Charles Dickens The Signalman :: charles Dickens signalman Essays

Charles Dickens' The Signalman Introduction I have studied pre-1900 short stories by different authors, which all follow a similar format and historical content of their time. In my essay I will discuss and describe what necessary ingredients are needed to make these murder mystery short stories effective and successful. Short stories became an extremely favoured form of fiction and entertainment during the nineteenth century... In the days before electrical advantages for entertainment, (e.g:-radio, television, films and videos) adventure was generally only discovered/only existed within the imagination of mystery and supernatural stories, and were especially popular in the Victorian age, where people would escape into the mystifying worlds the words described in the stories. (Perhaps these authors’ fulfilled the need for excitement in this relatively oppressed society...). It was during this era that many writers began to capture readers’ curiosity about death, vengeance, trickery, imprisonment, hanging, ghosts and fear... A first impression may affect/ determine the way the words will communicate with its reader throughout a story. So I feel it important that the begining of a mystery story must be (engaging, compelling, intriguing, appealing, capture the imagination/ attentions of the audience) immediately for it to be successful. Mystery= arcane, baffling, curious, enigmatic, incomprehesible, inexplicable, insoluable, magical, miraculous, mystifying, obscure, perplexing, puzzling, secret, strange, uncanny, unexplained, unfathomable, unknown, wierd, bizarre, puzzle, problem, riddle, abnormal, supernatural. Murderous= barbaric, bloodthirsty, brutal, cruel, dangerous, deadly, ferocious, fierce, homocidal, pitiless, ruthless, savage, vicious, violent, assassin. The overall effect of the above ingredients, if successfully combined, will ensure the reader is first drawn in, by capturing their imagination, and they are then compelled to keep reading until the end. Beginings In the begining of our first story The Adventure of the Engineers Thumb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892) (who is the creator of the famous characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson’s detective adventures) He tells this strange, dramatic story, which he believes, had been told more than once in the newspapers - to stress how significant this mysterious account was. The following quotation is the paragraph introducing the story:- ‘One morning, at a little before seven o’clock, I was awakened by the maid tapping at the door, to announce that two men had come from Paddington, and were waiting in the consulting room. I dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my old ally, the guard, came out of the room, and closed the door tightly behind him. ‘I’ve got him here,’ he whispered, jerking his thumbs over his shoulder, ‘He’s all right.’ ‘What is it then?’ I asked, for his manner suggested that it was some strange creature which he had caged up in