The Girl Next Door

“It’s what you do last that counts”
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum was written to open the readers minds to what could happen and what did happen. It also deeply examines the human awareness and the way people can be easily influenced, pressured, and in the end completely controlled. This book was based on a true story. The most interesting thing I learned about this book was how much the human body can handle before it gives up. A reason I did not find this book interesting was the fact that it could and did actually happen and that frightens me. The narrator, David is recalling his horrid memories of the abuse of a young girl next door.
The story took place the summer of the 1950’s, in a seemingly happy suburb, where the major troubles
are local alcoholics and maybe joyriding teenagers. This era was when the colored televisions just came out, the narrator explains how when he walks through the door his neighbors are glued to their new colored television. The setting has a major impact on the story, showing how long the abuse lasts. The reader will note that the beginning of the story started near the end of school and ended within weeks before school started.
The Girl Next Door had many characters. Ruth and many of the kids on the street was involved with this ill-treatment. The Protagonist of The Girl Next Door was David. David was our narrator and a witness to the cruelty Ruth had bestowed Megan. The antagonist was, you guessed it, Ruth Chandler. This woman was the source of Megan’s abuse, she started the whole new “game” towards Megan. Not one of the characters in this story remained the same, they all changed in some way. The children around the block are flat characters, we know little about them. Alternatively, David, Megan, Ruth and her children are round characters. David was a 12 year old boy living next door to Ruth Chandler and her three children, Willie, Ralphie, and Donny. Later after a car accident, Megan, age 14 and her sister Susan Loughin were orphaned and sent to their distant aunt, Ruth. This viewpoint of this story was first person.
There were many different conflicts of this story, for example; Man versus Man, Man versus society, Man versus fate, Man versus self.
Within the conflict of Man versus Man, Megan and David are fighting Ruth. Ruth was an exceedingly psychotic woman. She tortured Megan to no end, Ruth made her take a boiling hot shower and more. In the conflict Man versus Society, Megan is against Ruth and the children in the suburban area. They were rude to Megan and rejected her in every way. Man versus fate is to be described as Megan versus her fate of dying, which the reader later finds that Megan lost this battle. David is facing himself in the conflict of Man versus self. David is fighting his intuition of helping Megan or following his friends and commence the torment towards Megan. David fights this scuffle with himself throughout the story.
One type of literature in The Girl Next Door is imagery. Imagery is used in stories to describe to the reader either, what the character looks like or where the character is. Jack Ketchum described how the basement where Ruth held Megan. An example would be “I was alone by the brook, lying on my stomach across the Big Rock with a tin can in my hand. I was scooping crayfish. The brook ran fast along on either side of me. I could feel the spray on my feet dangling near the water. The water was cold, the sun was
warm.”
An additional type of figurative language in The Girl Next Door is dialogue. “Crayfish can I see?” one of the main characters, Meg asks as David is catching “crayfish” on the Big Rock. Crayfish is word commonly used in the northern parts of the United States. In the southern parts of the U.S. Crawfish and crawdads are the same things as crayfish, freshwater crustaceans resembling small lobsters, but they have different names in different places.
The basic situation of The Girl Next Door is the abuse of Megan Loughin. Jack Ketchum has a good way of holding the reader’s attention, but the main narrative hook was in chapter 1 before the narrator recalled the horrifying story of his past. He asks the reader if they know what pain is and gives examples of what his former wives said what they thought it was. He believed they were stupid, they knew nothing of the word “pain”, he knew what pain was and if the reader resumed reading they would soon find out also. The rising action of this story was the brutal thrashing that was inflicted upon Megan. It began with verbal abuse, moving on towards physical punishment, which wasn’t needed, to locking in the basement with little food and water. David, in the end, risked everything to help Megan and her sister, Susan, unfortunately he got caught and joined Meg in the basement. The climax was the death of Meg, Ruth brutally smashed her head into the wall. The falling action was when the cops arrived. In the end, out of anger, David pushed Ruth down the stairs. Yet, David was not charged with murder, the cop stated that David fell from lack of nutrition. One of the last things Megan told David was “It’s what you do last that counts.” This was the author’s theme of this story.
I both loved and hated this book. I enjoy reading a fine, decent horror book. On the other hand, this book disgusted me with the imagery it possessed. The Girl Next Door had extremely disturbing descriptions. Yet, I could not even think about putting this book down. Jack Ketchum could hold the reader’s attention, for some authors this is hard to do. This story is too real and graphic for some readers this would be a small weakness. I recommend this book to anyone who takes interest in terrifying and alarming stories based on true events.