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Wider Reading Assignment The two short stories “The Signalman” and “The Darkness Out There” are both similar in the way that they are both about shocking and horrifying incidents involving death. Also they both have endings which are surprising and unexpected. Both writers involve death in there stories. In 'The Signalman' the incidents that involve death are the fire, which happened in the train tunnel, which many people died. Then there was the death of a young woman on the train that the signalman saw as it went past and finally the death of the signalman, which is also the tragic ending where he gets run over by the train. In 'The Darkness Out There' the incidents in the story that involve death are when Mrs. Rutter is telling Sandra and Kerry about the plane crash in the woods, where she left the German soldier to die. The surprising ending to the story is that the two children went into the house thinking that Mrs. Rutter was a sweet old lady, but she turns out to have a horrifying past. Both of the readers show a great skill of being able to build up tension in the story. Dickens does it by introducing the ghost. The reader soon learns that the specter is giving signs of what's going to happen in the future, but his final sign is unknown therefore causing the tension. You know something is going to happen but you don’t know what. Penelope Lively does it in a different way by using Sandra’s and Kerry's slow realisation and horror of the possibility of evil in the stereotypical old lady. The two stories were written at totally different periods of time. Dickens was writing for the people of the Victorian age which who were fascinated by ghost stories.
Approximate Word count = 1149
Approximate Pages = 4.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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