The Knife Essay, Research Paper
The knife
By: Alfred Hitchcock
Everybody has read a horror narrative before at some point, but a narrative from Alfred
Hitchcock is different because at the terminal he leaves the reader believing what has
happened. In “ The Knife ” he uses Plot, Setting, and Conflict to make merely this.
Edward Dawes and Herbert Smithers are merely two friends holding a drink with each
other, but one of them has a knife that was found in a nearby cloaca drain. Herbert is
cleaning it widly as if he was possesed. Then a ruddy ruby appears on the knife when he is
done cleaning it, now the lunacy breaksout like a awful plague..
While Herbert is look up toing the knife, the amah walks in and asks to see the knife,
but all of a sudden Herbert goes insane out of his head when the amah touched him,
so he stares right at the amah with a diabolic expression, and out of the blue he stabbed her,
following thing you know the amah is on the floor dead and Herbert runs out the house as fast
as he can. The reader may believe this is the flood tide, but it is non, it is the lifting action
taking up to the flood tide. Alfred Hitchcock does non state the reader why he stabbed her,
he likes to go forthing the reader thought and acquire more into the narrative, which is sort of like a
hook to maintain the reader reading.
The flood tide is where he will acquire the readers interested more in the narrative. After
Herbert runs out Edward Dawes picks up the knife and advise the constabulary of the incident.
one time he has called the constabulary for some ground he goes into the kitchen to clean the
wicked knife. While he is cleaning it, it slips out of his manus and cuts his arm, so his
married woman walks in and seek to assist him, so Edward goes bezerk merely like his friend Herbert
and for no ground stabbs her in her thorax.
The falling action and decision acquire a small Wyrd because the constabulary get to the
scene, and they start discoursing about this, but the sergeant remembers a slaying on the
same street a
while back, and the individual that was murdered on this street was Marie
Kelly, the last victim of Jack The Ripper. When Jack The Ripper was acquiring off he
dropped the knife into a cloaca drain. Both work forces say it was the knife that made them stabb
the two adult females.
All of Jack The Ripper & # 8217 ; s victims were adult females. This how the narrative ends. “ He
picked up the knife, gripped if steadfastly, and struck a airs, winking loosely.
“ Be careful, Miss Maples! ” he said. “ Jack The Ripper! ” Miss Maples giggled.
“ Well now ” , she breathed. Let me look at it, may I Sergeant Tobins, if you do non
head. ”
“ Her fingers touched his, and Sergeant Tobins drew his manus back suddenly. His
face flushed, and a ferocious choler unnacountably flared up in him at the touch of Miss
Miss Maple & # 8217 ; s manus, but as he stared into her field, bewildered face, the choler was
soothed by the enjoyable prickling heat in his right carpus. And as he took a Swift
measure toward her, there was a unusual, sweet vocalizing in his ears, high and shrill and
faraway. Or was it the sound of a adult female shouting? ” That & # 8217 ; s the terminal of the narrative and
that & # 8217 ; s how Alfred Hitchcock leaves his readers.
The scene physically is in a house in the in the eventide. Two work forces and two
adult females, one a married woman of one of the work forces, and the other the amah. The temper is non that
scaring particularly for a horror narrative. Here is one quotation mark, “ The air current blew calmly that
flushing while we were indoors holding some drinks and speaking. ”
But the temper starts to acquire tense and rapid when adult females get downing acquiring killed
because of the knife.
In “ The Knife ” the struggle was between work forces vs. adult females, or upon the reader & # 8217 ; s
determination it could be knife vs. adult females because all of the adult females that were killed, were
killed everytime they touced the adult male keeping the atrocious knife which gave the work forces
bloodlust. All of the adult females killed were all killed by a different adult male, but all with the
same knife.