‘The Signalman’ – the kids at my old school enjoyed it (year 10 set 3). It’s a good story for discussion because it raises more questions than it answers. Dickens’ dark irony is brilliant – this man whose role in life it is to interpret and communicate signals, cannot grasp the meaning of the warning hauntings, on which his and others life depend. The narrator/visitor is interesting too as Dickens’ offers little explanation for his nocturnal wanderings. He interprets the signalman’s premonitions as evidence of an “infection of the mind” , along these lines his death could be suicide … but I’m not sure … that’s what I love about it!


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