Suspense. Horror. Fear. All of these things coincide with “The Hitchhiker” by Lucille Fletcher. “The Hitchhiker” is a story about a man named Ronald Adams who is driving cross-country from Brooklyn to California. He leaves his home with his mother worrisome of him having an accident in the motorized vehicle he was in. On the morning he was leaving New york, in the rain, he sees a man on the Brooklyn Bridge. He seemed to have been waiting on a ride. Ronald sees him again an hour later at the Pulaski Skyway. Along several points in his journey, Ronald sees him multiple times, despite the fact that, logically, there was no physical way this man could stay ahead of him. Ronald Adams is more on the insane side. He is insane for the following reasons: …show more content…
Ronald becomes frantic and starts thinking irrationally. Ronald is already an emotional wreck by the time he starts seeing the hitchhiker at a constant rate, but it gets worse as the time goes on. Adams is losing his mind and panicking because of the hitchhiker and he starts thinking far out of the box. He thinks that he is going to run over the man. “I HAD seen him at that roadside stand. I knew I'd see him again. Maybe at the next turn of the road. I knew that when I saw him next -- I would run him down” (Fletcher). Ronald says he isn't crazy, but he actually is. Ronald adams is an odd man. He leaves home to go driving cross-country and doesn't make it to his planned destination. He starts seeing a man in each place he goes. He starts seeing him everywhere and he starts going crazier than he already is. “My name is Ronald Adams. I'm thirty-six years of age, unmarried, tall, dark with a black moustache. I drive a 1940 Buick, license number 6Y175189. I was born in Brooklyn. All this I know. I know that I'm at this moment perfectly sane, that it's not me who's gone mad -- but something else, something utterly beyond my control”(Fletcher). Ronald Adams is not a crazy man. He is completely
“I sit and watch this boy walking backward until a car stops for him. I think, he is a polite boy, and lucky to get rides at night” (Pancake 88). In the short story, “Time and Again”, the main character overcomes his obsession for murdering innocent hitchhikers. He does this because of the tragic loss of his wife and son. By killing the hitchhikers it gives him a sense of contentment.
In the memoir, The Other Wes Moore, the author Wes Moore compares his life with another man's, whose name was also Wes Moore, and shows how shockingly similar they were. Particular coincidences are certainly strange, like the fact that both of their fathers were not around, both mothers cared about their child's well being, they both lived in the Bronx at one point in their childhoods, and the obvious one, their names are the same. Not only were their home lives similar but they also had similar social experiences, including being caught breaking the law; however, this book also illustrates, through these social experiences, the subtle differences in their lives as well.
One question that stuck out in my mind was, “Where did this guy live before coming to Chicago?” The fact that he hadn’t experienced what he was going through before he hit age twenty-two struck me as odd. This led me to assume he originated from a mostly black community where white fear wasn’t common to him. The next thing that struck interest in my mind was the automatic assumption that the women in the alley feared him because he was black, and not because of the fact he was a rather large male at six-feet, two-inches, and had a beard. Not to mention that he was walking behind her late at night down an alleyway with no witnesses. Naturally even I would be wary of a man walking behind me in a situation like that, even if “the stalker” was a women. I do not blame that women for getting out of that situation.
Despite of this information, how he is a calculated killed, in paragraph 2 it reads,” Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.” A person who is mentally insane can have uncomfortable behaviors and this information shows that he had nothing against the old man. Therefore, the narrator acted on impulsive behavior and can be described as mentally
In Richard Yates’ fictional novel Revolutionary Road, April Wheeler, Frank Wheeler, and John Givings all seek escape from their current captive situations in suburbia; however, while April and Frank employ concrete methods of escape, the mentally unstable John Givings has no solid plan of escape. Foremost, April Wheeler is a young woman seeking freedom and independence, which also means getting away from her suburban life. She first attempts her escape when she joins the Laurel Players in a production of The Petrified Forest. Full of hope, April dreams of something different and exciting. Her dreams are crushed when the play crashes and burns. Her face that she puts on for the stage, bright, glowing, and covered with makeup, represents her dreams for something bigger. Once she fails, she retreats back to suburbia, removing her makeup and revealing a “graceless, suffering creature” with a “constricted” appearance and a “false” smile (Yates 13). The more April tries to conceal her disappointment, the more her anger builds. Soon, she snaps, declaring that her husband Frank has pu...
