Comparing "The Red Room" and "The Signalman"

There are many comparisons that can be made with ‘The Red Room’ and ‘The Signal-man’ by H.G. Wells and Charles Dickens respectively. I am going to examine some of these comparisons as well as analyse these two stories. These two stories are both classified in the Gothic genre. This was very well-liked in the Victorian industrial revolution, towards the end of the 1800s. Both were also written around the time of the industrial era. Science, particularly physics, was beginning to take over in working terms; people were now unable to work because most jobs were becoming motorised: thanks to the new technological advances. In ‘The Signal-man’ science is taking over in the form of the train; whereas during ‘The Red Room’ science is there but people are unable to comprehend it.

‘The Red Room’, written by H.G. Wells, opens in the middle of direct speech. This plunges the reader directly into the story. This also gives the reader the impression that they begin reading in the middle of a conversation with the line It’s your own choosing, the meaning of which is unexplained as of yet. That particular line also creates an air of mystery which is very good when writing a Gothic story. This technique is a good one because it engages the reader and stimulates the brain, causing you to want to know more. This means the reader carries on reading in order to find out more about the tale. This technique also works quite well because, like ‘’The Signal-man’’, ‘’The Red Room’’ is also a serialised story.

The Signal-man, however, begins with a somewhat friendly opening. The tale begins with a line of speech and then some description of the situation and then there is a little use of pathetic fallacy in the description of the angry sunset. The open...

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... to the climax at the end of his tale. The Signal-man also had all the ingredients of what, in my opinion, is a good Gothic tale. There is the mystery which needed to be solved by the gentleman: what it was that haunted the signalman. There is also the appearance of the supernatural: in the form of the sceptre. There were also many showings of emotion: fear at the beginning, what could be portrayed as love in the middle, and what could be portrayed as grief at the end. There is also the generalisation of the protagonists, giving them no name, no identity, making them everymen. Finally, there was rapid change in pace as the tale built towards its climax through the use of stichomythia and the rather ambivalent ending of the tale, an ending which plays with the reader’s mind and causes it to ask many questions, for example, whether or not the suicide committed suicide