Suspense and Tension in Charles Dickens’ The SignalmanIn the Charles Dickens’ story the narrator meets the signalman who isconfessing to him his problems. The narrator comes every night to findout that the signalman was seeing a ghost of a man, who was pointingout that certain train accidents are going to happen. After a few daysthe narrator goes peacefully to the signalman’s shed, and finds outthat he mysteriously died.
The signalman at the train station sees sightings of a ghost in thedistance. However the figure is trying to tell the signalman somethingimportant, but each time the signalman sees this figure doing someactions something bad always happens, this is where Dickens createsthe suspense and tension.
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To add to the tension Dickens adds a narrator to the story, this isdone to emphasise various points more and to spook the audience out.The suspense and tension is created in various different ways I amgoing to explore these factors: the characters, the setting of theplace and the time at which incidents happen.
To add to the tension Dickens adds a narrator to the story, this isdone to emphasise various points more and to spook the audience out.The suspense and tension is created in various different ways I amgoing to explore these factors: the characters, the setting of theplace and the time at which incidents happen.
The very first line spoken by the narrator is negative, and putsthoughts into our minds about bad things happening because it portraysthe fact about height and if something is down, it makes it seem verymysterious:
Halloa! Below there!”
The word halloa is a very old …
… know what happens next. The meeting involves thesignalman telling him about the “spectre” that he sees in the tunnel.
In conclusion I think that Dickens has created the suspense andtension in this story very well. He has kept a few themes throughoutthe story such as dark, danger and red which symbolises the fact thatsomething bad is going to happen. Also Dickens focuses on the “down”theme like everything is below this could be the fact that a grave isdeep and you have to look down into it. So all through this storyuntil the end we have this image of bad things happening but theynever actually happen, until the twist at the end when the narratorcomes back and finds out the signalman is dead. So the whole story isbuilt up to this ending, this is where the suspense and tension addsto the affect of the story.
