With Halloween right around the corner, you’re probably looking for a few spooky stories to put you in the mood. Charles Dickens’s The Signal-Man might not be the typical horror story you’re used to for the month of October, but it will fit right in with any other tale of ghosts or the unknown that you’re reading around now. The story first introduces us to a narrator, who calls out to a railway signal-man stationed below him. The two begin to interact, and the narrator notes that though the signal-man is extremely vigilant, and seems to have quite a handle on his job, twice he looks out at the alarm bell as if it is ringing, though the narrator does not hear a sound. Before leaving, the narrator schedules another visit with the signal-man, but the signal-man asks the narrator a few odd questions, seemingly suggesting that some of the narrator’s actions may have been influenced by some sort of supernatural being. Upon the narrator’s return, the signal-man details a few stories in which he sees some sort of specter that seems to be signaling to him, and later, a horrible accident occurs on the train line.

Dickens was most likely influenced by his own involvement in a railway crash just one year prior to the writing of this story. When a train derailed in 1865 with Dickens on it, he took the trauma with him forever. One of the primary reasons that the crash occurred was a mistake made by the signal-man, which shows some very obvious parallels to the characters in his story. This fear of trains, however, was not uncommon for the time, as trains had just begun growing in popularity in the past few decades, and disasters caused by the new technology were much more frequent than is necessary for many to feel confident in their safety on a train. When analyzing Dickens’s story of The Signal-Man, Karen M. Odden writes in her Victorian Review that “the early railway crash was widely understood to be a different kind of accident from those that came before– shocking and overwhelming in its size, speed, and effects.” It would seem likely that this common viewpoint helped boost the popularity of this story when it was published within Dickens’ collection Mugby Junction, which contains several short stories about a fictional railway junction.

Several other literary critics have analyzed this particular short story, many of which put emphasis on Dickens’s mastery of setting. A. O. J. Cockshut notes in his book Reference Guide to Short Fiction that “Dickens’s unequaled power of description of urban settings, which makes his London streets and Coketown in Hard Times so memorable, is used here to intensify the impression of dull, depressed, yet dutiful life: ‘On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air.’” The story would not hold the same power it does without this imagery, as the foreboding setting allows us to understand the same sense of unease that the signal-man feels. The environment adds to the credibility of the signal-man, since without this fearful tone, we might be inclined to believe that the signal-man is in fact just paranoid, and much of the story’s meaning may have been lost. In his article Studies in Short Fiction, Ewald Mengel looks at the relationship between other facets of the setting and the signal-man, explaining that “The allusions to the fate of the signalman from the beginning create an atmosphere of doom. More particularly, they create the feeling that the life of this man is predetermined by forces beyond his own control.” This analysis is particularly interesting, as it looks at other aspects of the setting that are often ignored, going past the surface-level description of the surroundings and focusing on the ingrained beliefs of the characters that form the basis of the story. The effects of the setting, however, run even deeper than this. Michael J. O’Neal, who holds a PhD in English, writes in an essay that “The effect of these images is to suggest that the railroad cutting is more than just a physical setting. They imbue the setting with mythic, sinister possibilities…It seems that the narrator is being initiated into a demonic realm inhabited by spirits of the departed. It is a dank, unnatural, unhealthy, subterranean world that imprisons the signalman and that is disconnected from the sunlit, rational, upper world of the narrator, who can come and go as he pleases.” Dickens’s setting does more than just set the tone of the piece. It is what allows the story to progress, and without the setting, it might not even be possible for the specter to have the same effect on the reader.

Though, if Dickens’s unique ability to craft a setting that expands the meaning of the story in all directions is not enough to convince you that The Signal-Man is worth a read, perhaps the future insight you may gain on Dickens’s other works may intrigue you. This particular short story is very representative of Dickens’s other novels and stories, sharing similarities in the setting and the commonly used motif of the specter. A. O. J. Cockshut writes about the themes the specter adds to this story, saying that “Dickens, more than other novelists, stresses and analyzes work; it is characteristic that the signal-man does not rest in his horror of the spectral visitant but instead wants to know what it means.” Sound familiar to any other Dickens stories you may have read? I’m sure it’s not unlikely for me to say that after your Halloween decorations get taken down, it won’t be long before the Christmas ones come up. And if your family decides that it is time for an annual reading or viewing of A Christmas Carol, your understanding of Charles Dickens and the themes of  The Signal-Man will allow you to learn even more from the classic holiday tale.

Works Cited

Cockshut, A. O. J. “The Signalman by Charles Dickens, 1866.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction, edited by Thomas Riggs, 2nd ed., St. James Press, 1999, pp. 1023-1024. Gale eBooks, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3408300699/GVRL?u=napervillepl&sid=GVRL&xid=5263c917. Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.

Dickens, Charles. “The Signalman.” Short Stories for Students, edited by Kristin B. Mallegg, vol. 45, Gale, 2017, pp. 200-218. Gale eBooks, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3661200022/GVRL?u=napervillepl&sid=GVRL&xid=1b122e3f. Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.