A Comparison of The Signalman by Charles Dickens, The Red Room by H.G. Wells and The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

A Comparison of The Signalman by Charles Dickens, The Red Room by H.G. Wells and The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

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All these stories were written in the Victorian era and ghost stories

were popular. The reasons that ghost stories were popular was because

people were learning to read and write, there was not much

entertainment and people had a fascination of supernatural events. The

Victorian era was starting to develop more technology such as steam

trains and education was becoming more compulsory than optional

because people wanted young children and themselves to read and write

and since they had fascinations of supernatural events, ghost stories

was perfect in this era.

One of the famous Victorian ghost stories was "The Signalman", which

was written by Charles Dickens. The story is about a signalman whose

job is to make sure that the track is in the right position when the

train comes and must also make sure that the track is clear. In this

story the signalman hears another man shouting, "Halloa, below there!"

and this was reminding the signalman about the spectre that appeared a

year ago. The signalman tells the narrator to meet him the next day in

his workstation. The next day the signalman meets the narrator and

tells him a story about a tragedy that happened a year ago. The

narrator leaves and the signalman invites the narrator the next day.

When the narrator returns, he "saw a appearance of a man with his left

sleeve across his eyes and passionately waving his rig...

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...TV program will attract audiences

that wasn't interested in the story.

Stories of the supernatural continued to be so popular because of the

way that it has been written, the language used in the stories and the

suspense and pace that is also used in supernatural stories. Also

people in the pre-20th century was very interested in supernatural

events so ghost stories was very entertaining in those times and still

is today.

I like these kind of stories because the language, pace, tension and

suspense techniques that are employed in the stories motivate me into

reading more supernatural stories that are done by the past. One of

the three Victorian ghost story that I enjoyed the most would have to

be "The Red Room". This is because the pace was very thick and fast

during the suspense and tension used in that story.