How Does Dickens Build Suspense

Gothic literature perpetually creates suspense and tension in the form of both tradition and contemporaneity. Both forms of gothic literature share a theme insanity that helps the writers to create suspense. In the traditional gothic literature ‘The Signalman’ written in 1866, Charles Dickens successfully builds suspense by writing in first person with numerous imagery. In addition, suspense and tension are well-developed through various techniques, such as third person point of view and familiar imagery, by Roald Dahl in the contemporary gothic literature ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’.

Dickens explores the theme of insanity to set up suspense throughout the story. This is clearly shown through the adjectives, such as ‘troubled’, ‘strained’ and

In ‘With what? What is your trouble?’, the narrator asks question to know more about the Signalman though the punctuation ‘?’, so the readers can know more details about the characters in first person point of view than in third person point of view. By learning about the characters deeply, it gradually creates suspense towards the readers as the readers can be immersed in the story. The phrase ‘this figure must be a deception’ helps to create connectedness between the narrator and the readers. The readers may not believe in ghost and they can surmise ‘the figure’ as hallucination which is same as the narrator predicts. This gives the effect of scepticism towards the readers to create dramatic suspense later in the story by making the readers to feel relief. In choosing to include language such as ‘disagreeable shudder’ and ‘nameless horror’, Dickens makes a sense of sympathy between the narrator and the readers by writing in first person view as the adjectives ‘disagreeable’ and ‘nameless’ connote unpleasant or uncertainty and the nouns ‘shudder’ and ‘horror’ imply fear, revulsion or disgustedness. The adjectives and nouns make the readers to feel displeasure. So suspense mounts towards the readers as the narrator feels fear while he gets to know about the Signalman’s trouble throughout the story. In using first person view, Charles Dickens manages to uncover theme of

Dickens describes the imagery of ‘the cutting’ and ‘the post’ using adjectives, such as ‘clammy’, ‘oozier’, ‘wetter’, ‘solitary’ and ‘dismal’. The adjectives imply dampness, displeasure, sliminess, gloom and depression. Also, comparative adjectives, ‘oozier’ and ‘wetter’, suggest that the conditions are severer than usual. So, as the adjectives contain negative connotation, it creates eerie and ominous feeling towards the readers. The readers are left with suspense since the adjectives indicate portentousness and something bad is going on. Also, the adjectives portray the imagery of ‘the cutting’ swallowing the narrator and this suggests that suspense slowly encloses both the narrator and the readers. Moreover, since the Signalman reacts to the silent ‘bell’, the imagery of ‘the bell’ dramatically builds suspense by showing the Signalman as mentally problematic to the readers and make them to wonder what make him to mentally ill. As ‘the bell’ is an alarm, we can say that it is the noticeable beginning of supernatural that helps suspense to environ the readers. Furthermore, continuous references to the imagery of ‘the spectre’ and ‘the red light’ tell us about the supernatural and danger. The imagery of ‘the spectre’ is obvious supernatural feature that includes negative implication and the adjective ‘red’ often symbolises blood and death, so they conveys the effect of anxiety and fear