Protagonists

"His protagonist is a don, a librarian, an antiquary or curator of a museum, for James always had the good sense to write about the people or the fields he knew well. There is an inevitable dry-as-dustness about them which shows up horrendous discoveries or experiences as a bright spalsh of blood might show the more hideously on a sheet of shrivelled parchment."

Ruth Rendell's introduction in A Warning to the Curious - The Ghost Stories of M R James

Dickens' lonely, tormented signalman and M R James's bookish bachelor dons, doing a spot of church visiting or rummaging in old bookshops, are far removed for the experience of current readers. This does not really matter as long as the circumstances that overtake them are sufficiently interesting. Rendell's point echoes in many ways the one already made concerning elaborately depicted settings James preferred for his tales - the more ordinary they are, the more extraordinary and at the same time believable are the mysteries that encompass them.

If there is one duty the writer of a ghost story has in terms of his main characters, it is that they should be strongly motivated to risk and endure the spiritual menace that reaches out to embrace them. 'Handling Apparitions' studies the nature of the hauntings in these three stories and the film representations that they generate. Here the emphasis is on examining the depiction of character in both the tales and their film versions.

Activity 1 - mise en scène

This exercise aims to build students' understanding of the term mise en scène - literally 'what is put in the frame'. What appears moment by moment in a film is not there by chance; each set up involving the repositioning of the camera also involves the careful composition of all that is in view. This encompasses the setting and the props, as well as the position of characters in the frame, which can be highly suggestive of their state of mind, circumstances, or inter-relationships.

1. Ask the class to study these images depicting the main characters in the three ghost stories on film. Each of these images depicts the main character in each of the ghost stories.

Whistle, And I'll Come To You

12.21: Professor Parkins sits alone in the dining room of the hotel. Viewed in long shot, his figure sitting in the bay window is utterly dominated by the row of empty chairs that occupies the foreground and middle distance.

A Warning to the Curious

10.52: Deep focus shot of Paxton in background and skull in foreground.

The Signalman

05.50 approx: the signalman performing his 'work' - pulling the track levers.

2. Discuss each shot in class. The following questions may be useful:

• What impression do you receive from this shot of one or more of these people?
• Does the image make them seem strong or weak, important or unimportant?
• Can you say why?
• Can you see anything in the shot that suggests the character's personality or state of mind?
• What about the environment surrounding the character - does it seem in harmony with him or not? Is it threatening in any way?

Notes on the films

Whistle, and I'll Come to You - Professor Parkins

In the original story, M R James creates in Professor Parkins a man who is dryly academic and seemingly self-contained. The third person narrative gives us insights into his thinking, for example, when he first notices the figure pursuing him down the beach following his initial discovery of the whistle. Despite being an object of fun, he is allowed a number of interactions with both his colleagues at university (in the prologue) and later with various servants, a small boy, and his fellow hotel guest, Colonel Wilson.

In Jonathan Miller's film, Parkins has been reduced to a man so preoccupied that all forms of human discourse appear to be beyond him. When addressed, he seems incapable of responding other than repeating the phrases pitched in his direction. In one scene with the hotel porter, the entire dialogue is rendered down to a series of grunts interspersed with key words - 'bathroom-dinner at eight' and one suspects we are experiencing the conversation as the Professor hears it.

In the introduction to his film, one of the special features on the DVD from bfi Video, Miller tells us that the story is a study of the dangers of 'intellectual pride'. It is also an extraordinary examination of human alienation and isolation. This is suggested throughout the film by curiously composed shots in which the Professor seems dwarfed by his surroundings. Often innocuous objects are placed in the foreground, in front of him, diminishing his significance. The effect is at times disorienting, allowing a banister, part of a bedstead, or the branches of trees to acquire an oppressive, sinister dominance over the frame. In one scene the camera is placed at a worm's eye level, on the beach, allowing the Professor's boot to come crashing into sight. The camera angle is maintained and the Professor quickly dwindles away until he is a tiny figure in the distance.

