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Suspense In The First Book Watchers By Dean Koontz

1999 Words8 Pages

When a person picks up a Horror Novel for the first time, they have no idea what is in store for them. Certainly they know the book will be quote unquote “scary”, but of course it will be scary. The sole purpose of that book is to scare the reader. Many horror books attempt but are unable to scare the reader, or if they do scare the reader, the book is not very well written. The three books that this essay is focusing on all do a brilliant job of not only terrifying the reader, but also using and exploiting many literary devices that make the book stick in the reader's memory. The first book Watchers by Dean Koontz is a suspenseful horror novel. Koontz explores many flaws and issues in society through the usage of small metaphors and large …show more content…

The outsider is a monster created through experiments. Despite being a monster however, there is a scene of vulnerability shown by the Outsider when it believes itself to have killed Einstein (who survives the encounter). The Outsider represents the nightmare in the story. It always follows but shows up when the reader leasts expects it. While it serves as the main horror point of the novel, it only kills because it hates people and animals who look at it. The Outsider has taken on such a level of mentality that it understands the concept of ugly, and while it has never seen itself in a mirror before, the Outsider gauges people's reactions and deduces that it must be horrifying to look at. As a result, it rips out other creatures eyes so that they cannot look at it. In the final scene of the novel, the creature begs Travis to kill it. This unleashes Travis’s inner monster for the second time, and Travis proceeds to shoot the outsider, thus ending the nightmare. However, it again provides Koontz with yet another way to show the different sides to humanity. This book features the question of who is the real monster in the story, however it is very discreet. This is because the Outsider is very clearly the monster in this story. However, if you read deeply, you begin to realize that Koontz is actually portraying that while yes, the Outsider is evil and a monster, it is the humans who created it who are the ones to blame. Koontz points out that human beings can be unintentionally evil and cruel when they believe they are doing what is best for the world, even if what they create is a monstrosity.

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