The Signal-Man

“HALLOA! Below there!”

The first line of the story and also the first words the narrator speaks to the signal man, this greeting initially seems cheerful and friendly. Yelled from above ground into the cutting where the signal man works, it travels the distance between the worlds of light and dark. Yet this same greeting is one that the signal man purports to have heard from the ghost, causing even the most friendly, interested greeting to evoke terror in the signal man, who lives a life on edge. The words thus introduce the theme of Communication, Connection, and (Social) Mobility, promising help and understanding that the story will never deliver.

“Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down.”

The oncoming train initially seems benign, but the closer it gets, the more “violent” it becomes. The narrator describes himself as having a “newly-awakened interest in these great works” (313)—i.e., trains—yet his first close encounter with one suggests a force that is ominous in its “greatness,” with a power to subdue (“to draw me down”) the very humans for whom it is built.