How Does Fletcher Build Suspense In The Hitchhiker

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Strange noises, eerie strangers, and phantasms are things that often pull an audience into a suspenseful story. In Lucille Fletcher’s The Hitchhiker a man is driving from his home in Brooklyn to the west coast. Along the way he continues to see a man who makes him nervous. Eventually, the vision makes him question his sanity. This play works because of the plot decisions that the author has made. Fletcher uses the elements of plot to create an effective story.
One of the finest ways that Fletcher develops suspense is in the exposition and rising action. She starts the play by having Ronald Adams address the audience about his sanity. “I know that I am, at this moment perfectly sane” (100). The audience knows deep down that he is not sane. She continues to build suspense when the man in his flashback sees a man standing
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The climax begins to build when Adams think about killing the hitchhiker. “I stepped on the gas hard, veering the wheel sharply toward him. I could hear the train in the distance now but I did not care. Then something went wrong with the car. It stalled on the tracks” (1007). Adams tried to run the man over that he kept seeing. Once he revved the gas to make it over the tracks, the car had stalled on the tracks. Fletcher continues to build the climax by having the hitchhiker to disappear when the train leaves. “I managed to back up. But when the train passed, he was gone” (1007). Adams had finally gotten the car off the tracks but when the train passed the hitchhiker had disappeared. The audience gets jerked into reality that he has been dead all along. “She been prostrated for five days. Nervous breakdown. It’s all taken place since the death of her son Ronald Adams” (1011). Ronald Adams mother had a nervous breakdown because she found out her son had died in a car accident. Fletcher has now taken us from the climax of the play into falling action and