A Comparison of 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens and 'The Ostler' by Wilkie Collins Both The Signalman and The Ostler are Victorian ghost stories, the signalman being written by Charles Dickens in 1866, and the ostler being written in 1855 by Wilkie Collins. Both these stories were relatively scary at the time of which they were wrote (The 19th Century.) Both writers create suspense in their stories by using a certain type of narrative, descriptive and organisational conventions such as in the beginning, they both have someone narrating it without the reader knowing who it is. The oster mentions murder, and the signalman has someone shouting, “Halloa! Below there!” Both of these examples create …show more content…
The main characters in the stories are haunted by ghosts and picked on as targets, making them interesting. The supernatural appear in both of these stories, the signalman using the spectre, which appears to be his cause of death, and the ostler using a witch. Both of the endings in these stories are unexpected, the signalman has a twist at the end, it lead up to just another ordinary day, but then “Signalman killed this morning, sir” is clearly not what the reader expected to happen, very good for creating suspense, makes the reader want to read on to find who or what killed him. The ostler didn’t really have an ending; it ended with a sort of cliff hanger. Suddenly ends with the narrator stating that his wife or the witch may be looking for him, and then poses the question, “Who can tell!” Creating a lot of suspense, this makes the reader want to know what is going to happen. In brief, both of these stories are similar but at the same time, rather different. The signalman is about a ghost that has been haunting a signal man on a railway, each appearance preceding a …show more content…
Both stories start off with powerful and effective beginnings, “Halloa! Below there!” the signalman starts off with that exact sentence making the reader want to read on and find out who or what was saying it, and who or what it was saying it to. The ostler uses narrative, “I find an old man...” this showing that he/she has made a discovery, making the reader want to find out about the old man. Also, both these stories have been written in a mysterious way as to make the reader want to carry on, the signalman using a cold, weary, and isolated, where as the ostler uses an everyday appearance, out in the open, but still cold and weary, causing two different effects, the signalman causing suspense, and the ostler causing mystery and a feeling of fate. The signalman is a moody and mysterious character where as the character from the ostler, Isaac is a quiet and unlucky person. These characteristics are what make the stories what they are. The signalman says “I don’t know,” this explaining that he could be possibly hiding something. The inn keeper from the ostler remarks “You’re our only lodger tonight” this implies that Isaac is a lonely
Living in Maryland, the narrator and her little brother Joey lived a very simple life. There mother had job that required many hours, and her father was unemployed and still in the process of trying to find a job. They lived in a very run down house in a very small poor community. One summer day, the narrator , Joey, and a group of kids from the community were bored and wanted to do something different. So,the narrator and the kids went down to one of the elders home, Miss Lottie. Miss Lottie was the old woman that everyone made stories about and for the kids they knew her as the witch. In the summer time Miss Lottie would always be in her front yard planting marigolds, which were an easy target to destroy. The kids all took part in throwing rock at Miss Lottie's marigolds, and the narrator was the coordinator. After they sprinted back to the oak tree, the narrator started to feel guilt for what she
“Home. I want to go home,” the story begins of a Confederate prisoner of war. A friend’s grandmother, age 76 and a worker at the historic society, tells a story of Point Lookout. During the Civil War, the Union had a prison for captured Confederate soldiers near Point Lookout. With a warm and friendly voice that shows the sign of age, the storyteller joyfully recollects the story. She has the tale in book, but recalls it from memory. She knows the story so well that one could hardly tell it was not being read word for word. When speaking the voice of the ghost, she softens her voice, making the voice sound afraid and evoking sympathy for the unfortunate boy.
Suspense and Tension in The Red Room by H.G.Wells and The Signalman by Charles Dickens
The Range of Devices Charles Dickens Uses to Engage the Reader in the Opening Chapter of Great Expectations
The aim of this essay is to explore the way in which the two authors
The witch appears to him again but this time to offer him a magical scarf. She tells him that the scarf will capture her and she will be his forever. James takes the scarf and wraps it around the sylphide, which kills her. James is soon left alone with no one and all alone. His fiancée ended up marrying his best friend.
Great Expectations is one of Dickens’ greatest accomplishments, properly concentrated and related in its parts at every level of reading. Dickens skillfully catches the reader's attention and sympathy in the first few pages, introduces several major themes, creates a mood of mystery in a lonely setting, and gets the plot moving immediately.
leaves to go out to a meeting that turns out to be for witchcraft and finds himself torn
Understanding the experiences of one’s past may inspire the decisions that will lead the course of one’s life. Charles Dickens’s childhood was overwhelming and had many difficult phases. It is truly impressive for a young boy to support his family, mostly on his own, and be able to maintain a suitable education. These hardship episodes may have been difficult for him, but it made him who he had always wanted to be. Eventually, he had been known as one of the most significant writers since Shakespeare.
searching for evil. He goes to the forest to do his deed and "he had taken a
One aspect in the novel Beloved is the presence of a supernatural theme. The novel is haunted. The characters are haunted by the past, the choices made, by tree branches growing on backs, by infanticide, by slavery. Sethe, Denver and Paul D are haunted by the past that stretches and grasps them in 124 in its extended digits. A haunt, Beloved, encompasses another supernatural realm, that of a vampire. She sucks the soul, heart and mind of her mother while draining the relationships that exists between Denver and Sethe and Sethe and Paul D.
Macbeth turns on the King and becomes a very insane and disloyal man as the witches prophecies began to come true.
After locking her self in the solitude of her bedroom she begins to recognize things that one would not think of after a loved one just passed away. " She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life (paragraph 5)." This is the point at witch she begins to deal with the grieving process, but also starts to realize the beauty of life. She begins to see that ...
The fixation on the old man's vulture-like eye forces the narrator to concoct a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" (34). The narrator begins his tale of betrayal by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly surmises the narrator indeed is out of control. The fact that the old man's eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must search for justification to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own unreasonable fear of the eye.
spell on him. So he had every woman that was thought to be a witch