Section 1 - The Thriller Genre

Critics and Authors

Thrillers



The thriller genre has been around for hundreds of years and has had many critics define what ‘is the thriller genre?’

In the 1900’s, G K Chesterton discussed thrillers at a time when it was new and being highly criticised. He said thrillers are a modern genre, which is a reason why many criticised it, saying it was ‘trashy’ compared to ‘classic literature’, Chesterton defended it.He said thrillers are always set in urban landscapes; busy cities, where crimes can go un-noticed. He also said that they are set in cities so that it can create fear and the unknown, as city life is part of the people’s everyday lives so its puts fear into them as the stories could be reality. He says its bringing excitement into the usually monotonous, work related city life. He says thrillers are an attempt to find ‘the poetry in modern life’.

Northrop Frye’s definition builds on Chesterton’s. He says that thrillers contain a hero, and this is most usually an ordinary person, but we are happy to believe this and not question it as thrillers are similar to Romance fiction. He says that ‘the hero of Romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature is slightly suspended’, that they can bend the laws of the normal life.He takes the enchanted and puts it in everyday city life.

John Cowelti combines them both, he agrees with Frye in that he says they turn the modern city into an enchanted place, but he also says that they achieve this by introducing the ‘exotic’ into everyday life, where the exotic can be anything from a book to a tissue.

Another definition is form W H Matthews, and he applies a different view on to thrillers. Matthews says that thrillers relate to mazes and labyrinths in fiction.He says that everything is based on the story of Theseus, descending into an underground maze; full of twists, turns, puzzles and dead ends to create excitement and suspense.He says to create a thriller you need to add complex twists so that the problems aren’t solved too easily by the audience so that the story retains an air of mystery. But also so that the audience can eventually deduce it and it is not completely aimless, i.e. including subtle hints throughout. Overall he says it is a puzzling journey.

Pascal Bonitzer thought Matthews was describing ‘Partial Vision’, and this supports the idea of mazes. He says the audience should only see so much throughout the story, and what they don’t see keeps them interested, and is part of the system of thrillers.

Lars Ole Saurberg thinks thrillers consist of two main things; concealment and protraction. Either deliberately hiding something from he audience, or delaying or protracting an outcome expected by the audience. He says that both of these things create suspense.

And finally Noel Carroll says that it is important to create questions, keeping the audience in suspense until they get their questions answered.

He also combines this with the probability factor to add excitement. So, in most cases ‘will the hero survive?’ and this creates a ‘battle against the odds’ type scenario, again adding suspense.He also says that there is a moral factor, which also increases suspense, for example if it is not morally right for the hero to survive in the end if they were previously bad.