Every death in “The Signalman” is caused by a train-related accident—though trains are meant to serve as a means of transport, in the story they represent the crushing power of industry. (While many Victorian writers critiqued industrialization, Dickens had extra motivation to do so; he survived the 1865 Staplehurst rail crash, which killed 10 passengers.) In “The Signalman,” the narrator is initially interested in speaking to the signalman because of his own interest in industrialization, which he refers to as “these great works” (e.g., trains and other machinery). Working from a box alongside the tracks, the signalman is supposed to serve as the human branch of industry, controlling and monitoring trains as they pass through a tunnel by waving flags and shining lights. But the recent accidents on the signalman’s rail line imply that controlling trains is impossible. Though a ghost warns the signalman of the accidents in advance, and though there’s protocol in place to prevent crashes (like the red light that warns of approaching trains), the signalman can never manage the trains effectively enough to save anyone. The first time, this resulted in a major crash; the second time, a woman died inside a train, and the signalman couldn’t get the train to stop in time.
The signalman’s job working with trains suggests that humans are defenseless in the face of industry: though the signalman is supposedly an expert (a worker later tells the narrator that “no man in England knew his work better” than the signalman), the trains are too powerful for him. They were built to serve humans but seem to have a life of their own—the first time the narrator feels the “violent pulsation” of a train, he worries that he’ll be dragged downward. Though the signalman believes supernatural forces are causing the accidents, this only amplifies the power trains already possess.
The signalman’s comparative powerlessness is solidified at the end of the story, when he’s “cut down” and killed by a passing train. Though the engine-driver, Tom, saw the signalman in advance, he couldn’t “check speed” in time to stop the train, implying that he actually has very little power over the train’s movements. The signalman and the engine-driver both controlled trains professionally but were ultimately helpless to stop them, implying that any control humans believe they have over industry is false.
The Train Quotes in The Signalman
Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by.
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.’
‘Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,’ he said, ‘I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.'
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!”’
I started.
‘Ah! It was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.’
Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine- driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate signalman had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.
The Train Symbol Timeline in The Signalman
