as if he were expecting it to here it from somewhere else. We are also given an impression of a darkness and gloom by the words such as shadowed, deep, trench, and angry sunset. From the first few words we can almost picture a grave like setting and with the last two " angry sunset" we can imagine that the place has a dark but red glow that indicates the cutting could perhaps be a
The Signalman
Answer the following question and up-load your answer. How does the writer of 'The Signalman' create a feeling of impending doom throughout the story? Think about: * Language * Structure Answer:- The writer has used many techniques to create a feeling of impending doom throughout the story mainly through repetition, metaphors, similes as well as short sentences. The writer says that the narrator finds there is something wrong with the signalman; "something remarkable in his manner of doing so". As when the narrator called on him, instead of looking directly at the narrator he looks at the tunnel to which the narrator finds something wrong with the signalman. This gives the reader a clue that this is a horror story as the first paragraph itself describes that there is something wrong with the main character; the signalman (due to the title "The Signalman"). The writer uses personification to describe the sunset at the day the narrator met the signalman as "an angry sunset" which might give the readers an idea to show the arrival of doom in the latter part of the story. This could also be done to create the set up for the horrific part of the story. The writer describes the vibration on the surface when the train passed by through the tunnel as "vague vibration" shows that this was different kind of vibration and that of an usual and an unclear one. This could also
The Signalman
The Signalman In the following essay I will be looking at the way that Charles Dickens creates suspense in the Signalman. The Signalman is a short, gothic story written by Charles Dickens; in it Dickens shows a vast amount of gothic conventions. The story is set in a deep railway cutting; this fits to gothic conventions in that most of the gothic stories are set in dark, damp and lonely places, however most are set in castles or ruins of some kind. Throughout the story Dickens emphasizes how lonely it is in that place and eerie, this again fits with gothic conventions as all gothic stories have some link to eerie and supernatural things. The story opens with the narrator shouting down to the signalman on the tracks below him. "Hello below down there" was the words he used; this spooked the signalman as the spectre, which will be explained later, had said the exact same words to him on several occasions. When the to men meet Dickens intentionally makes us think that one or both of them might be a ghost. He does this by making the narrator first think that the signalman is a bit weird and might be a ghost but then he makes it clear that the signalman is afraid of the narrator making us think that maybe he is a ghost but it is revealed that in fact neither of them are ghosts. The signalman's reaction to the narrator calling down makes the reader think that something is
The Signalman
The Signalman In this essay I am going to explore how Charles Dickens creates the appropriate atmosphere in the short ghost story The Signalman. The story is set in the 1860's in a railroad cutting, this was around the time that trains were coming into use. The story is about a train Signalman, who gets a visit from a man. The man visits the Signalman for a second time and is told that he is troubled by a ghost. On his third visit to the Signalman he finds that he has been killed by a train. The story is started with the line, "HALLOW! Below there!" This is direct speech. From this line we do not know who is calling or whom they are calling to, this makes the reader ask questions about the story and what is going to happen next. We do know from this line that someone is up high calling down. Later in this paragraph we are told more about where they are, "but instead of looking up to were I stood on top of a steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself and looked down the Line." The Narrator finds this behaviour strange. As he says, "One would have thought considering the nature of the ground that he could have not doubted what quarter the voice came from." Throughout the story we are not told the names of the characters. The Signalman is refereed to as the Signalman. The story is written in first person so the Narrator refers to himself as 'I,' this makes the
The Signalman.
The Signalman. By Ryan Curtis The signalman is a supernatural story set in the 19th century. It is written by Charles Dickens. The story stars off with the narrator walking through fields, he then hears a train and so he walks towards where the sound is coming from. The narrator comes to a viaduct where he shouts, "halloa down there", waving his arm in front of his face at a man standing below. The narrator finds a path down into the viaduct and goes over to the signalman. The signalman asks the narrator if he has ever stood in the mouth of the tunnel because he saw a figure there sometime before waving his hands in front of his face just as the narrator had done. The two men get to know each other really well and the signalman tells the narrator of the two accidents that have happened on the railway line. Firstly there was a crash in the tunnel involving a head on collision and the second incident was a woman who fell off a train. The signalman also tells the narrator that every time there has been an accident he has seen a ghostly figure standing by the warning lantern that is situated at the mouth of the tunnel, telling him that there was going to be an accident. The man did not know how to stop any of these tragic happenings and he did not know when they were going to happen. The day before the narrator had come to viaduct the signalman had seen the figure waving its