Episode 129 - Signal-Man

[old book]

It's emerged.

[amancalledprak]

I think a key aspect of this story is that the signalman, throughout, is just doing his job. He receives, and perhaps even sends, along with his electrical signals, supernatural ones, and does it with a horrible efficiency. Despite this, he is unable to prevent any of the deaths on the line, including his own. The narrator appears to be wrong when he argues that "whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well". Even the most diligent discharge of duty, in a world that has slid beyond the control of humanity, might lead to disaster. Even worse, our extra-sensory apparatuses aren't only of little use, but actually serve to confront us with the monumental horror of a system we can't understand (a very Lovecraftian idea!).

The threat in this story most certainly isn't a ghostly echo of the past, it is a glimpse of the future, both on a personal and cultural level. The signalman's supernatural prescience can be seen as a metaphor for the electrical prescience it is his job to act upon. Hence the bell acts as the signal for both electrical and supernatural messages. Also note the description of his heightened anxiety in listening for the bell whenever he has a chance to escape from his dungeon-like cutting. It isn't just the responsibility of the visions that torments him, but the responsibility of his job.

I think there are certain classic Dickensian themes in this. A fear of mechanisation and systematisation and a sense that the world is becoming threatening and dangerous in an unprecedented way. The themes aren't just Dickensian, however, they are Lovecraftian and even Kafkaesque. The signalman is disturbed and tormented by signals he cannot interpret and cannot respond to. These themes also seem to have a wider continuing relevance. The fear of a world become a meaningless torment through an overload of incomprehensible information obviously remains very real to this day.

[Eibon]

What I'd say about the "ghost" is that it is a herald of death, rather like "The Mothman" myth (as related in the book and movie of that name). It is not itself malign necessarily, but its appearance signals disaster. A more malign version, obviously influenced by Dickens and others, is Susan Hill's The Woman In Black, where the sighting of the Woman in Black herald's the death of a child (read the book, see the play, or the multi-part radio series; the one-part radio play or the recent movie change elements to the detriment of the story).

I fact there is a branch of ghost story where a future doom haunts someone. I recall a Space 1999 episode where someone was haunted by their future mutilated self. And the "Room for one more" section of Dead of Night, which we already touched on, could be looked at as similar, as the "Room for one more" dream predicts the bus accident which kills people. Nigel Kneale's teleplay "The Road" involves a Victorian road being "haunted" by the echoes of a future nuclear war, rippling back through time--which is a really interesting variant on the theme.

Because the "ghost" is a herald of death, it too can be said to be the signal-man of the title.

The BBC version is well done, and for anyone unfamiliar with the British railway, it will give you a good idea. A signal-man also changes the points from his signal box, as well as sending messages up and down the line, so he makes sure the system runs without trains crashing into each other. The job is largely automated these days.

[Genus Unknown]

One thing that puzzles me is how the signal-man got run down at the end. The conductor describes him as looking intently at something, not heeding the whistle or his cries to get out of the way. Are we meant to assume he was seeing the apparition, and looking at it so intently that he didn't realize the train was bearing down on him?

[amancalledprak]

The conductor describes him as looking intently at something, not heeding the whistle or his cries to get out of the way. Are we meant to assume he was seeing the apparition, and looking at it so intently that he didn't realize the train was bearing down on him?

I don't think it's that clear. From the description given by Tom the Engine-Driver, it seems that the Signal-man has his back to the train as it comes out of the tunnel. If that's the case, I don't see how he can have been seeing the apparition, at least where it is located earlier in the story.

[Eibon]

I don't think it's that clear. From the description given by Tom the Engine-Driver, it seems that the Signal-man has his back to the train as it comes out of the tunnel. If that's the case, I don't see how he can have been seeing the apparition, at least where it is located earlier in the story.

But remember when the narrator calls down, the signal-man looks "down the Line", which can only mean away from the tunnel, along the track. So maybe, upon hearing the driver use the same words, he again looks down the line, away from the tunnel. He must have been on, or very near, the track to be hit, although the suction of a passing train can drag a man into danger (I knew a man who lost an arm because he was standing too near to the edge of a platform and was sucked against a passing train -- although he lost consciousness, so relies on the accident report for details), I don't know if this could happen or a train emerging from a tunnel. Certainly if the driver has time to call to him, he can't be that close to the tunnel mouth.

