Summary
The signalman says the specter has been appearing by the red danger light occasionally over the past week, making the same gesticulations of waving its arm and shouting to clear the way. He says it has been calling to him and ringing his bell. The narrator asks if it rang the bell yesterday while he was present. The signalman says it did, but in a different way than the bell’s usual ringing. It does not move, and the sound is heard only to the signalman. Both times it rang the day before, the signalman says, the specter was there.
The narrator asks if they can go outside. The signalman obliges. They look at the red light and confirm that neither of them sees the specter. Back inside the box, the signalman says he is most troubled by the question of what the specter warns against. Based on the first two accidents, the signalman assumes a third disaster is coming. But he doesn’t know where or how it will happen. He cannot send out a danger warning on the telegraph line because other operators will want to know what the danger is, and he cannot say for certain. The narrator can see the situation is causing feverish distress to the conscientious signalman.
The signalman asks why the specter won’t warn him plainly and clearly where the danger will strike. He asks why the specter doesn’t go to someone with the credit to be believed and the power to act. The narrator knows for the man’s sake and for the public safety he needs to help the man compose his mind. He reassures him that he is performing his duties as a signalman well, even if he isn’t able to decode the apparition. The signalman grows calmer and gets involved in the demands of his work. The narrator offers to stay the night but the signalman insists it isn’t necessary. The narrator leaves at two in the morning.
The narrator looks back at the red light uneasily. He wonders what he ought to do after having heard the signalman’s story. He determines the signalman is stable enough to perform his job, but he worries how long this mental stability will last. He questions whether he would stake his own life on the signalman’s chances of continuing to carry out his work with precision. Believing it would be treacherous of him to tell the man’s railway superiors about what is happening with the signalman, the narrator decides to return the next day and propose to the signalman that they consult a medical practitioner.
It is a lovely evening the next day. The narrator goes for a walk, planning to wander near the railway valley until it’s time to visit the signalman. While nearby, he looks down and sees a man standing by the tunnel mouth; his left arm is over his face and he is waving his right arm passionately. He feels a thrill of horror but quickly sees there are other men standing nearby the figure, who is not an apparition. The narrator notices a bed-sized hut made of wooden supports and tarpaulin. He is overcome by a sense that something is wrong and, simultaneously, by dread that he is responsible for having left the signalman alone.
The narrator races down the path and learns that the signalman was killed that morning. A man lifts the tarp, which conceals the corpse, to show the narrator the signalman’s face. The men explain that he was run down by a train. The train driver explains that the signalman was standing on the outer rail and didn’t seem to see the train coming out of the tunnel. There was no time to slow down, and the signalman didn’t seem to hear the whistle, so the driver shouted, “Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!” When the signalman didn’t move, the driver covered his eyes so as not to see and continued waved with the other arm.
The story concludes with the narrator pointing out the coincidence of the train driver’s warning calls and gesticulations: they match precisely what the specter said and did while haunting the signalman. The narrator also notes that the phrase “For God’s sake, clear the way!” was not something the signalman said, but rather something the narrator added in his own mind to the gestures the signalman imitated.
Analysis
The signalman’s dilemma is drawn out as he explains how he would like to act on the specter’s warning. However, he knows that if he sends a danger message he will have to provide information about the danger, and he does not know where it will strike. He wishes the specter would go to someone higher in the chain of command at the railway, someone who would be more creditable and would have “the power to act.” These words, in hindsight, reveal an irony: because the specter is warning of the signalman’s own death, the signalman is the only one with the power to act to save himself.
The signalman’s helplessness to decode the specter’s message is deeply troubling: the narrator, though still preferring to explain the apparition through rational means, observes the signalman’s genuine conscientiousness and sense of responsibility. The pity he feels for the signalman leads the narrator to feel responsible to help the signalman himself. He also wonders if the signalman’s behavior is unhinged enough that he should report the man to his railway superiors. Ultimately, the narrator consoles himself with a plan to help the signalman seek a doctor’s opinion on what is causing the apparition sightings.
The narrator’s self-consolation is quickly torn from him when he arrives at the rail cutting the next day and sees the figure the signalman described covering his eyes and waving his arm. Similar to how he received the signalman’s story, the narrator registers first in his body that something has happened to the signalman before he learns that the man is dead.
The story ends on a note of profound situational irony: the signalman was so preoccupied with the safety of others that he never considered his own life to be in danger. The danger the specter warned of was the signalman’s own impending death. The cryptic gesture of covering his eyes while clearing the way with the other arm is explained by the train driver’s demonstration of how he didn’t want to watch the signalman be cut down.
In the story’s final paragraph, the narrator suggests an acceptance of the supernatural occurrences he has experienced and of his own complicity in the signalman’s fate. The narrator notes not only that the train driver emulates the exact gestures the specter made, but that the driver said “For God’s sake, clear the way!”—a phrase the narrator had, earlier in the story, added in his own mind when the signalman was waving his arm. The eerie coincidence suggests the narrator has not been a mere observer to the events but an active participant.
Ultimately, the union of cutting-edge technology and impending death points to Dickens’ anxiety about the unforeseen impacts of industrial advancement on delicate human lives. Rather than portraying the convenience of rail travel, Dickens focuses on the static and solitary post of the signalman. Alienated and mechanistic, he works on the precipice of death, as represented by the great shadowy tunnel. Though he knows an ambiguous disaster is about to happen, he is helpless to stop it.
