In this essay, I will be comparing "The Darkness Out There" with "The Signal Man," I will also talk about the way in which people and places are not what they seem in the two stories.
In "The Darkness Out There" one of the main characters is a young girl, Sandra. The facts we know about her are that she works for 'the good neighbours club which is a club that looks after grannies. Sandra is asked to "give a helping hand" to Mrs Rutter in the daily housework. For this I think she is a good person, Sandra's view of the future would be for her to have a single sewing machine, and to travel around the world.We also find out she is squeamish towards dirt and grime.
She also felt threatened by Packers End when she was 6-8 years, but at that age she didn't know about the German plane that crashed there, instead she is frightened of witches, wolves and tigers. She and her friends would go into Packers End as dares, "sometimes they'd go there for a dare" (page.57/line 48).A minor character in 'The Darkness Out There' is Kerry Stevens. Kerry lives at Richmond Way he has licked down hair and slitty eyes.
He is at school at the moment but will be leaving school in July because a garage is taking him on. The garage is called Blue star. Sandra doesn't really like him because he is unattractive. There is another reason why Sandra doesn't like him, it's because Kerry wants to work in a garage, but as I stated before Sandra doesn't like dirt or grime.I the second story the first few conversations between the narrator and the signal man we find out that the signalman is a lonely person and he has taught himself how to read and write "he had taught himself a language" he also learnt some maths and algebra.
"He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra." The signalman appears to think that he has seen the narrator before, but the narrator assures him that he hasn't seen him until now. The Signalman's words sound as if he doesn't really care what the narrator says or as if he is waiting for something to happen. The appearance of the signalman gives the reader a feeling of the supernatural.
The narrator is a man of logic, you can see this is because of the way in which the narrator describes and thinks about the Signalman.Sandra thinks Kerry is an ugly boy who doesn't understand anything, but on the other hand Mrs. Rutter thinks he is a hard working lad. Near the end of the story you can see that Sandra's view of Kerry changes.Before she wouldn't take any notice of him, but after Mrs Rutter tells them about the German plane which crashed there in world war two.
And how Mrs Rutter and her sister, Dot, left a German pilot dying there for two days, Kerry says that Mrs Rutter is cruel. Sandra for once, also thinks that this statement is not wrongly placed. In other words, she also thinks the same way about Mrs Rutter.The old lady, Mrs Rutter, lives by herself.
We find out that she was married but her husband died in the war. Sandra describes Mrs Rutter as a stereotype of an old woman. "She seemed composed of circles, a cottage-loaf of a woman, with a face below which chins collapsed one into another, of creamy smiling pool of a face in which her eyes snapped and darted" (page58/line.97-98).You would have thought that stereotypical old women would be a friendly, caring, kind and comfortable person.
That is what Penelope lively would like you to think at this part or phase of the story, but later on as the story develops, we find out what find of dark secrets Mrs Rutter has been concealing.In the signalman the narrator deals with the signalman's fears by showing the logical explanation to all his fears. At this point of the story we, the reader, are given the image of the signalman as being mad or at least going mad, I mean if I saw strange ghostly images and figures mysterious bells ringing, and warnings of accidents, I would certainly think there was some type of type of supernatural force at work.In the "darkness out there" the reader's view of the old lady, Mrs Rutter changes dramatically as she tells us the story of the German plane and how Mrs Rutter and her sister, Dot went and saw if it was a enemy plane. When they found out that it was indeed an enemy plane they started swearing and abusing the German.
She also tells us how they left a German pilot dying there for two days. During this time the reader's view of her changes for the worse. The reader gets the image of a disgusting, cruel, and maybe even racist woman.In the end of the 'Signalman' the reader feels shocked at the death of the signalman.
I believe it was unexpected. I knew something was going to happen because there were warnings, but the reader didn't expect the signalman to die, but the most astonishing thing is, when the narrator asks the driver what he said to the signalman to try and get himself off the rails the driver told the narrator the exact words. They were exactly the same words that haunted the signalman in the first place.In conclusion I will be looking at the ways in which both stories end. In my opinion the reader was never able to predict how both stories would have ended.
I feel that the helpless or the people in need of help in some form or another were the people you'd least expect to turn out differently. I believe that the authors were trying to say that you can't under-estimate anybody, no matter what they do or what they look like.
