[1] John Collier’s “The Chaser” is based on the situational irony of the unreal hope of youth as opposed to the extreme disillusion of age and experience. Collier builds the brief story almost entirely in dialogue between a young man, Alan Austen, who is deeply in love and wants to possess his sweetheart entirely, and an unnamed old man who believes in a life free of romantic involvement [The opening sentence of your paper It introduces your topic and sets the context]. [2]The situation reflects disillusionment so completely that the story may in fact be called cynical [Thesis Statement]. [3]This attitude is made plain by the situation [par .2], the old man [par. 3], and the use of double meaning [par. 4] [The plan of topics].
[4] The situation between the two men establishes the story’s dominant tone of cynicism [Topic sentence of first body paragraph]. Austen, the young man full of illusions and unreal expectations about love, has come to the old man to buy a love potions so that his sweetheart, Diana, will love him with slavelike adoration. Collier makes it clear that the old man has seen many young men like Austen in the grips of romantic desire before, and he therefore knows that their possessive love will eventually bore and anger them. He knows, because he has already seen these disillusioned customers return to buy the “chaser,” which is a deadly, untraceable poison, so that they could kill the women for whom they previously bought the love potion. Thus Collier creates the ironic situation of the story—the beginning of an inevitable process in which Austen, like other young men before him, are made to appear so unrealistic and self-defeating that their enthusiastic passion will someday change into hate and murderousness.
[5] The sales method used by the old man reveals his cynical understanding of men like Austen [Topic sentence of 2nd body paragraph]. Collier makes clear that the old man knows why Austen has come. Before showing his love potion, the old man describes the untraceable poison, which he calls a ‘glove cleaner’ or ‘life cleaner.’ His aim is actually to sell the old man’s art of manipulation, for even though Austen is at the moment horrified by the poison, the seed has been planted in his mind. He will always know, when his love for Diana changes, that he will have the choice of “cleaning” his life. This unscrupulous sales method effectively corrupts Austen in advance. Such a calculation on the old man’s part is grimly cynical.
[6] Supporting the tone of cynicism in the old man’s sales technique is his use of double meaning [Topic sentence of 3rd body paragraph]. For example, his concluding words, “Au revoir” (that is, “until I see you again”), carry an ironic double meaning. On the one hand, the words conventionally mean “goodbye,” but on the other, they suggest that the old man expects a future meeting when Austen will return to buy the poison to kill Diana. The old man’s acknowledgement of Austen’s gratitude shows the same ironic double edge. He says, “I like to oblige . . . then customers come back, later in life, when they are better off, and want more expensive things.” Clearly the “expensive” thing is “the chaser,” the undetectable poison. Through such ironic speeches, the old man is politely but cynically telling Austen that his love will not last and that it will eventually bore, irritate, and then torment him to the point where he will want to murder Diana rather than to continue living with her potion-induced possessiveness.
[7] Before “The Chaser” is dismissed as cynical, however, we should note that Austen’s ideas about love must inevitably produce just such cynicism. The old man’s descriptions of the total enslavement that Austen has dreamed about would leave no breathing room for either Austen or Diana. This sort of love, because it excludes everything else in life, suffocates rather than pleases. It is normal to wish freedom from such psychological imprisonment, even if the prison is of one’s own making. Under these conditions, the cynical tone of “The Chaser” suggests that the desire to be totally possessing and possessed—to ‘”want nothing but solitude” and the loved one—can lead only to disaster for both man and woman. The old man’s cynicism and the young man’s desire suggest the need for an ideal of love that permits interchange, individuality, and understanding. Even though this better ideal is not described anywhere in the story, it is compatible with Collier’s situational irony. Thus, cynical as the story unquestionably is, it does not exclude an idealism of tolerant and more human love.
7 sentences
1. The opening sentence of your paper.
2. Thesis statement
3. Plan of topics
4. The topic sentence of your first body paragraph [Par. 2]
5. The topic sentence of your 2nd body paragraph [Par. 3]
6. The topic sentence of your 3rd body paragraph [Par. 4] Optional
7. Restate the thesis as your topic sentence of the concluding paragraph.
Academic Voice – avoid the use of the personal pronoun I, or its surrogates, “we,” “one,” “you.” Just make assertions. Do not say “I believe,” or “I think.” Just state your idea. Use academic language, the language of literary criticism. Contractions are short-cuts of oral communication. Do not use them in formal writing. Every word must be correctly spelled.
