The Signal-Man

The zigzag path and railway track are both designed as means to ends. They are spaces people move through to get from one place to another, but they themselves are uninhabitable. Both spaces thus symbolize the interpretive limbo that the signal man experiences and that the story invites in the reader.

The path connects the world above, from which the narrator calls out in the story’s first sentence, to the dark underground “cutting” where the signal man works. While there are moments of “light” in the story, the narrative itself occupies a space akin to the path, situated in a no-man’s land between light and dark, the rational and the supernatural, the middle and lower classes, with clear interpretation unavailable. More specifically, the signal man himself is stuck with a message that he cannot read and also cannot deliver; he cannot keep communication moving from one point to another.

This limbo is not viable, as shown in his tragic death: The train, moving to its destination so quickly that it cannot stop, cuts him down as he stands in the literal line of duty. The ending serves as both a class critique—the signal man is killed by the machines he ostensibly controls—and a cautionary tale regarding