65 pages • 2 hours read
Riley SagerSurvive the Night: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Psychological Thriller
Like most of Riley Sager’s novels, Survive the Night is a psychological thriller that incorporates many common thriller and horror tropes. These tropes include an unreliable narrator, red herrings, and plot twists. Charlie Jordan acts as an unreliable narrator, with her movie hallucinations making it difficult for her, and the audience, to distinguish between reality and imagination. Sager also uses the trope to highlight how Charlie’s mental state gives both Robbie and Josh advantages in keeping her from learning their secrets. Thus, the unreliable narrator trope supports the themes of The Blurred Line Between Reality and Imagination and Trust Versus Paranoia.
Another trope that supports Trust Versus Paranoia is the red herring trope. Sager uses ambiguity to make Josh appear to be the Campus Killer but then uses Josh’s perspective of working for Marge and wanting to help Charlie to establish him as a red herring. Sager uses the red herring trope for Marge as well. Marge seems a likely candidate to be the Campus Killer given the ambiguity of her purpose in the story and her harsh and violent treatment of Charlie, but once again, the novel uses a suspicious character as a distraction. In fact, Marge is Maddy’s grandmother, who has decided to take the law into her own hands. This event also acts as a plot twist.
The plot twist is common in psychological thrillers. Thriller writers use it for shock value and to challenge the audience’s understanding of the plot and characters. The most significant plot twist in this novel is the reveal of Charlie’s boyfriend, Robbie, as the Campus Killer. This second plot twist, after Marge’s reveal, also emphasizes Trust Versus Paranoia, showing that the characters toward whom Charlie is paranoid are characters she can or should trust, while the characters Charlie trusts might not have good intentions. These plot elements and tropes are staples of the thriller and horror genres and generate suspense and surprise.
Cultural Context: Early 1990s America
The novel takes place in the United States in late 1991. The setting of the early 1990s is important because, at the time, the internet was still in its early years, and wireless phones were not commonly used by the general public. The lack of smartphones limited communication methods during travel in this period. In pre-internet-age thriller stories, this lack of quick communication builds tension by isolating the protagonist(s). Characters must choose in real time whether to trust someone who might or might not want to harm them; if things go wrong, characters are trapped in the situation until they can reach a pay phone or a building where someone might allow them to use the landline. This problem arises for protagonist Charlie during her car ride with Josh. Though she fears that Josh might be a killer, she is forced to stay near him until she can find an opportunity to escape or a place where she can call the police or her boyfriend. This challenge supports the theme of Trust Versus Paranoia throughout the novel. Charlie eventually manages to contact her boyfriend on a pay phone outside a diner; her boyfriend, in turn, promises to use her location to call a local dispatcher to help her. Setting the novel at a time period when Charlie could have had a mobile phone, especially one with access to the internet, would have simplified the plot significantly. It would have also made it much easier for Charlie to leave Josh’s car and, eventually, return to the university or her grandmother’s house.
The novel also makes references to music bands that were popular in 1991, such as American grunge band Nirvana and English rock band The Cure. These groups are established as the favorite groups of Josh and Maddy, respectively. In addition, Charlie makes a reference to the film The Silence of Lambs, which in the novel “had hit theaters seven months earlier, entering Buffalo Bill and Hannibal the Cannibal into the pop culture lexicon” (56). Charlie makes this observation in comparison to Olyphant’s serial killer, who is simply referred to as “The Campus Killer” (56), something Charlie appreciates.
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