Tick Tock Analysis
Tick Tock by Dean Koontz is a story of many genres, including comedy, suspense, thriller, mystery, and a bit of romance, but is mostly referred to as a screwball comedy/horror story. The novel features an array of characters: zany Del, cautious Tommy, and judgmental but loving mother Phan, as well as Del's beloved pooch, Scootie, and a cursed doll that wants to destroy all of them. Oh boy.
Tommy Phan comes home to find a creepy handmade ragdoll on his doorstep. Assuming it to be part of a prank, he takes it inside. Later the doll’s white cotton cloth skin rips open to reveal green eyes with the elliptical pupils of a predator and scaly hands with tiny, but wickedly sharp claws. It attacks him with clever tactics, speed, and bloodthirsty shrieks …show more content…
Koontz uses imagery to vividly describe different situations in several scenes, doing so well enough that I can imagine scenes as if I'm in the book. For example, shortly after his argument with his mother, Tommy starts hearing strange noises from the car radio. At first the noise is described as "a soft surration- not ordinary static, but like distant water tumbling in considerable volume over a sloping palisade of rocks" (Koontz, 14). After Tommy presses a button, the sound is compared to water, "gushing and tumbling, growling yet whispery" (Koontz, 14). The next description is eerily lucid, chill inducing: "Hundreds or even thousands of [voices]. Men, women, the fragile voices of children. He thought he could hear despairing wails, pleas for help, panicked cries, anguished groans- a monumental yet hushed sound, as though it was echoing across a vast gulf or rising out of a black abyss" (Koontz, 15) The above descriptions made me feel as if I was in the car with Tommy; I felt like I could hear the voices, even feel them. Koontz uses another literary technique to enhance the story. He uses hyperbole in a few different situations, but the one that stuck out to me is during the scene in which Tommy, Del, and his mother are in a car chase with the doll, and Del and Tommy's mother are arguing. Upon Tommy's mother calling her bad news, Del replies with "I am the weather." To explain she says the weather is neither good nor bad; it's just there. Comparing herself to weather rather than something else that is rather neutral, like, say, an animal, seems like a bit of an exaggeration, not that such a statement shouldn't be expected from
Tommy Phan comes home to find a creepy handmade ragdoll on his doorstep. Assuming it to be part of a prank, he takes it inside. Later the doll’s white cotton cloth skin rips open to reveal green eyes with the elliptical pupils of a predator and scaly hands with tiny, but wickedly sharp claws. It attacks him with clever tactics, speed, and bloodthirsty shrieks …show more content…
Koontz uses imagery to vividly describe different situations in several scenes, doing so well enough that I can imagine scenes as if I'm in the book. For example, shortly after his argument with his mother, Tommy starts hearing strange noises from the car radio. At first the noise is described as "a soft surration- not ordinary static, but like distant water tumbling in considerable volume over a sloping palisade of rocks" (Koontz, 14). After Tommy presses a button, the sound is compared to water, "gushing and tumbling, growling yet whispery" (Koontz, 14). The next description is eerily lucid, chill inducing: "Hundreds or even thousands of [voices]. Men, women, the fragile voices of children. He thought he could hear despairing wails, pleas for help, panicked cries, anguished groans- a monumental yet hushed sound, as though it was echoing across a vast gulf or rising out of a black abyss" (Koontz, 15) The above descriptions made me feel as if I was in the car with Tommy; I felt like I could hear the voices, even feel them. Koontz uses another literary technique to enhance the story. He uses hyperbole in a few different situations, but the one that stuck out to me is during the scene in which Tommy, Del, and his mother are in a car chase with the doll, and Del and Tommy's mother are arguing. Upon Tommy's mother calling her bad news, Del replies with "I am the weather." To explain she says the weather is neither good nor bad; it's just there. Comparing herself to weather rather than something else that is rather neutral, like, say, an animal, seems like a bit of an exaggeration, not that such a statement shouldn't be expected from