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Culture of fear conclusion
Culture of fear conclusion
Culture of fear conclusion
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There are many ways fear can control ones life. Fear can drive one to insanity, even. In Lucille Fletcher’s The Hitchhiker, the main character Ronald Adams, tries to prove to both the readers and other people that he is sane. As the events of the play continue, a hitchhiker seems to be following him around, which drives Ronald mad. Lucille uses many elements of her plot to craft an amazing, effective, and thrilling story.
The beginning of our plot introduces both Adams and the hitchhiker, but not all is right with the free traveling man. He seems to constantly follow Adams, “Crossing the Brooklyn bridge in the rain that morning, I saw a man leaning agains the cable poles.” (page 1002 The Hitchhiker) being as the first time he sees the man, Ronald Adams doesn't think much of it. Until he sees the man again, the mood getting a tad eerie. “I would have forgotten about him, except a hour later I saw him again.” (page 1002 The Hitchhiker)
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Coming close to the first climax of the story, Adams begins to discover that the hitchhiker may not actually be there.
This turns the story darker, gives a motion of both fear and surprise. This also gives the motion that Ronald Adams is not completely sane. “hitchhikers? Here?” “A guy would be a fool to hitch a ride on these roads.” (pages 1002, 1003 The Hitchhiker) This is just the beginning of the audience thinking that perhaps the hitchhiker isn't actually real. Then Adams actually gets told himself that he’s seeing things “did you see him that time?” “No, I didn't see him that time and I don’t expect never to see him!” (page 1008 of The Hitchhiker)
And then the figure wont leave him be “For now he begun to appear everywhere, where I stopped for food and drink.” (page 1009 of The Hitchhiker) Towards the ending of The Hitchhiker, both the audience and Ronald Adams realize the Hitchhiker isn’t real. Although, with literary symbolisms, the audience can connect that the hitchhiker is a symbol for death. “And now I knew he was beckoning me, beckoning me into death.” (The Hitchhiker, page 1007) In that case, the figure is trying to take him to death, although in others he seems to be death. “I could see his figure, shadowless, flitting before me in its same attitude, over the cold and lifeless ground.” (page 1010 of The Hitchhiker) And then Adams learns that he died, days before. “its all taken place since the death of her oldest son, Ronald.” and then the last symbol for death, “your three minutes are up, sir.” (both quotes from page 1011 of The Hitchhiker) Using fear, suspense, drama, and action, Lucille Fletcher made an amazing plot out of her play, The Hitchhiker. Her use of supernatural occurrences made for an effective story. Throughout the play, Ronald Adams faces a hitchhiker that follows him from place to place, slowly driving him mad. As it continues, Adams realizes the hitchhiker isn't really there, and then it’s revealed that Adams died days ago. With her play, Lucille raised one question. Who is the hitchhiker, and what does he mean?
Lucille Fletcher’s story “The Hitchhiker”, is a story that creates fear in the hearts of some people. And not just any fear, a fear that would impel even the strongest man to go insane. The main character, Ronald Adams, had that fear, with seeing a hitchhiker more than ten times drove him to almost getting hit by a train. Fletcher creates an effective, and suspenseful story, with the use of elemental plots.
Then, the main character comments, “He hops to the ground, and I watch him walking backward, thumbing” (Pancake 87-88). You can conclude that he finally comes to the realization that these hitchhikers deserve to live despite his recent losses. In sum, this is the major turning point in the story because this is when he finally overcomes his obsession of murdering the
Robbins reflects that everything is interrelated, and how our societies denial of that fact is damaging. Julian displays the Western mentality of a free rider, when defining hitch hiking: "Hitchhiking is parasitic, no more than a reckless panhandling, as far as I can see. "(Cowgirls 45). Similarly, Sissy lives her life constantly focused on finding the next driver who will pick her up. She is consistently engaged with the rhythm of people on the move, but all Julian recognizes is that she is not a contributing part of the whole.
The idea of fear is a fairly simple concept, yet it carries the power to consume and control lives. Fears have stemmed from an inadvertent psychological response to situations deemed threating to one’s personal safety, but have evolved into a complex web of often illogical misconceptions which are able to cloud a person’s judgment and result in situations often worse than originally intended. Fears can be hard to quell, but it has been shown the best way to overcome fears is often to face them, as author James Baldwin asserted when he wrote, “To defend oneself against fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.” Baldwin makes strongly qualified statement, and his idea fears must be faced to ensure one is not conquered by them is evident frequently, and is especially visible in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel, The Scarlet Letter. In The Scarlet Letter, two characters are placed in situations in which they are directly confronted with their fears, but react much differently, resulting in contrastingly different consequences. Baldwin’s assertion is qualified by the journeys of Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter, who show how facing one’s fears can have a positive outcome while defending oneself from their fears can have detrimental consequences.
“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.
Alfred Hitchcock’s films not only permanently scar the brains of his viewers but also addict them to his suspense. Hitchcock’s films lure you in like a trap, he tells the audience what the characters don’t know and tortures them with the anticipation of what’s going to happen.
The paper compares two short stories (Poe’s “the fall of The House of Usher” and Perkins-Gillman’s “the Yellow Wallpaper”), in order to develop arguments about the relationship between characters’ fears and the main theme of each story. In the two short stories, the characters are suffering from various forms of fear under different circumstances. Such fears include fear of fear, fear of death, fear of other people, fear of isolation, fear of punishment, and fear of loss of reputation. Such different forms of fears can assist readers in understanding the motives of the characters.
Sherwood Anderson depicts all the characters throughout his 24 short stories as a grotesque. He prefaces most of the stories with the old writer’s definition of what it means to be a grotesque. This definition frames how the book is to be interpreted throughout the different stories. Anderson paints every character as a grotesque. However, he does not paint them in the same light. What may make one person a grotesque may not make another person a grote...
Through the use of insanity as a metaphor, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, introduced us to characters and stories that illustrate the path to insanity from the creation of a weakened psychological state that renders the victim susceptible to bouts of madness, the internalization of stimuli that has permeated the human psyche resulting in the chasm between rational and irrational thought, and the consequences of the effects of the psychological stress of external stimuli demonstrated through the actions of their characters.
Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the
When writing a story that is meant to scare the reader, authors use a variety of different literary elements to intensify fear. This is apparent in the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “beware: do not read this poem,” and “House Taken Over”. It is shown through transformation in the character, setting, and sometimes even the story or poem itself, adding to the scariness that the reader feels when reading it. While there are some examples of transformation not being scary or not playing a role in stories meant to scare us, transformation plays a crucial role in making the reader of these stories scared.
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.
This relates to a very significant element in stories meant to scare us: transformation. The most compelling part of this element is transformation in people or characters. There are incredible examples of this in the stories Frankenstein, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Raven and even in a personal experience of mine involving the popular movie, The Goonies. There are marvelous examples of transforming characters in the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. One of these is the book’s namesake himself.
Stories have an opportunity to leave the reader with many different impressions. When you look a different characters within the stories the ones that leave the greatest impressions are the ones that tend to scare us. The figures in Bob Dylar’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have you been?”, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”, and Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suite” all instill a bit of fear in the reader. They are symbols that represent the devil or devil like attributes in people and the uncertainties of human nature.
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one of the most evident and important themes is the theme of madness. The theme is apparent throughout the play, mainly through the actions and thoughts of Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes. Madness is defined as the quality or condition of mental illness or derangement (being insane). Madness is at the center of the conflicts and problems of the play and is conveyed through Shakespeare’s elaborate use of manipulation and parallels between Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes to contribute to Hamlet’s tragic character. All examples of madness begin and end with death.