Essay/Term paper: The knife

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Book Reports

The knife



By: Alfred Hitchcock



Everybody has read a horror story before at some point, but a story from Alfred



Hitchcock is different because at the end he leaves the reader thinking what has



happened. In "The Knife" he uses Plot, Setting, and Conflict to do just this.



Edward Dawes and Herbert Smithers are just two friends having a drink with each



other, but one of them has a knife that was found in a nearby sewer drain. Herbert is



cleaning it widly as if he was possesed. Then a red ruby appears on the knife when he is



done cleaning it, now the madness breaksout like a terrible plague..



While Herbert is admiring the knife, the maid walks in and asks to see the knife,



but all of a sudden Herbert goes insane out of his mind when the maid touched him,



then he stares right at the maid with a devilish look, and out of the blue he stabbed her,



next thing you know the maid is on the floor dead and Herbert runs out the house as fast



as he can. The reader may think this is the climax, but it is not, it is the rising action



leading up to the climax. Alfred Hitchcock does not tell the reader why he stabbed her,



he likes to leaving the reader thinking and get more into the story, which is kind of like a



hook to keep the reader reading.



The climax is where he will get the readers interested more in the story. After



Herbert runs out Edward Dawes picks up the knife and notifys the police of the incident.



once he has called the police for some reason he goes into the kitchen to clean the



wicked knife. While he is cleaning it, it slips out of his hand and cuts his arm, then his



wife walks in and trys to help him, then Edward goes bezerk just like his friend Herbert



and for no reason stabbs her in her chest.



The falling action and conclusion get a little weird because the police get to the



scene, and they start discussing about this, but the sergeant remembers a murder on the



same street a while back, and the person that was murdered on this street was Marie



Kelly, the last victim of Jack The Ripper. When Jack The Ripper was getting away he



dropped the knife into a sewer drain. Both men say it was the knife that made them stabb



the two women.



All of Jack The Ripper's victims were women. This how the story ends. "He



picked up the knife, gripped if firmly, and struck a pose, winking broadly.



"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 not



mind."



"Her fingers touched his, and Sergeant Tobins drew his hand back abruptly. His



face flushed, and a fierce anger unnacountably flared up in him at the touch of Miss



Miss Maple's hand, but as he stared into her plain, bewildered face, the anger was



soothed by the pleasurable tingling warmth in his right wrist. And as he took a swift



step toward her, there was a strange, sweet singing in his ears, high and shrill and



faraway. Or was it the sound of a woman screaming?" That's the end of the story and



that's how Alfred Hitchcock leaves his readers.



The setting physically is in a house in the in the evening. Two men and two



women, one a wife of one of the men, and the other the maid. The mood is not that



frightening especially for a horror story. Here is one quote, "The wind blew calmly that



evening while we were inside having some drinks and talking."



But the mood starts to get tense and rapid when women starting getting killed



because of the knife.



In "The Knife" the conflict was between men vs. women, or upon the reader's



decision it could be knife vs. women because all of the women that were killed, were



killed everytime they touced the man holding the horrible knife which gave the men



bloodlust. All of the women killed were all killed by a different man, but all with the



same knife.