The Night Of The Hunter Analysis

When children endure high-level stress situations that mix with a lack of loving, supportive relationships, children endanger their brain's and can achieve permanent brain damage . In Davis Grubb's gothic novel, The Night of the Hunter, a blameless child named Pearl experiences traumatic situations and lacks a supportive relationship. The Preacher’s perfect storm causes Pearl to back-track and makes her figuratively experience short-term memory loss. Thourgh the character of Pearl, Grubb suggests that in order for our minds to function properly, we must have at least one relationship which is supportive and loving. The four year old Pearl, orphaned by "Sin and Green" (Grubb 22), becomes forcefully adopted by the Preacher. Once Pearl loses all loving parental support, she falls into the Preacher's trap. The Preacher seems to be a perfect mix of an evilness and insanity, who finds ways to creep into people’s lives only to then show his true colors once people around him realize his intentions. Except, some people do not realize his intentions until it becomes too late. Sweet, innocent Pearl is one of those who never realizes his intent.
All Pearl wants in her cruel world is to be loved by someone, and her blindness to the Preacher’s evilness causes her to keep falling back into his trap. Even when the Preacher threatens to,"tear...[her] arm off," (140) and grabs her physically, Pearl forgets this and she’s willing to fall back in his arms later. These traumatic experiences, such as when the Preacher flips to his evil side and Pearl doesn’t recognize it because she mistakes his duplicitousness for love, are very disturbing to