What Are The Similarities Between The Hanging Stranger And Kill All Others

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In the short story “The Hanging Stranger” written by Phillip K. Dick, and the Electric Dreams episode Kill All Others, directed by Dee Rees, demonstrate how a person is affected by rebelling against society. Both characters from “The Hanging Stranger” and Kill All Others, try to show society that they’re controlled and silenced in the world they live in. In “The Hanging Stranger”, Loyce notices the hanging body and is curious to know if others can see it as well or just him. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there? His voice rose excitedly. What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!" (Dick 2). Loyce continues to wonder why no one else is mentioning the body that’s hanging from the street light, and as he keeps mentioning …show more content…

Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!" (Dick 3). Everyone around Loyce looked at him and wondered if he was okay, they didn’t understand why Loyce was concerned about the hanging body so much and looked at him as an outsider. Similarly, in Kill All Others where society doesn’t seem to understand what’s the big deal of the hanging body and ‘Kill All Others’ sign. Philbert couldn’t just ignore the fact that he heard the Candidate mention ‘Kill All Others’ during the broadcast. There was a close up shot of Philberts phone while he’s at work. He started wondering if others have heard her say that and asked his coworkers if they heard it as well, but they didn’t want to get involved in that conversation. “Why am I the only one who saw and heard it?” (Rees 13:57). This demonstrates how different Philbert is from his coworkers and he is not psychologically at par with them. He is higher up and sees reality while everyone else avoids it. When Philbert comes back to work while he’s on lunch break with his coworkers, low-key lighting was used. Philbret was still wondering why no one was not doing anything about the situation and why hadn't people questioned the signs that were put