Comparing Horror Stories 'Real Bad Friend And The Others'

Imagine being placed in a horror story full of dread and isolation, would one be able to remain sane throughout their whole experience? Horror stories in all types of media from novels to films often focus on a protagonist eventually losing their mind, as well as their grasp on reality. This same idea is presented in each media; The Real Bad Friend written by Robert Bloch, The Others directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and I Am Legend directed by Francis Lawrence, where the protagonist slowly loses their sense of what is real or not due to the abrupt change in events, the self conflict that each character faces as well as hallucinations that are created to help the character feel in control and cope in the situation they are in. Furthermore, throughout …show more content…
This also occurs in horror stories, where the main character suffers through a traumatic experience which results in the change of their mental state leading to the loss of reality. In the short story The Real Bad Friend, the main character George Foster Pendleton “didn’t like to think about the service, or going haywire there on the island and trying to strangle the sergeant, and ending up in stockade” (Bloch 321), changing his environment from a suburban lifestyle to a cold stoned cell. Likewise, this change of environment is a prime cause in George’s loss of reality due to the fact that his normal mental state cannot cope with the idea of being in solitude. In the film The Others, the protagonist Grace and her children uncover the truth in which there are ghosts present in their household. Grace slowly loses her sense of reality and she makes an unexpected action by strangling her daughter Anne after mistaking her for one of the visitors - who Anne explains earlier in the movie is an old lady with cloudy eyes (Amenábar 2001). Moreover, this evidence shows that Grace’s mental state is affected because of the traumatic situation she is revealed to. The