Comment closely on ways in which the following passage from The Signalman creates atmosphere in the story.
In ‘The Signalman’, the writer uses unsettling imagery, worrying suspense and ghostly symbolism to create a dark, tense atmosphere and make the reader feel suspicious of the mysterious and unusual railway and the signalman’s inexplicable, alarming behaviour.
Firstly, the writer uses chilling metaphors and dark pathetic fallacy to paint a depressing and lonely atmosphere and make the reader feel wary and tense about the place the story takes place in. He uses a wide semantic field of adjectives that reflects a cold and gloomy atmosphere. The ‘oozier and wetter’, ‘clammy stone’ and the ‘dripping-wet wall of jagged stone’ all paint the signalman’s surroundings as uncomfortable and the use of unpleasant connotations ‘barbarous, depressing and forbidding’ and metaphor ‘dungeons’ makes the reader feel suspicious of this isolated, shut-off place. Even the ‘cold wind’ strikes ‘chill to’ the narrator as if it, too, is eerie. This unpleasant atmosphere is reinforced through the use of pathetic fallacy: ‘gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel’. There is also a sense of mystery created. Why is the place so dismal? Is there a reason for its gloominess?
Secondly, not only does the ‘dark’ characterization of the ‘sallow’ signalman with his ‘heavy’ features also add to the depressing painting of the setting but it also make the reader feel pity towards him. The words ‘saturnine’ ‘sallow’ and ‘heavy’ make him sound sickly, unhappy and scruffy looking, making the reader wonder if he is poor, with little access to hygiene and of poor health. The indirect speech used to represent the narrator’s speaking allows us to focus entirely on the signalman and the narrator’s perception of him. Indeed, through the narrator’s thoughts about the man’s ‘solitary’, ‘lonesome’ post and how rare he must find visitors, the reader understands how isolated the signalman is and this causes them to feel compassion for the ‘saturnine’ signalman. The metaphor ‘shut up’ emphasises the signalman’s distorted, restricted perspective of other people caused by his unsocial life; he feels they are literally restrained in a ‘narrow, limi[ted]’ place and anyone who shows ‘newly-awakened interest’ in him seems like they have been ‘set free’, as extreme as it is. The signalman’s ‘latent fear’ and the narrator’s idea that he might have ‘an infection (sickness) in his mind’ further depict him as an unhappy, nervous and weak man. It could be argued that he seems haunted by his industrial, gloomy surroundings or more specifically, by the railways and trains. It was an understandable fear at the time because technology was a new, unknown thing that many people regarded as extremely dangerous.
Thirdly, it is hinted that something supernatural is present in the story through the use of symbolism and similes, creating an outlandish and scary atmosphere. The adjectives ‘extremely’ and ‘unusually’, describing the steep cutting, hint that the place is not normal, even in its simplest aspects. The signalman’s attitude is also depicted as unusual with the first person focalization of the narrator’s thoughts emphasising his ‘most curious’ behaviour that causes the narrator to stop and ‘wonder at it’. There are numerous similes to pinpoint the bizarre, eerie circumstances: ‘as if he were waiting for me to appear’ ‘as if I had left the natural world’. These all have supernatural hints in them, especially the idea that the railroad is unnatural. The signalman’s air of ‘expectation’ and ‘watchfulness’ makes it sounds as if he is already aware of the narrator’s whereabouts, like some kind of all-knowing deity. The narrator’s ominous decision that ‘something in the man [daunted him]’ and following ‘monstrous’ suspicion that the signalman is ‘a spirit, not a man.’ makes the reader panic momentarily and builds the tension, especially with the nebulous, mysterious use of ‘something’. They wonder if the signalman is really a supernatural being and if he is a malevolent one who sees visitors as ‘an unwelcome rarity’ as the narrator wonders briefly? It could also be argued that the red light described is a symbol of the supernatural presence in the story. All of the signalman’s strange actions or words seem to be directed towards the ‘gloomy red light’ ‘near the tunnel’s mouth’. His apparent belief that ‘something [is] missing from it’ and insistence that the narrator was in front of the red light makes the reader feel tense and anxious; what is he seeing that they cannot? Who did he see if it wasn’t the narrator? When the narrator enquires about the light, the sentences are short and dramatic to build up even more tension and the signalman’s ‘low-voiced’ and ‘without sound’ words and his repetition of ‘I may’ add to the suspense. The reader feels therefore unnerved by the red light and its mysterious, perhaps hostile meaning.
In conclusion, the writer encourages the readers to feel both sorry and wary of the signalman at the same time, through the use of metaphors and symbolism. We feel as if he is a lonely man, his life wracked by the introduction of unknown technology yet we also wonder if he is involved in a dark, supernatural world with his strange, ominous behaviour. Through this manner, the writer builds up a lot of tension and makes the reader feel as if there a mysterious secret being kept from them.
My teacher's comments:
To improve, a wider range of lit terminology is needed with more explicit comment on language and CERTAINLY more structural awareness with a more SYSTEMATIC sense of your own interpretation of this text. BOOM!
More imaginative response to the "echoes" of particular phrases - e.g. the black tunnel. What might this remind you of in other literary (classical) works?
You need to extract more riches from quotations, not just bundling them together as if they all prove the same point - use brief comments in brackets after short quotations in a list to knock the examiner over...