Dark Fantasy Essay

There are many people whose favorite stories are in the Dark Fantasy subgenre. This is because Dark Fantasy has a sort of appeal to some readers, whether it is because of certain horrific events, or the fear that it creates in them. Sometimes readers are drawn to the fear that a character’s impending death brings about. The three short stories, Duel, Nightcrawlers, and The Raft, all clearly demonstrate qualities of horror, fear, and impending death, with The Raft taking the cake as the epitome of Dark Fantasy. Furthermore, while Nightcrawlers and The Raft both clearly demonstrate qualities of the supernatural, Duel comes up short without any sign of the supernatural.

Duel is the least exemplary of the Dark Fantasy genre out of the three short stories presented, but it still shows substantial evidence that it is in fact Dark Fantasy. In Duel a person named Mann is driving to San Francisco but runs into a problem along the way. A mysterious truck driver harasses him on the highway, and no matter what Mann tries to, the driver won’t give up. The author, Richard Matheson first presents an element of fear in the short story when the mystery driver passes Mann for the second time. He describes the, “Unexpected roar of the truck motor,” making his startled look, “jump to the rearview mirror.” Eventually, Mann’s fear faded to anger towards the truck driver as the passing road battle continued. Mann pulled off the highway and stopped at a diner hoping to calm his anger and lose the truck driver, only to realize that the truck driver had followed him into the diner. Once again, fear and anxiety start taking over as Mann doesn’t know what to do; “What was to prevent him from calling the local police and telling them the situation?” but then again, “What if the truck driver stayed to face him? Naturally he’d deny everything.” This argument Mann is having in his mind while sitting at the diner enhances the tension in the novel that the fear creates. It escalates even more once Mann returns to the road and the truck driver tries to kill him again. Not only is the truck driver obviously waiting for and following Mann, but Mann’s car is also slowly dying and will not be able to last much longer. The fear throughout the short story along with the notion of impending death makes Duel an acceptable example of Dark Fantasy.

Nightcrawlers is another fine example of Dark Fantasy showing elements of fear, impending death, and horror. The frightening mood of the piece is first established with the raging storm outside; “Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip.” It almost seems as if the storm with its huge booms of thunder, is warning the people in the diner of what is going to happen later on. Later, a man walks into the diner and the workers there soon discover all the problems that come with him. When this man first walked in, the narrator described him as, “a man who looked like walking death.” This clearly demonstrates an element of horror and obviously, impending death. One main component of Dark Fantasy is that the protagonist is trying to escape death. The man who walked into the diner had been driving all night so that he would not fall asleep. This is because if he fell asleep, his war-filled past would come back to life, literally. The man drove all night and was going to continue driving so that the war and death did not come back into his life. The fact that the man’s dreams come to life is an apparent example of the supernatural in this story. The appearance of the supernatural and the protagonist trying to escape death makes it a superior example of Dark Fantasy compared to Duel.

While Duel and Nightcrawlers both exemplify the Dark Fantasy genre, The Raft is the most fitting of the three. For example, the protagonist of The Raft, Randy, perfectly corresponds to the typical Dark Fantasy protagonist which is to escape death. He outlives all of his three friends who each get picked off one by one by “the monster”. In this short story the monster was what seemed to look like a harmless oil slick, but in reality was a human-hungry monster. Even after his first two friends are eaten, Randy is determined to keep his friend, LaVern and himself alive. Even after she gets eaten Randy stays awake all night and all days so that he will not become vulnerable to the will of the monster. Along with the protagonist’s impending death, there is most definitely an element of the supernatural in this short story. The “oil slick”, not only can take hold of people and eat them alive, but it does so by entrancing them with its colors. It almost hypnotizes them and draws them in so that it can eat the victim. The horror created when the monster kills each of its victims also greatly contributes the Dark Fantasy genre of this story. Deke’s death posed to be the most gruesome, as the monster pulled his whole body through one of the cracks in the raft; “Blood streamed from each of Deke’s ears. His face was a hideous purple turnip, swelled and shapeless with the hydrostatic pressure of some unbelievable reversal…” Stephen King, the author of The Raft is excellent with his choice of vocabulary and the impact that it has on the reader. The words he chooses put images in the reader’s head that are horrifying and perfect at generating fear within the reader. The Raft through King’s excellent vocabulary to create horrific imaging, along with his use of the protagonist’s pending death is an excellent example of the Dark Fantasy Genre. 

While all three short stories are considered Dark Fantasy, some are a greater part of the genre than others. Duel is the least exemplary of the three, as it only creates fear in the reader and shows the main characters impending death. However, Nightcrawlers is a better example because it also contains qualities of the supernatural. The Raft demonstrates obvious examples of fear and horror, along with the protagonist’s imminent death and the supernatural.  While Nightcrawlers and Duel are both clear examples of the genre, The Raft clearly is the best example of Dark Fantasy out of the three short stories.