Fresh Bait Analysis

In the story “Fresh Bait” written by Sherryl Clark, the narrator is searching for her sister’s killer. The title is appropriate because the narrator is risking her life as ‘bait’ to lure in her sister’s killer. The story is set on a highway where the girl is hitchhiking. It begins with the narrator accepting a ride from the potential murderer until he drops her off a short time later. The action takes place in the car and includes the narrator having some memories of her sister’s murder. The theme of the story is the search to find a murder as well as not getting into cars with strangers. We know that this is the theme because when the narrator’s sister got into a car with a stranger, she found herself dead. This gives you a warning as if to say that there are dangers with going into cars with strangers.

The writer engages the reader/s by showing them the story and not just telling the story. The scene is set when the author shows the narrator hitch hiking on the road. The author establishes the characters by making them involved (speech, etc.) The author is very descriptive when writing. The complication of the story is when the sales representative who picked up the narrator had checked off everything on the suspect list except for the last one. This brings suspicion from him but the narrator is still wary. This engages the reader/s by making them curious about the man that seems to show sings that he could be Melanie’s murderer. Unfortunately, since he doesn’t check off the last vital checkpoint which is ‘finger’, he is, to the narrator, a mystery. We do not know for certain if he is actually Melanie’s murderer. This makes the reader stick to the end and to find out what happens. We find out at the end that the last clue was misleading and that it was actually pointing to his last name meaning that there was actually no anomaly of any kind with his fingers. The narrator finding out that by ‘finger’, her sister meant her murderer’s last name, which was