[Genus Unknown]

I'm gonna have to re-read the story (and watch the BBC adaptation) because I'm not at all clear on just where everything is happening, particularly where the narrator was standing when he first called down to the signal-man, where the apparition appeared, and where the signal-man was standing when he was run over. That would probably help with the puzzle.

There is something odd about the signal-man's final few moments though, isn't there? He was described as so painstaking and dutiful, it seems strange that he would just stand there staring at... something... and let a train run over him. If anything, he should have been hyper-vigilant, knowing as he does that a tragedy involving a train is bound to happen at any time. So what was he doing just standing there while the train approached? And what was he looking at?

Also, does anyone else keep wanting to think of this as a doppelgänger story (perhaps a doppelgänger for the engine driver, if not one of the signal-man himself)? Doppelgänger are one of the weirder types of "ghosts" because they seem to have some agency or life of their own (as seen in this story when the apparition shows up the second time, behaving differently than the first and third times), yet -- almost by  definition -- they can't be the spirits of dead people.

Also, doppelgänger are usually associated with warnings of disaster, aren't they?

I know Poe wrote at least one doppelgänger story ("William Wilson") so maybe doppelgänger were "in vogue" at the time.

Is there a 19th-century folklorist in the house?

[amancalledprak]

I suppose the possibility we haven't yet considered is suicide due to the visions. That would fit in with the odd causal loops that seem to keep cropping up in the story.

[Genus Unknown]

So I just checked the end of the story, and was surprised to find that there's no mention of the signal-man looking at anything very intently. It just says that he was standing with his back to the train. Somehow I had it in my head that he was staring at something (presumably the apparition) when he was killed, but I can't find any actual mention of that in the text. Weird.

So presumably he wasn't seeing the apparition at the time, or doing anything very odd, just... standing there with his back to the train.

I was going to attempt to refute the suicide theory, but it seems a little more plausible now. The idea still doesn't quite sit right, but I can't think of any other reason why this dutiful and alert man would completely fail to respond to an approaching train.

Unless, maybe, he heard Tom the engineer (or conductor, I don't know the difference) and thought it was the apparition again, and didn't move or turn around because he didn't want to see it.

I can't put my finger on it, but something about this story makes me think Dickens intended the apparition to be responsible for the signal-man's death in some way, as a final touch of irony. Maybe that's why I assumed he was distracted by the apparition when he was actually run down.

[amancalledprak]

I can't put my finger on it, but something about this story makes me think Dickens intended the apparition to be responsible for the signal-man's death in some way, as a final touch of irony. Maybe that's why I assumed he was distracted by the apparition when he was actually run down.

It seems to me that this applies if he killed himself because of the apparition. Think how tormented he is, during his last conversation with the narrator, by the responsibility he can't fulfil. I think suicide is at least one potentially satisfying reading.

The other thing I'd like to mention here is the education and station of the Signal-man. The sunken "gentleman" or "educated man" is an important type in Dickens, largely drawing on his childhood experiences of his father, who was imprisoned for debt when Charles Dickens was 12. Micawber is the classic figure, of course, but I think there's a stronger parallel between the Signal-man and Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby. A merely psychological interpretation might read the Signal-man as merely deranged by his fall and the imprisonment he experiences as a result of it. He might be seeing the apparition as a manifestation of a subconscious desire for death. Of course, a merely psychological reading won't really do, due to the odd circumstance described in the last paragraph.

[Eibon]

So I just checked the end of the story, and was surprised to find that there's no mention of the signal-man looking at anything very intently. It just says that he was standing with his back to the train. [edit] So presumably he wasn't seeing the apparition at the time, or doing anything very odd, just... [edit] Unless, maybe, he heard Tom the engineer (or conductor, I don't know the difference) and thought it was the apparition again, and didn't move or turn around because he didn't want to see it. [edit] story makes me think Dickens intended the apparition to be responsible for the signal-man's death in some way, as a final touch of irony.

