Suspense and Tension in Charles Dickens' The Signalman

Suspense and Tension in Charles Dickens' The Signalman

In the Charles Dickens' story the narrator meets the signalman who is

confessing to him his problems. The narrator comes every night to find

out that the signalman was seeing a ghost of a man, who was pointing

out that certain train accidents are going to happen. After a few days

the narrator goes peacefully to the signalman's shed, and finds out

that he mysteriously died.

The signalman at the train station sees sightings of a ghost in the

distance. However the figure is trying to tell the signalman something

important, but each time the signalman sees this figure doing some

actions something bad always happens, this is where Dickens creates

the suspense and tension.

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.

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 ...

... middle of paper ...

... know what happens next. The meeting involves the

signalman telling him about the "spectre" that he sees in the tunnel.

In conclusion I think that Dickens has created the suspense and

tension in this story very well. He has kept a few themes throughout

the story such as dark, danger and red which symbolises the fact that

something bad is going to happen. Also Dickens focuses on the "down"

theme like everything is below this could be the fact that a grave is

deep and you have to look down into it. So all through this story

until the end we have this image of bad things happening but they

never actually happen, until the twist at the end when the narrator

comes back and finds out the signalman is dead. So the whole story is

built up to this ending, this is where the suspense and tension adds

to the affect of the story.