Because the signalman has to spend his days and nights below ground watching for approaching trains, he lives and works out of a structure that the narrator calls a box, which represents the signalman’s limbo state between life and death. The box is a world unto itself, and includes a fire, a desk, an “electric bell” and other tools. As a result, the signalman almost never leaves his post; even when he has a break and can move above ground, he’s constantly thinking about approaching trains and is “liable to be called” by the box’s bell at any time. His job forces him to remain in the box, and his choices force him to remain in his job—he once lived a well-rounded life and was planning to enter the field of natural philosophy, but he tells the narrator that he squandered his opportunities. Now, the possibility of that life is gone. Because he can’t leave his box, trains perpetually pass him by while he waits in it, suggesting that life passes him by as he waits for things to happen.
However, this waiting isn’t passive. The signalman’s job requires him to constantly be thinking about death, in the form of normal train accidents and accidents that may have been caused by the supernatural—as he tells the narrator, a ghost warned him in advance about two casualties on the rail line. After the second, a woman’s dead body was laid down on the floor of the signalman’s box, suggesting that death is beginning to encroach on the signalman’s limbo state, and that he’ll soon have to leave that limbo state behind. The signalman also tells the narrator that the ghost is warning him about a third accident, even ringing his bell to get him to leave his box and look out. But when the signalman eventually leaves his box, presumably to investigate the ghost, he’s killed by a passing train, implying that the predicted third death was his own. Because the signalman may have been fated to die, his time in the box was a temporary limbo between his life, or his time before working as a signalman, and his death. The ghost disrupts the signalman’s normal routine by forcing him to leave the box, therefore leaving his limbo state behind.
The Box Quotes in The Signalman
Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above those lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken.
He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a ghastly nod each time: ‘That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.’
The Box Symbol Timeline in The Signalman