Miller's adaptation of Whistle departs most radically from the source story in its emphasis upon the psychology of the protagonist. Miller both emphasises the Professor's apparent disengagement from the world, and suggests that he is living an almost child-like life. This impression is conveyed through his endless succession of involuntary grunts and shouts, his schoolboy appearance and behaviour, and his utter discomfort when beset by more adult impulses. He is clearly disturbed when, on his first night, a fellow female guest smiles flirtatiously at him. Later, at the moment when she passes him in the passageway, Parkins' body contorts absurdly so as to put the maximum distance between them.

There is little doubt that M R James would have resented the imposition of such subtle themes. In his essay Some Remarks on Ghost Stories he condemns contemporary writers of the genre for dragging in sex, calling this 'a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have no patience with it.' Despite this, critics have pointed out that the ghostly manifestation in the original story is certainly open to sexual interpretation - something that will be considered in the next section.

In the still provided, we see the Professor taking his first breakfast in the hotel. His isolation is underlined by the row of empty chairs that draw the eye to him in the bay window. He seems an entirely insignificant presence in the frame next to the rather heavy and imposing furniture. Given that the Professor will be menaced by an animated bed sheet at the end of the film, his subordination to a succession of objects during the film is highly suggestive.

A Warning to the Curious - Mr Paxton

In A Warning to the Curious M R James is curiously casual about the cause and effect that leads his hero to search out the lost crown of East Anglia. The sequence of events that enables him to tie William Ager to the legend and then discover where Ager stood vigil, is set in motion and maintained by little other than coincidence. Intriguingly, what sets the process going is a moment of near class hostility where an 'old man' in the churchyard takes Paxton to task: 'Well then,' he said, 'for all you're a scholard [sic], I can tell you something you don't know.'

In the film version, Peter Vaughan, an actor associated with villainous parts is cast against type to play Paxton. There is nothing of the 'rabbity anaemic subject' with 'light hair and light eyes' of the Paxton in James' story. Vaughan's Paxton is a victim of the English class system - a clerk of limited formal education recently made unemployed. The headline of Paxton's newspaper locates these events in the midst of the 1930s' Depression. In a painful scene Arnold, the hotel's all-purpose servant, takes sadistic delight in humiliating Paxton after seeing the worn state of his shoes. When Arnold identifies the one other guest in the hotel, he adds in a tone oozing contempt 'Dr Black's a real gentleman.'

This early exchange is crucial when it comes to grasping Paxton's pursuit of the lost crown despite the increasingly violent warnings he receives from the dead William Ager. Later he has the opportunity to explain his full motivation to Dr Black now drawn in as his confidant:

"Study! I'm a clerk, Dr Black, or was - my firm folded up last week. I'd been in the job twelve years - clerking. No prospects mind you, but respectable and above all secure - that's what they say, isn't it. Archaeology's been my hobby for as long as I can remember. I used to dream of doing something big - to show people you didn't need a string of letters after your name. When the job stopped I took a chance. I'd heard about the legend in London - read about it in an old book I'd found. I didn't believe it at first - there are so many tales like that about the Dark Ages - rubbish most of them - but what had I got to lose? I was out on the street anyway. Worth a try I thought. An Anglo-Saxon crown - no-one's ever discovered one before - and I found it ...I'm going to put it back."

And so the film-makers provide their Paxton with a rich background and the compelling motivation to endure the increasingly sinister presence of Ager as the quest develops.

In the still provided Paxton is shown in the curiosity shop - a place briefly mentioned in the original story. He is filmed from a low angle and decentred - relegated to the background while the foreground is dominated suggestively by a skull. A moth-eaten fox head looks down from the wall above Paxton - its presence suggestive of the kind of surveillance he will soon have to endure - its permanent snarl a hint of the kind of feral hostility that will drive his dead tormentor Ager as the search for the crown develops.

