John Collier The Chaser

After reading John Collier’s short story “The Chaser,” the reader understands the danger of fulfilled dreams. Alan is a young man that goes into a store in search of a potion that will make his girlfriend love him. Before Alan buys the potion, the seller shows him another of his products, the “Glove Cleaner,” which is an untraceable poison which Alan has no interest in buying at this point in his life. In the poem “Be Careful What You Wish for” by Dave Holmstrom, the writer explains the danger in hoping for certain things to happen. The poem similarly to the short story explains the danger of fulfilled dreams. As the story begins Alan is entering a creepy shop in search of a love potion. As the old man selling the potions enters the room, he describes a tasteless and colorless liquid that if it is put in coffee will not be noticed, and if there is an autopsy it is untraceable. The old man calls it a glove cleaner to try to make Alan more at ease, saying how it might clean gloves he has never tried it. He also says it can be called a life cleaner since that is needed sometimes and it costs $5000 for just a table spoon of the glove cleaner. Alan …show more content…
The speaker warns the reader to be careful what they wish for since it may not be what they really want to happen; therefore, when “you wish to stay in bed” you get to but “Sure enough… you get the flu. The person gets what they asked for and what they wanted, but it did not turn out quite the way it was expected to. The wish of Alan in “The Chaser” is that the girl will love him causing him to go and buy the love potion. Because Alan does not truly know the full effects of the love potion he has no need for caution when the old man is talking about the “glove cleaner”. The old man knows that young men eager to find love are naïve enough to buy the potion without thinking it through and then they will come back to “clean” their