Dark Fantasy Comparison

Conor Doyle

Mr. Bailey

Dark Fantasy Essay

10/3/10

            Dark fantasy plays on human’s most basic instinctive fears: death, the supernatural, and horror. These aspects are depicted well in Stephen King’s The Raft, Robert McCammon’s Nightcrawlers, and Richard Matheson’s Duel. The Raft is the best example of dark fantasy, followed by Nightcrawlers, and lastly Duel.

            Duel is a short story about a guy named Mann who is driving to San Francisco for a business trip, but a has a near deadly run in with a seemingly insane trucker, who nearly kills Mann on several occasions. In the end, Mann survives because the trucker tries to take a turn to sharply and overturns and explodes. Although there is no supernatural aspect to this short story, which is why it is not the best example of dark fantasy, its emphasis on the human mind and how it reacts when put in a life or death situation is what makes it still apply to the sub genre. When Mann first has an experience with the trucker passing him at a dangerously high speed, he is scared and tries to calm himself down. As the duel between them gets more intense, his fear becomes great enough that he can no longer make any excuses for the trucker, and starts to panic when he is followed to the diner. The death aspect comes into this story comes in not only when the trucker dies, but also when Mann realizes that he may not survive this ordeal, and thinks seriously that he was going to die.

            In Nightcrawlers, the story takes place at a highway diner somewhere down south. A policeman named Dennis is having a meal and talking to Cheryl, the waitress and the cook, whose name is Bob. A family is eating a quick snack in a booth. Death is suggested from the very beginning when Dennis tells of the hotel massacre at Daytona Beach. The massacre itself has an aspect of the supernatural because there were plenty of bullet holes and the victims looked like they had been shot up, yet no bullets were found. Then a Viet Nam veteran named Price comes in, and they fear him because he drives in recklessly, and yells at Dennis when he tries to talk to him about the war. Supernatural events occur when Price suddenly thinks of a beer and one appears in his hand for a moment, and Bob is stunned. This display of his paranormal powers really freaks Bob out, and he becomes scared. Horror, death, and the supernatural all come together in the chilling conclusion when Price falls asleep, his ghostly comrades from the war who he deserted converge on the diner, shooting the place up with the imaginary bullets, and killing price. This combination of all the dark fantasy traits makes it truly a great example of the sub genre.

            Finally the best example of dark fantasy is The Raft. It is truly great because you have four young college kids who decide to do something stupid to be tough, telling nobody where they are and being completely unaware. The swim out to the dock, and immediately the supernatural starts to happen when the oil slick monster comes, and hypnotizes Rachel into falling into it, and it burns through her with a terrible burning acid, leaving the other three kids in total horror on the dock, too petrified with fear to swim away. Right away there is horror, fear, and supernatural events happening to these poor kids, and all three remain constant for the rest of the story, making this short story the perfect example of dark fantasy.

             All three of these short stories had their own unique way of incorporating dark fantasy’s aspects of death, the supernatural, and horror. The Duel focused more on realism and the fear of death, but its total lack of the supernatural puts it in last place. Nightcrawlers had a strong sense of the supernatural, and there was great fear and death, but no constant horror that prevailed throughout. The Raft included all three aspects of dark fantasy in perfect balance, and that is why it was number one on my list.