The short stories, The Raft, Nightcrawlers, and Duel are all considered dark fantasy stories. But, what exactly makes up a dark fantasy story? The three major elements of a dark fantasy story are horror, fear, and a supernatural element that takes place in the story. These three short stories have varying effectiveness and based on these three elements Duel, the most “realistic” story of the three, is the least effective, while Nightcrawlers is the second most effective, and The Raft being the most effective.
Duel, written by Richard Matheson, is a story about a guy named Mann, who was living in a typical driver’s nightmare. In terms of being a dark fantasy story, Duel only does a good job with the fear element. Throughout the story, Mann is faced with an unknown truck driver who seems set out to kill him. Matheson makes it a point to not reveal the truck driver’s physical appearance or any motives he had for trying to kill Mann. This fear of the unknown is a common motif in a dark fantasy story. In terms of the horror or supernatural elements, this story does a poor job of incorporating these. Matheson purposely named the main character, Mann, which is almost like the word “man” to signify that this situation can happen to any “man.” It seems like the whole point of this story was for it to not be a dark fantasy story at all. Nonetheless, this story has some dark fantasy elements in it.
On the other hand, Richard McCammon’s Nightcrawlers, accomplishes a better job of having these dark fantasy elements. This story has a supernatural element to it such as when Price, the Vietnam War veteran, can make his dreams and thoughts to come true or appear in real life for at least a few seconds. McCammon segues this into Price’s nightmare when he re-lives his past during the war where he left his fellow soldiers to survive. Price’s dream comes true and endangers everyone that is around him. This provides the horror aspect of the story. Many suspenseful scenes come out of this as Price’s dreams spiral out of control. Violence erupts and people die while Price just sleeps. Fear also plays a big part in this story. The fear of the unknown comes up again in the story as the spectators who meet or are near Price are frightened by his supernatural talent. These people do not know why all these things are happening. At the end of the story, Price is “killed” by one of his dream soldiers which gives him peace of mind about his troubled past. Overall, Nightcrawlers is a good dark fantasy story which is evident in its use of the three elements.
The best story out of the three is clearly The Raft for providing the reader excitement, and suspense along with the three elements of dark fantasy. Written by Stephen King, he opts to use the fear of the unknown, once again, when four teenagers go to a lake and find a black patch on the water that devours humans. All the four kids could do was take a guess on what it was, but they were stuck in a raft in the middle of a lake. Stricken with horror, the four get “eaten” by the monster one by one. The black monster on the water resembles a supernatural aspect of the story. What sets this story apart from the other two is the suspense that it provides all the way through the ending. The readers, specifically teenagers, can relate to this story by the content that King writes about in this story. King utilizes violence, sex, and terror to grab the readers’ attention. He uses other aspects of literature to bring his story to life while still falling under the category of dark fantasy.
All three short stories are all considered dark fantasy stories. Picking a story to best represent the genre can be determined by how effectively these short stories presented the genre through the three elements of dark fantasy. The Raft provides this efficiently and it is clear that it is a dark fantasy story. Also, the excitement that it provides compared to the other two short stories makes this the best exemplar of the genre.
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