The Hitchhiker

Hitchhiking, hitchhiking can be seen from the public as a figurative game of Russian roulette, having number after number of possible consequences. The definition for hitchhiking is traveling by getting free lifts from passing vehicles, this simple word has branched out and has been linked to a vast group of stereotypes. In most customary hitchhiker stories we expect someone to be in a body bag before we finish reading whether it be the hitch-hiker or the person giving someone a ride, but in the three hitchhiker stories that our class read: “The Hitch-hiker” by Anthony Horowitz“, The Hitch-hiker” by Francis Greig and “The Hitch-hiker” by Roald Dahl they were able to bypass all stereotypes and generalisations the reader had with a single character who moves the text away from typical arrangement of picking up a mysterious man or hitchhiking into a car with a mysterious man to find out he is a psychopathic murderer.
In Anthony Horrowitz’s story he deviates away from the normal hitchhiker storyline and only reveals that he does this at the end. In the story we are lead to believe that the shady man they picked up is a vicious killer, Anthony Horrowitz’s does this by playing on our stereotypes and generalisations and backing it up with adjectives that make the hitchhiker seem sneaky and secretive when really he was just an innocent gardener and the boy (Jacob) was the one in the wrong. This type of writing is effective because it draws the writer in by tricking them into thinking they already know what is going to happen and then surprising them.
In Francis Greig’s text all the attention is on Carole and her paranoia in her situation. The hitchhiker in Francis Greig’s story makes an appearance briefly at the end of the text emphasizing Carole’s paranoia. The centre of this story revolves around Carole and her second guessing the generalisations she made creating a tense atmosphere. The fact that Carole mind at work is the centre of this story is what separates it