Hg wells starts to use many techniques in order to make the red room horrifying as possible. Using many ways to build up tension. From the quotes,
‘My candle was a little tongue of light’ and
‘Island of light’
We can see that this starts to build up tension, because of the use of clever metaphors, to create of the mood of ever growing fear.
The author also uses some form of personification,
‘Fire was laid’
This gives the impression of the fire having human characteristics, building to the amount of tension and suspense. At this point the author is playing with the reader’s emotions, scaring the reader more and more.
The language that the author uses try’s to toy with the readers senses.
‘Echoing of the stir’ also
‘Echoes were not pleasant’ and
‘Large sombre room’
These quotes indicate the human senses, such as the sound and sight, this technique appears to make the surroundings life like, and at this point the tension and suspense reach its climax.
The Signalman is set in a railway cutting because in 1865, when it was wrote, railways were new and considered modern with many unseen dangers that people who only travelled on them did not know about. This lack of knowledge helped to increase the big monstrous cutting with a juggernaut of a steam train running through it reputation.
The setting of The Signalman gives the story a certain edge of suspicion and supernaturalism. Everything seems to point to danger and oddness from the ground to the air,
“A barbarous, depressing and forbidding air”
This is hinting that something is not right; all is not as it’s meant to be. In a way the cutting could be seen metaphorically as a passage way to hell the dark gloomy atmosphere helps this, it seems so deep that nothing could live down there.
“I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head…. down in the deep trench”
In this quote the narrator is standing above the signalman and it almost seems like he is looking into hell itself. The setting is so important in The Signalman without it the story would loose virtually all sense of horror and spookiness. Well basically the story is based around the setting of a railway cutting, which means men have came along and instead of making a tunnel through the hill they’ve made a big steep ‘v’ shape in the hill and at the bottom of this put the train tracks. The cutting then leads on to a tunnel, beside this tunnel is a red danger light where the signalman sees this spectre of his. The cutting is
“As solitary and dismal place as I ever saw”
As the narrator puts it. This means barely any one ever goes down there and certainly no one lives there except the single signalman. It could be because the place is so boring to the eye, the smell of dirt and the look of slime just like a dungeon or as the book puts it “this great dungeon” meaning really clammy, dark, dripping with mould and cracked, grey and boring walls of the valley. I imagine it a bit like the Grand Canyon but instead of having red valley walls it has grey, brown and a few old trees still just hanging onto life in poor soggy soil. Then we come to the red danger light and the deadly black entrance to the tunnel, which the story rotates around. The “gloomy red light and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel” the gloomy pair seem to just say aloud ‘use your imagination and see the ghost standing there’
The characters in the red room are timeless and ageless to go along with the ancient setting. From the first line in the story which is,
‘I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’
This signifies the narrator’s character instantly; it shows that he is a cocky and arrogant young man. As we progress through the story we learn that there are 3 ‘grotesque’ old people also in the room. The first line that the old man with the withered arm says is,
‘It is your own choosing’
Which creates a feeling of suspense, making the man with the withered arm seem mysterious? There is also a grim old woman sat there looking in to the fire with, ‘Pale eyes wide open’
This tells us that her eyes appear to be lifeless, almost like a ghost. She starts to say queer things
‘Ah… there are a many things to see….. A many
Things to see and sorrow for…
This suggests that the old woman is almost warning the narrator, trying to make him feel uncomfortable, she also,
‘Swayed her head side to side’
Which seems like an indirect physical warning, this adds more depth and tension to the story and the dreary old people? The narrator also starts to feel a little awkward
‘Man with the withered arm…. Gave the newcomer a positive glance of dislike’
Due to this the young man starts feeling afraid. Another old man comes in the scene,
‘More wrinkled, covered by a shade, decaying yellow teeth’
This implies that he is a very old man, almost ancient, with a disgusting and grotesque appearance. When the old man was about to encounter the narrator he,
‘Became aware of his presence…. Threw his head back’
From this we can tell that this movement is fairly strange, so unusual it shocked the narrator
The author describes the characters in great detail because he feels they are a key element in his story. Everything that the old people wear and are surrounded by was designed and made by someone dead, the quote, ‘the fashions born in dead brains’ reinforces the image of them being ghosts. The are all afraid of what the young man is about to do, and do not want to take the responsibility for his actions. Everything about the old people is depressing, dismal, drab and dreary. After he met the characters he is on the way to the read room.
From the first few lines we understand that he is a very boastful and confident young man
‘It will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’
However brave he says he is, he carries a gun with him. This shows that he is prepared for a possible emergency, although if there was a ghost, then generally you would be unable to shoot a ghost because the bullet would go straight through the ghost; it reinforces that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. By the end of the story the man has much changed and the confident boastful man that we knew at the beginning has gone, this tells us that he experienced authentic fear. The old people appeared to seem friendlier and less grotesque.
To add to the tension Dickens adds a narrator to the story, this is done to emphasise various points more and to spook the audience out. The suspense and tension is created in various different ways I am going to explore these factors: the characters, the setting of the place and the time at which incidents happen.
The very first line spoken by the narrator is negative, and puts thoughts into our minds about bad things happening because it portrays the fact about height and if something is down, it makes it seem very mysterious:
Halloa! Below there!"
The word halloa is a very old fashioned word and no one says it anymore, but if you say it now, the way the word flows, therefore it generates a spooky effect. Also the fact that the narrator is shouting it to the signalman, but the signalman doesn't quite know where the noise is coming from and looks straight down the line to see where it was coming from as if he has heard it before, is very scary because it makes us wonder why the signal man is looking down the line when the narrator is shouting from above. However once we have read the story everything fits into place, because the signalman has heard that same phrase from the figure.
Once the signalman realises where the voice is coming from the narrator asks him if he can come down from the bridge, when he is down the signalman is not quite sure whether or not the narrator is a ghost
"Monstrous thought…was a spirit"
But we know by reading the story he is not a ghost but then again the narrator begins to wonder if the signalman is a ghost because he hasn't said anything to the narrator. The narrator tries to make conversation with the narrator and Dickens shows this through indirect speech:
"This was a lonesome post to occupy"
If we were to say this in direct speech we would probably say something like this: "this is a lonesome post to occupy, isn't it?" if we use the direct form of speech in the story it wouldn't create the same tense atmosphere, and the interpretations would be different.
But because the signalman isn't giving a reply to the narrator the narrator has to think what reply he would get from the signalman. So the narrator wonders whether or not the signalman is a ghost:
"That this was a spirit"
That was the narrator's first instinct but later on in the paragraph he is relieved to have realised that the signalman was just scared of him, because he had thought that he had seen him before, near the red light. This idea of the red light makes us think of danger, and red lights are only indicated when something bad is about to happen so this adds to the tension of the story for the audience reading it.
As the narrator and signalman begin to have a conversation we start to find out more about the signalman and his character, this also adds to the suspense and tension of the story, because the characters make the story. The signalman is devoted to his job, nothing means more to him than his occupation, and he is a perfectionist everything he does has to be perfect:
"Exact and vigilant"
The signalman would even leave a conversation halfway or stop what he was doing and attend his work. Once he had completed it he would then come back and carry on with what he was previously doing. At this point the narrator thinks that he should feel safe whilst in the presence of the signalman, but then again on the other hand he thinks that there is something creepy about him. This increases the suspense for the audience because it makes us think about what is going to happen next and why does the narrator think that there is something strange about him. Does the narrator know something we don't? But then again some people would take no notice of it and say that it's not strange at all. He's only doing his job.