OK, the geography of the place is not clear from the story, but I think the BBC film gets it about right. It is common for roads to go over train tunnels, so the narrator is high up on the top of the cutting when he calls, almost behind the signal box. The signal-man is on the raised walkway in front of the signal box, standing at the door and looks "down the Line" on hearing the words. We never discover why. If he was looking toward the tunnel, I, for one, would not say he was looking "down the Line" as the line disappears into the tunnel. Only after a moment does he look up. Clearly he recognises the phrase the narrator uses, and so has seen and heard the apparition before. He also appears to hear signals when he's in the signal box too. It is a remote, deep, clammy and damp cutting, through which the wind howls, not a particularly nice environment to work in.

The ghost appears near the red signal light, which is near the mouth of the tunnel, and is red to indicate that it is not safe to enter the tunnel from this end (a train may be coming from the other end -- this suggests it's a single track, and therefore the signal-man's job is more about ensuring there isn't a crash in the tunnel than about changing points). I believe he talks about standing near the signal to see if he can get a better look at the ghost when relating the incidents, so he would be on the tacks at that time.

For the final incident: from the driver's cabin of the train Tom sees the signal-man silhouetted against the mouth of the tunnel, with his back to the tunnel. We don't know if he can see the apparition, but events seem to be repeating themselves as if the haunting is happening again from the signal-man's perspective. He hears the words, and this causes the same kind of confused reverie he experienced when the narrator called to him, but this time while standing on the tracks. Tom unwittingly adopts the posture and phrasing that the apparition used, which doesn't help.

The malignancy of the apparition is one of those things which isn't clear. Is the ghost a "future echo" of Tom? Is the ghost manipulating Tom and the signal-man? I've already said that I favour the ghost being a herald of disaster--which the doppelgänger theory also features. While a doppelgänger would be malign, a "herald" need not be (hence my likening it to the "Mothman" myth, where the creature itself is said not to be dangerous, but its sightings coincide with disasters). The middle haunting, when the ghost puts his head in his hands, suggests that it's not a "future echo" -- the apparition seems to be distinguishing between the train accidents and the death (murder?) of a woman on the train.

Suicide is hinted at. The narrator explains the apparition to the signal-man: "how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves" -- which indicates that he believes the signal-man to be mentally ill. But suicide doesn't explain how the signal-man could predict the actions of Tom in calling out?

[old book]

Of course Dickens might've just been doing some pre-product placements for the Signal Oil & Gas Company of California, which used to lure kids in with a line like "Hey kids! Get your parents to talk to your Signal man about all the free prizes, gifts and toys we have for you!" Signal sponsored Tarzan of the Apes and the Signal Tarzan Club, and the massively popular series The Whistler.





The part at the end I didn't get was the gesture the narrator connected with something and which the signal-man made right before he was struck by the oncoming train. I sort of pictured him throwing up his hands or something.

I guess the bell as rung by the paranormal powers and which only the signal-man could hear goes to show he is receiving signals from the other side.

If I remember correctly, "signal" used to be used in another sense as well, as a synonym for "singular" or "extraordinary." My computer dictionary gives that primacy of place in the definition for the adjective, so I guess it isn't all that archaic.

[Jake W]

One thing that struck me was the motif of three things occurring. It's a theme in many superstitions commonly believed at the time and I suspect most of Dickens' readers would anticipate a third accident to be the final part of the cycle. My grandmother, if something bad happened to her, used to take two jam jars to the bottom of the garden and smash them so that the second and third bad things were accounted for. "And the third time counts for all."

To my mind, two themes emerge from the story - firstly, the inevitability that the universe will complete its cycle; and secondly, that we are helpless to intervene even with prior knowledge. Rather than a ghost story, it's more like a time travel story where the protagonist is helpless to avert an event he/she travelled back in time to prevent.

I wonder if Dickens' train crash was over quickly, or if he had time to notice everything around him as the crash happened and if that created a feeling of helplessness and unavoidable doom that led to this story.

[BeerClark]

Chris & Chad talked about what the connection was between the 'ghost' and the deaths that followed.

I got the sense that what happened was that the signal man was getting a premonition but it was only triggered when Death was near. The fact that someone physically close to him was about to die would sort of make a 'death field' and make him sensitive to 'seeing' his own death.