There are many elements in a horror story that can make it frightening, whether it be the suspense, gore, or ghosts, but in Mary Gaitskill's short story "The Other Place" there is no supernatural. Instead, what makes Gaitskill's story so terrifying is how realistic it is. The narrator supposedly lives a normal life, except when he visits "the other place", which is a place in his mind where he goes to think about his dark and violent thoughts. Gaitskill's narrator speaks about three stages in his life: his childhood, life as a teenager, and life with his son, but the more he reveals, the scarier the story gets. The narrator has a knack for bringing up traumatic times in his life, but passing it off in an indifferent tone. He believes that …show more content…
He says that it would just take a thought to get him excited, but his thoughts were not like the thoughts other boys his age. His thoughts consisted of girls being killed or hurt, and when he had these thoughts, he would slip into the other place, where "I sometimes passively watched a killer and other times became one" (5.) As he got older, the narrator became more dangerous. His thoughts stopped becoming thoughts, and started to become actions. After following college girls, he gets the idea to hitchhike, and that is where he finds his victim. He is in his victim's car, when he pulls out his gun and tells her to "take the next right or you'll die" (14.) When he says this, his voice "at that moment came out not from me but from the other place" (14.) This is the first time he is acting on his thoughts, but it ends when his victim gains control. All of his fantasies in the other place involve him having power, so when she parks the car and tells him to just kill her, he loses his desire to hurt and kill her. She eventually tells him that he is wasting her time, and she wants him out of the car. This narrator, as he gets older, he becomes more terrifying, not only because of his actions, but because the reasons behind his desires become more
The narrator of the story seems to give off a biased opinion of the character and does so by using the literary devices of point of view and irony to contribute to the development of Clarence’s complex nature.
The theme of this passage as previously mentioned, is “Anguish of Remorse.” The protagonist seems to be the cause of all this havoc through his dialogue. His manner is very bleak and stress filled, this can be seen in all of his actions. He develops his own personal descriptions. His intentions
3) The tone that was demonstrated throughout the story is family. The author believes that family will support you and come to your defense no matter what.
Since this story is told by death it tends to have a rather morbid feel. This story is told in second person. Since not many books are written in second person this one reads quite differently than others. It has a detached feel to it, like listening to a person on the platform discuss the goings on inside a passing train.
Edgar Allan Poe depicts his narrator in the story as a man who is believed to be mad. The narrator assures that he is sane and that...
In the commencement of the story, the narrator is shocked and in disbelief about the news of his brother’s incarceration, “It was not to be believed” (83). It had been over a year since he had seen his brother, but all he had was memories of him, “This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done” (83). The narrator’s thoughts about Sonny triggered his anxiety that very day. It was difficult to bear the news of what his brother had become, yet at some point he could relate to Sonny on a personal level, “I hear my brother. And myself” (84). After the news had spurred, the narrator experienced extreme anxiety to the point of sweating. Jus...
Psychological horror is characterized as horror literature which “relies on the character fears, guilt, failings, evil, and mental instability to build tension or further the plot (Howells 410).” Many stories can be defined as psychological horror, including the short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” revolves around the story of Connie, a fifteen year old, who through her own mistakes, allows herself to be stolen from her home by a stranger, Arnold Friend, who gained an obsession with Connie. This short story is an example of psychological horror portrayed through the themes such as independence, fantasy versus reality, and loss of innocence.
It’s important to examine how Foer is able to accurately represent trauma in his story, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Todd Atchinson states, “Trauma literature depicts a survivor’s personal struggle in responding to and representing the mass atrocities suffered through the threats to individual, cultural and inhuman eradication.” Breaking that down, he is arguing that trauma literature like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close attempt to follow a person’s journey to redefine themselves after facing a tragedy that as threatened their individual and cultural identities. The hardest part of this is creating a text that is both realistic and relatable, with a narrator that can be trusted to relay important information accurately throughout the story. Now if a reader were to try to think of a trusty narrator, Oskar might not pop into her mind right away. However, it appears that Fo...
He really avoids the problem about the theory. As an example, he thinks you never curse the injustice of the woman deeply, so which is one of the people that he believes a person most because he thinks about it. And he is bright and it seems to be separated from other people. It is the narrator of the story, but, from the opinion of the reader, he seems to seem to be a person with conceit by oneself. For this reason, the reader may feel that condition is wrong and may doubt his reliability.
We simultaneously believe, however, that society is disinterested in an individual’s story. One outcome of this dilemma is that public knowledge can only be built from “something real, some firm ground for action that would lead…onto the plane of history…” (507). In other words, the stories that are remembered are concrete. Individual’s stories are filled with uncertainty and emotions that continuously evolve. Society is too careless to comprehend this complexity. This leads to the other outcome, the narrator suggested, being our inability to understand one another. Our distinct experiences are critical elements in shaping our way of being; yet, they are unknown and figuratively we are
...oe strove not so much to tell a story as to produce an effect such as that of desolation and despair.
The first thing the narrator tells us is that he doesn't expect us to believe the story he's about to write, or ask us to believe it. He says he'd have to be crazy to think we'll believe him he can hardly believe it himself. Then he says he isn't crazy and isn't dreaming. He is going to die the very next day, and has confess everything to set his story straight. His purpose in writing the story is to give the world a the plain facts of a series of mere household event read stuff that happened around the house. The consequences of the things that have happened around this mans house have caused him intense fear, extreme discomfort, and have actually destroyed him. But, he isn't going to go into the details of that. Rather, he is going to present
The opinions of the narrator can be seen throughout the book. The readers saw a glimpse of the narrator’s opinions about the settings, situations and the characters. However, the narrator’s attitude throughout the book changes over time. In the beginning of the book, the readers got information about the narrator feeling guilt towards his writing career due to his Puritan ancestors. In the passage, the narrator has some judgmental attitude towards the Puritan community.
Through his voice, it assists our understanding of the material as through the narrator’s bleak heart, we are made to experience very strongly the extent of his guilt. The tone of this passage is somewhat personal in the sense that he seems like he is arguing and deliberating to himself about the events which either have happened or are about to, ‘ …Had I the a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?’. He questions his own significance in society at the time when the passage is written and for the future generations and thinks himself as a ‘curse upon everlasting generations’. Having heard his reasons and seen his desolation and feeling the despair of desolation we, as readers are more able to sympathise with his actions.
In the first paragraph, Stephen King begins the story with the main character as an old man describing the horrific event that occurred to him at the age of nine. With this it shows that even at his old age, this horrific event that occurred to him many years ago, it still haunts him. As the story continues, he mentions that he has a book marked “Diary.” Using that shows that he must write