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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
"The Signalman" includes many markers typically associated with the Dickensian style, such as his descriptive prose. The intense imagery and figurative language Dickens uses enhances the ominous atmosphere of the story by immersing the reader in the dark, gloomy setting and its mysterious characters. For example, Dickens uses long, complex sentences to place the reader in the worried, skeptical mind of the narrator:
“One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what.”
In this passage, Dickens provides thorough details of the initial encounter between the signalman and the narrator yet simultaneously emphasizes the narrator’s confusion. This establishes the pervasive mysteriousness and uncertainty of the rest of the short story.
Dickens also uses long sentences when describing the signalman's post, creating slow suspense and paralleling the narrator's winding path to the post underground. However, Dickens does not stick to one monotonous pace throughout the story. For example, when the signalman is in a panic, he speaks in choppy questions:
"What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?"
The story is also a first-person account of the narrator reflecting on these events to the readers. This perspective and more conversational style make its horror more impactful by adding intimacy and involving the reader.
