The Signalman - essay

The Signalman is written in the second half of the 19th sentury, more accurate around 1866. It is written by the very famous English-writter Charles Dickens, who had a long career for writing. This story is about the supernatural aspects i a railworkers life. At this time, the Romantism have had its time, and enden in 1824. After that it was the NeoRomanticism that took over. With it a whole new era came. The start of the 19th sentury to the end is also knowen as the Victorian age. Everything is no more beautiful. Not everything is pink with green trees and roses everywhere. Now tragedies was written, paintet and played. Dickens tells here a dreadful story about a working-man at its best, but wiht terrible outcome.

In “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens the narrator meets a signalman frightened about a phantom he has been seeing. After every phantom he sees, a disaster happens on the railway where he works. But the signalman does not know what the phantom wants, so he wonders that it might mean. The narrator is skeptical but want to help the signalman. The signalman’s job is, to controle the ongoing trains. When there is danger his fellow signalmen alert him by telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a way that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the spectre, and then by a terrible accident. The ?rst accident involves a terrible collision between two trains in the tunnel. The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train.The narrator continues his skepticism by telling the signalman that the events that occurred after the apparitions were merely coincidence. The narrator doubts the signalman and his visions at ?rst, but at the storys conklusion a stange event makes the narrator a beliver. The ?nal warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death.