A Supernatural Death: Uncertainty in "The Signal-Man" Anonymous College

The narrator of “The Signal-Man” by Charles Dickens comes across the Signal-Man and calls to him, and thus he begins to learn of deaths and supernatural happenings along the train tracks where the Signal-Man keeps his post. At the very ending of the story, the Signal-Man dies on these tracks. There lays considerable ambiguity as to what killed the Signal-Man—did he kill himself, or was he killed by a spirit that haunted him? It appears that the isolation of his post, the trauma of the train crash, and perhaps a supernatural influence played a role in his madness and subsequent death.

The Signal-Man may have experienced madness before he was assigned to the post and is influenced by isolation and emotional trauma, which suggests that there are no supernatural forces at work. From the beginning of the story there is something off about the Signal-Man: When the narrator calls to him, he looks around him instead of to the location from which the narrator called to him. We also learn, after the narrator has enter the Signal-Man’s post, that his life has gone downhill—according to the narrator, “He had been, when young, a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone...