The Chaser By John Collier Summary

The short story by John Collier has exposition, climax, conclusion, allusions, magical realism, imagery, symbolism, archetypes, irony and some themes. The author succeeds in making short stories and the audience is for the young adults and any man or women who are in a relationship. Collier makes it possible to have his readers imagine what’s going to happen next and makes them wonder what happened in the end.

The story starts off slowly then picks up, and then at the goodbye there’s no tying up the loose ends and the ending needs to be imagined by the reader if Alan got what he wanted. It starts off slowly by introducing the main character, how he’s feeling and the setting. The old man’s introduced after the description of his home was given. Then they started talking. It climaxed by the old man saying if he didn’t sell love potions he wouldn’t make a killing out of the potions. The actions that Alan gave are normal but a bit exaggerated.

Most of “The Chaser” alludes to Greek and Roman myth about Odyssey, the story mentions sirens. The Odyssey starts with war and wanting to go back home and has

There is the dark creaky stairs, the sign, the glass bottles in the drawer being dusty and used. The expressions of objectivity, joy, and fear are present in most of the work. There should be a reason why there are 12 glass bottles of poison during Alan’s visit, maybe the apostles during the Last Supper? Is it that Jesus got killed by the apostles because they secretly knew Judas would betray him and didn’t do anything because of dread, so as not to not be marred a traitor in history? There is plenty of irony in this piece, mostly with religion and domesticated women. Newhous’s article mentions about the cookbooks that were published at the time and some pages include recipes for canned food, the problem is it was looked down upon because it is unwomanly to not be slaving in the kitchen