“The Signalman”
Charles Dickens
(1866)
Background:
Charles Dickens – 1812-1870
English writer and social critic
Greatest novelist of the Victorian era; a literary genius
Wrote A Christmas Carol, Oviver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Great
Expectations, etc.
About the story:
On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris, Dickens was
involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The train's first seven carriages
plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair. The only first-class
carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling.
Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the
dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water, and saved some
lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our
Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens later
used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The Signal-Man",
in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail
crash. (Wikipedia)
Written in the gothic style. Research gothic literature.
Vocabulary:
A cutting – an open excavation through raised ground to permit a railway to
cross it.
Trench: a long narrow bridge
Sallow: an unhealthy yellow or pale brown color
Barbarous: savagely cruel, exceedingly brutal, primitive, uncivilized
Daunted: to make someone feel intimidated or apprehensive
Saturnine: dark in coloring, and moody or mysterious
Latent: lying dormant or hidden until circumstances are suitable for
development or manifestation
Dread: anticipate with fear or apprehension
Incongruity: not in harmony with the surroundings; not fitting in
Ruminating: to think deeply about something
Reading Questions:
1. How does using a first person narrator affect the story as opposed to using a
third person narrator?
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2. What is surprising to the signalman when the narrator calls to him? Why?
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3. What suspicions does the narrator have about the signalman and why?
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4. What do we learn about the background and education of the signalman?
Why are these important?
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5. Why is the signalman’s death especially disturbing?
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6. Discuss Gothic elements used by Dickens in “The Signalman.”
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7. How is rationalism vs. superstition presented in this story?
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