Characters

The most important characters in the short story “The Signal-Man” by Charles Dickens are the unnamed narrator and the railway signal-man. The ghost also plays an important role in the short story as a symbol of bad signs.

The narrator

The narrator of the short story is an educated unnamed man, probably travelling as he is staying at an inn. We do not know anything about his outer characterisation, as his focus is not on himself, but on the railway signal-man he meets.

Inner characterisation

Most of his inner characterisation is done indirectly, through the way he depicts his impressions of the signal-man and the conversations the two of them have.

The most important trait of the narrator is his rationalistic view on the world. Though he is attracted by the railway worker’s strange outlook and compares him to a spirit, he still keeps a cool head when he hears the ghost story of the man. In his attempt to find plausible, rational explanations to the man’s story, he comes up with all types of common sense assumptions.

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The Signal-Man

The signal-man is the main character of the short story and the focus of the narrator. His characterisation is both direct, through the narrator’s description and indirect through the man’s own perspective on what he has experienced and his reactions to it.

Outer characterisation

The railway worker is a middle-aged man. Even if he is a simple worker, the man had received some education in his youth:

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Inner characterisation

The personality of the signal-man surfaces through the narrator’s observations of him and through the story he is narrating.

The man describes himself as “troubled”, for he has come to believe he is being haunted by a ghost who warns him of terrible things which are to happen on the railway platform. His conviction suggests that the man may have lost his mind or that he is experiencing hallucinations. 

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