Thomas Fahey 03/01/2009
How do the authors maintain suspense and tension in The Red Room and The Signalman which story do you consider does this most effectively?
In The Red Room by H.G Wells, written in 1885 and The Signalman by Charles Dickens, written in 1894 are both excellent examples of stories concerning the supernatural. Ghost stories and thrillers were very popular in the Victorian Era. These types of stories are found under the genre ‘Gothic’. H.G. Wells and Charles Dickens are both renowned authors and are very good at using particular techniques throughout their writing to maintain suspense and tension.
The Signalman is set in an age where the train was a brand new technology which was not completely perfected; this made it a perfect place to set a mysterious ghost story. Charles Dickens was influenced to write The Signalman in 1865 when he was in a railway accident in which the train derailed at high speed. Ten people were killed and many injured. By using his experience to write this story it gave the setting a very contemporary edge, which played on societies fear for the latest technology.
The Signalman was a man who worked by signalling to drivers to slow down. He lived in a cutting, which was a very dark deep place like a coffin with no quick escape if anything happened. A large red light flicked on and a bell rang whenever a train was approaching. A lot of colours used are associated with mystery and death such as ‘red light…black tunnel…saturnine face’. Charles Dickens also uses personification quite regularly. ‘Angry sunset…the wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail’. Some quotes such as ‘angry sunset’ suggest that nature itself is angry. The personification can also make the reader feel that perhaps there is something or someone else present in the darkness. All of the colours are quite dark. Red can easily be related with death through blood. His use of light is very obvious too, for example ‘gloomier entrance…dark room…foreshortened, shadowed’. The shadows and midst scares the reader by making them think that perhaps there is something lurking in the shadows. The description used in the story make it very gothic as well, for example ‘earthly deadly smell… high stone walls… damp air’. The gothic genre is well known for danger, so when the reader realises that the story is gothic they can tell that something mysterious or dangerous is going to happen.
