The Signalman

by Charles Dickens

The Signalman: Style 1 key example

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.”