Literary Strangers

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Authors and screenwriters frequently employ the arrival of a stranger to drive the conflict in narrative. The writer will introduce the reader to a protagonist, add the arrival of a stranger to the protagonist’s life, then use that stranger’s presence to change the protagonist in dramatic ways. Seven ready examples from literature and film reveal the importance of the arrival of a stranger to drive such narratives: Ernest Hemingway's "Indian Camp” and “Hills Like White Elephants," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," ….

One narrative that illustrates an author’s capacity to introduce a stranger as a transformative element in the protagonist’s life is Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp.” When young Nick accompanies his father to an Indian camp to deliver a breech birth baby, his life is changed forever by his encounter with the baby’s father, an injured man who commits an act which will haunt Nick forever. “[The Indian father] had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.” (17). Later in the story, the father decides—either from the pain of his injury or the guilt he feels about subjecting his wife to the pain of birth—slits his own throat. “The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.” (20). This stranger who has come into Nick’s life leaves him wondering why a human would take his own life—a question that even his father cannot answer.

In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills like White Elephants” the stranger introduced is an unborn child. The stranger is introduced when the man know as the American states “'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig'” (Page Number). Throughout the story the American alludes to the fact that he wants the abortion and the woman doesn’t. However, the relationship between the American and the woman is doomed to fail, the back-and-forth questions between...