Suspense is only one of Hitchcock’s many techniques and themes. His themes range from the obvious violence, to the depths of human interaction and sex. From Rear Window to Psycho, Hitchcock’s unique themes are present and evident. Rear Window starts with something we all do at times, which is nosing in and stalking on others business, and turns it into a mysterious investigation leaving the viewer second guessing their neighbors at home. Psycho on the other hand, drags
“I didn’t see—anybody. There wasn’t nothing, but a bunch of steers—and the barbed wire fence.” (94) His desperation and loneliness overpowering all, Adams takes up his initial idea of running down the hitchhiker, but his momentary traveling companion does not see the victim, claiming he was never there. Now in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the hitchhiker doesn’t wait for Adams to make a stop before appearing; his form and face flit by every other mile. (96) Learning of his mother’s prostration and the death of Ronald Adams, the protagonist leaves the audience with his last thought: Somewhere among them, he is waiting for me. Somewhere I shall know who he is, and who . . . I . . . am . . .” (97) Alone, without the willpower to fight for survival, the main character fades into a mist of doubt and helplessness.
As the story develops, Scottie gets admitted to a psychiatric unit. His mental and emotional confusion is illustrated by chaotic music. When he meets a young woman named Judy Barton, who bears a striking resemblance to the late Madeleine, Hitch really takes advantage of color in a scene in Judy's apartment. Fog, typical to San Francisco, combined with green light coming from a neon sign in the street, give the scene a remarkable, almost divine effect. In order for Scottie to overcome the trauma he suffered when he lost Madeleine, he drives Judy to the same church and asks her to run up the stairs in an attempt to reproduce the sequence of events leading up to Madeleine's death. Shockingly, Judy really jumps off the roof, thus abruptly ending the story.
Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite subject was the superficial placidity of American life, whose clean, bright surfaces disguised the most shockingly moral, political, psychological and sexual aberrations. For Hitchcock, the most striking, funny, and terrifying quality of American life was its confidence in its sheer ordinariness. Beneath the surface, ordinary people and normal life were always ‘bent’ for Hitchcock.
In John Irving's novel titled, A Prayer for Owen Meany, suspenseful events are of abundance, and there are multiple ways the author creates this suspense. Among these methods of creating suspense, four that stand out are the use of setting, the pace of the story, the involvement of mysteries to be solved, and the ability of the reader to easily identify and sympathize with the protagonist. By placing a character in a gloomy or solitary place, uncomfortable feelings are created, which append to the suspense. Pace and structure of the story also play into the foundation of suspense, as shorter sentences and stronger, more cutting verbs and adjectives are often used to keep the reader highly interested and reading at a rapid speed. Of course, suspense could not be considered what it is if there were no mystery involved. The element of not knowing what is in store for the future and having the urge to find out is the essence of suspense. Also, if the reader cannot easily relate to and sympathize with the character in the suspenseful situation, a loss of interest can arise, and therefore spoil the spirit of the tension. Uncomfortable settings, pace and structure, use of mysteries, and capability to relate to the main character are four techniques that John Irving uses to create suspense.
...t home and tells his wife that he nearly crashed the car again (Miller 8).
This independent reading assignment is dedicated to Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut experienced many hardships during and as a result of his time in the military, including World War II, which he portrays through the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim. Slaughterhouse-Five, however, not only introduces these military experiences and the internal conflicts that follow, but also alters the chronological sequence in which they occur. Billy is an optometry student that gets drafted into the military and sent to Luxembourg to fight in the Battle of Bulge against Germany. Though he remains unscathed, he is now mentally unstable and becomes “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 30). This means that he is able to perceive
" You fancy me mad? Madmen know nothing about this. But you should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what caution-with what foresight-with what dissimulation I went to work!" In addition, every night at midnight the narrator slowly went into the room of the old man. He claims this was done so wisely that he could not be insane.
David arrived at Betty’s house, picked her up, and promptly proceeded to Lake Herman Road, a well known "lover’s lane" of the local teenagers. After a while, a car, possibly a blue Valiant, pulled up next to David’s 1961 brown and beige four-door station wagon, and a man got out. "Framed only in silhouette, the man appeared to be stocky in build and slightly heavy, with an eerie sense about him" (Tina 3). The man requested that the teens get out of their car, but they refused.
The next character introduced is the narrator. He is both complex and interesting. He thinks he is not crazy. As he goes out of his way to prove that his is not insane, he does the exact opposite. His relationship with the old man is unknown. However, he does say he loves the old man. “I loved the old man.” (Poe 1).