The Signalman

The fact that the central character - the signalman - remains unidentified, other than by his job title, slightly dehumanises him. The dubbing of the narrator as 'the traveller' hints at the tale's use of archetypes, and the story contains a lengthy description of his work by the signalman and how the technology of the modern railway has reduced his function to the performance of a few mechanical tasks. He describes how his responsibilities continually draw him down into the dark cutting out of the sun. We learn of his efforts at auto-didacticism, which have tellingly brought him the rudiments of a foreign language, but 'crude ideas of its pronunciation'. Through routine he has become little more than a cog on the mechanical operation of the railway - a symbol of modernity and industrialisation. That the narrator may also have been subject to similar processes is tantalisingly alluded to when he cryptically admits to being 'a man who had been shut up in narrow limits all his life.'

In the image provided we see the signalman firmly framed within the confines of his little cabin. The prominence of the levers, with which he must occasionally grapple, and his own automatic performance of his duties suggest the automaton-like state he has been reduced to by his mechanical role. This medium shot draws attention to the confined conditions in which he must work, which are suggestive of a prison.

Activity 2 - setting up the protagonist

There is a clich- that often features in suspense and horror films. A character finds him or herself in a dark and menacing place. He/she hears a noise, and says 'Hello, who's there?' When every normal person's instinct would be to run screaming from the place, this character ventures further into the dark - with never a doubt that the cellar/tomb/sealed chamber is not a place to investigate. Invariably a terrible fate awaits this person but the shock of his/her comeuppance never quite dislodges the memory of how unnatural his/her previous behaviour had been.

1. Divide the class into groups.

2. Ask the groups to consider each of the following circumstances facing a protagonist and discuss how could they be used in a story to ensure he/she has to endure the haunting.

• The protagonist has to remain in the situation in which he/she is, because of either the nature of the job or financial circumstances.
• The protagonist is driven to carry on with a quest that outweighs the hinted ghostly dangers that attend it.
• The protagonist's beliefs lead him/her to ignore the danger signals.

3. Use a plenary session to feedback and share ideas.

The most successful ghost stories manage to suggest compelling reasons why an individual must endure the haunting they are exposed to. Often he/she has no choice. But even when fate is a crucial player, the plight of the victim and the reader's capacity to empathise with him or her increases in proportion to the extent we can see they have little chance of avoiding these frightening experiences.

• Professor Parkins is rigidly convinced by his rational philosophy that will not admit to the presence of the supernatural - stoutly denying the existence of ghosts in both story and film version and devoting himself (in the film) to reading the books that confirm his views.
• The characterisation of Paxton in the film is more successful than in the book, because of his desperate circumstances and sense of social inferiority, both of which lend his treasure hunting extra urgency, making him persist with it despite the supernatural prompting that he should desist.
• And finally, there is the signalman - stuck in his post, reminded by the spectre of his duties to ensure safety to those that travel the line, and yet incapable of communicating his fears, knowing his sanity will be doubted and he will be dismissed.

Like all effectively portrayed victims of hauntings all three characters are liminal - located at some crossing point in their lives or in circumstances that put them almost at the limits of conventional society. They are a guest in an empty hotel (Warning), an explorer of abandoned monasteries (Whistle), or located at the very mouth of darkness itself (the tunnel in deep cutting in The Signalman).

Activity 3

In groups, get students to discuss ways in which to make characters 'liminal' - a person at a threshold; someone outside the comfortable, familiar structures of society either temporally or more permanently. These could involve making them:

• A stranger;
• A person who has no clearly defined role or falls between roles - the governess in tales such as Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is a suitably betwixt and between individuals - neither true servant nor true family member;
• A person who significantly lacks power to alter their circumstances;
• A person in an isolated environment, or forced to use facilities normally crowded but made eerie when emptied of people after hours - schools, hotels, a swimming pool.