''The Signalman'' was written by Charles Dickens in 1865 and was based on a signalman who worked with the steam trains. By Charles Dickens choosing this option it gives the story a modern touch as steam trains at that time were the most modern technology around. However today it gives the story a historical feeling as it shows how the signalman had to manually work everything contrasting today's world almost everything is done by automatically by electronic devices and computers. The signalman also shows how the Victorian world was very much judged by class, and the author shows this by making the narrator surprised that this educated man has a low rank and a mentally unstimulating job that a lower classed person would expect to have. Charles Dickens also shows his originality in this story by making a railway the setting for supernatural happenings which are an unusual combination, this seemed to be influenced by the fact that Charles Dickens was involved in a train accident which killed and injured many, this happened just a year before he wrote ''The Signalman''.
English: Detail from photographic portrait of Char...
Charles Dickens, a former resident of Lant Street.
author and listenerIn ''The Signalman'' the author keeps the reader gripped by using such strong settings, atmospheres and descriptions. He first created all this by the narrator shouting ''Halloa, below there!'' to a person the reader does not yet know below in a deep trench. This creates curiosity causing the reader to try and find out why he's shouting to this man. The author then writes '' I stood on top of the steep cutting nearly over his head...down in the deep trench''. The word cutting usually means manmade so would have been modern for Victorian times and with the narrator over the signalman in the deep trench, it gives the reader the thought that they need to go down into...