The Three Strangers Summary

The clues that are given about the first stranger’s profession is that Thomas Hardy writes “I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing.” So the stranger must be very poor and must be living on the streets. We suspect that he is lying that he has a job because he says, “But you hardly have heard of me.” The second stranger was much different than the first stranger.

He had more manners, he was several years older than the first one. He was richer, and all he asked for was shelter to go to Casterbridge. The second stranger makes himself at home. The second stranger was the hangman, he was to hang the clockmaker who stole a sheep to feed his family.

Essay Example on The Three Strangers

The third stranger was very frightened and ran away when he heard about the situation with the stolen sheep, and he was an escaped prisoner.

You can tell that the prisoner was frightened because Hardy says, ” he hid under the tree and it was very obvious that he was hiding there.” The first stranger returns, and chats to the second stranger and they go off in separate directions. This builds up a sense of mystery because all the strangers went in different directions which was suspicious and that everyone thought that they would have run in the same directions because they had known each other.

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I think at the end, this mystery story was designed to entertain and to instruct, because Thomas Hardy instructs us to believe in this story and NOT TO OPEN THE DOOR TO ANY SRANGERS! The other message for us in the story is that “Should a man be hanged for stealing a sheep for his family because they are poor and hungry. In “A Vendetta” Guy de Maupassant builds up a mystery story by writing about an old widow living only in a tiny cottage who is presently living with her son Anotine Saverini. It is similar to Thomas Hardy’s story because he writes about a cottage as well. Different about these is that Thomas Hardy talks more of the surroundings and areas in the setting. They are both in bad moods, because the surroundings are described as a bad mood, like raining and it was a dull day.

If an old widow is described in a setting it tells you straight away that this story is going to be a mystery story because an old widow living on her own, there is something bound to happen to her or her son. I think that Guy de Maupassant is trying to intensify the reader’s interest in the psychology of revenge and the way the person thinks, whereas in Thomas Hardy’s story he seems to litter his story with intriguing clues and fate leads throughout the narrative.

In “A Vendetta” the ending was more horrific than “The Three Strangers,” and it keeps the reader entertained. It is about a woman who avenges her son because Nicolas Ravolatti had stabbed him treacherously. The old widow trains her gundog to kill people by grabbing at their throats and killing them. I believe that although both stories use the usual formulaic devices of mystery story such as lonely and hostile environments, bizarre behaviour and puzzling relationships between people, a resolution or explanation, with a scattering of useful and useless clues (red herrings) there is much more to the mysteries that meet the eye.