The Signalman

by

Charles Dickens

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Themes and Colors
Responsibility and Guilt Theme Icon
Helplessness, Fate, and Death Theme Icon
The Supernatural and the Unknown Theme Icon
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Helplessness, Fate, and Death Theme Icon

Throughout the story, the signalman feels helpless: it’s his job to keep train passengers safe, yet he couldn’t prevent the mysterious accidents that recently happened on the railway. In contrast, the narrator believes that he can help both the signalman and the train passengers who depend on him. But the narrator soon learns that he was always as helpless as the signalman, as he’s unable to prevent the signalman’s death at the end of the story. Furthermore, the railway accidents—including the signalman’s own death—may have been predetermined. By implying that neither the signalman nor the narrator had a chance of preventing the accidents in the story, Dickens suggests that everyone is equally helpless in the face of death—and that believing otherwise is tempting fate.

The signalman understands and accepts his own helplessness, though he wishes he could change it. According to his conversation with the narrator, helplessness has always been part of the signalman’s life. He was once a philosophy student, but he squandered his educational and professional opportunities. Instead of trying to change his situation, he believes that “he had made his bed, and he lay upon it.” The signalman seems to accept his bleak fate willingly instead of fighting against it. This helplessness also forms the basis of the signalman’s relationship with the narrator. The narrator’s first appearance shocks him, as the signalman later reveals that a ghost recently greeted him the same way that the narrator did—yet the signalman doesn’t prevent the narrator from approaching him. The narrator notices that the signalman watches him with “expectation,” suggesting that the signalman knows he can’t prevent whatever mysterious fate the ghost represents, although he’s frightened of it. The signalman tells the narrator that the ghost seems to be warning him about something—and indeed, tragic accidents have occurred on the railway both times the ghost appeared. However, the ghost’s warnings haven’t been specific enough to warrant the signalman sounding an alarm. Furthermore, the signalman isn’t powerful enough to shut down the train line on his own; if he did, he’d be fired. Thus, he’s forced to watch the deaths happen, and he can’t do anything more. In fact, he questions whether the accidents were preventable at all: he wonders why the ghost doesn’t show him how the crises “could be averted—if it could be averted,” meaning he thinks that they might be fated to happen and thus impossible to prevent.

The narrator, on the other hand, doesn’t believe that either he or the signalman are truly helpless. Just as the signalman’s background explains his helplessness, the narrator’s background explains why he doesn’t feel helpless. He’s presumably wealthier than the signalman and seems to have had an easy life—which is why he’s shocked by the long hours and weighty responsibilities that the signalman’s job requires. The narrator can’t imagine that the signalman is helpless or weak in any way, given how “exact and vigilant” he is in carrying out his many duties. Perhaps because of the signalman’s sharp mind and competence at his job, the narrator doesn’t buy into the ghost story—or, by extension, the signalman’s helplessness to remedy the situation. Instead, the narrator tries to solve the signalman’s problem by attributing the ghost sightings to mental illness, saying that the signalman’s “imagination misleads [him]” and that he shouldn’t “allow much for coincidences” when evaluating the situation. Although the signalman refuses to be dissuaded from his story, the narrator still believes he can help him: he plans to have the signalman institutionalized. This is both for the signalman’s benefit and for the good of the public, who depend on the signalman for their safety. This decision is the narrator’s way of taking control of the situation and proving that he has some level of agency over what’s going on.

But ultimately, Dickens suggests that all the events in the story were predetermined from the start, meaning that neither the narrator nor the signalman could have changed them. The reason the signalman was afraid of the narrator at their first meeting was because the narrator cried, “Halloa! Below there!” which were the same words that the ghost uttered. The signalman doesn’t think this is a coincidence—he suggests that the words may have been “conveyed” to the narrator in a “supernatural way.” This suggests that the narrator was fated both to meet the signalman and to say these words, and that the ghost predicted this in advance. Soon after this, the engine-driver, Tom, whose train hit the signalman tells the narrator that, in an attempt to warn the signalman to move out of the train’s path, he yelled “For God’s sake, clear the way!” The narrator remembers how, earlier, he himself imagined that the ghost uttered this same phrase. However, the narrator never spoke this phrase out loud—and this mysterious, supernatural connection again suggests that the signalman’s death was somehow predetermined or fated to happen. This time, the narrator’s own thoughts came before the catastrophe rather than after (unlike his use of “Halloa! Below there!”)—but this doesn’t stop the signalman’s death, which the ghost seems to have warned about through the narrator’s thoughts. The narrator was indeed helpless to prevent the signalman’s death all along; the control he tried to exert over the situation was illusory.

Flipping the order of events in this way implies that the order doesn’t actually matter—the signalman’s death couldn’t have been prevented either way. The narrator believed that he could help the signalman, but he was always equally helpless, his fate equally sealed. And although the supernatural events of the story may seem far-fetched, Dickens’s underlying implication—that people are powerless in the face of death—is very much real. After all, everyone is fated to die, and no one knows exactly when or how their death will occur. The story’s morbid ending sends the rather fatalistic message that trying to overcome this helplessness will only usher in what’s fated to happen.

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Helplessness, Fate, and Death Quotes in The Signalman

Below you will find the important quotes in The Signalman related to the theme of Helplessness, Fate, and Death.
The Signalman Quotes

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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman
Related Symbols: The Train
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman
Related Symbols: The Box
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

‘[…] Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, “Halloa! Below there!” tonight?’

‘Heaven knows,’ said I, ‘I cried something to that effect—’

‘Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well.'

‘Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below.’

‘For no other reason?’

‘What other reason could I possibly have?’

‘You have no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?’

‘No.’

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman (speaker), The Ghost
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

“‘One moonlight night,’ said the man, ‘I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, “Halloa! Below there!” I started up, looked from that door, and saw this someone else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, “Look out! Look out!” And then again, “Halloa! Below there! Look out!” I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, “What’s wrong? What has happened? Where?”

[…]

‘I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways. “An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?” The answer came back, both ways: “All well.”’

Related Characters: The Signalman (speaker), The Narrator, The Ghost
Related Symbols: The Red Light
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

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.’

Related Characters: The Signalman (speaker), The Narrator, The Ghost
Related Symbols: The Train, The Box
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.

‘When it first stood under the Danger-light,’ he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, ‘why not tell me where that accident was to happen—if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted—if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, “She is going to die. Let them keep her at home?” If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signalman on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?’

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman (speaker), The Ghost
Related Symbols: The Red Light
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman, The Ghost
Page Number: 23-24
Explanation and Analysis:

But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:

Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.

The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft a little low hut entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Signalman, The Ghost, Tom
Related Symbols: The Red Light
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:

‘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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tom (speaker), The Signalman, The Ghost
Related Symbols: The Train
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis: