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The short story, "The Hitchhiker" takes place in multiple different settings throughout the story. One of these settings is the calm, flat fields of Ohio. Another setting takes place in the plains of Oklahoma.

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"It was a bright sunshiny afternoon. The peaceful Ohio fields, brown with the autumn stubble, lay dreaming in the golden light." (Fletcher 3)

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"It was a perfectly airless, dry day. The red clay of Oklahoma
was baking under the southwestern sun." (Fletcher 5)

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Ronald Adams is an established, intelligent, and handsome young man. Ronald is optimistic and a logical thinker. He is the protagonist of the story and mostly a static character.

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"I'm thirty-six years of age,
unmarried, tall, dark with a black mustache." (Fletcher 1)

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"He didn't even look up at me. He was staring at the ground. I stepped on the gas hard, veering the wheel sharply toward him." (Fletcher 5)

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The conflict Ronald Adams is facing is him desperately trying to get away from a hitchhiker that is following him. This is an external conflict.

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"Unless I drove at eighty-five miles an hour over those endless roads, he waited for me at every other mile. I'd see his figure, shadowless, flitting before me, still in its same attitude, over the cold, lifeless ground" (Fletcher 8)

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The theme of this story starts out as light-hearted and cheerful when Ronald is with his mother, but it quickly turns eerie and suspenseful when the hitchhiker starts following him.

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"Somewhere among them, he's waiting for me. Somewhere. Somewhere I will know who he is - and who I am." (Fletcher 9)

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The author creates suspense by using very descriptive words to describe dramatic events. The author also does a good job of making you feel alone and frightened which adds great suspense to the story.

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"Somewhere among them, he's waiting for me. Somewhere. Somewhere I will know who he is - and who I am." (Fletcher 9)

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The author uses foreshadowing by hinting at things that are going to happen later on in the story. In the beginning, two characters converse about not picking up a stranger on the road and the trip going smoothly, which is not how it goes.

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"Stranger? Look… don’t worry. There isn't anything going to happen. It's just eight days of perfectly
simple driving on smooth, decent, civilized roads with a hot dog or a hamburger stand every ten miles." (Fletcher 2)