Read the following extract from William Sleater's short story, 'The Elevator' and answer the questions that follow: Martin felt nervous when he got back to the building after school. But why should he be afraid of an old lady? He felt ashamed of himself. He pressed the button and stepped into the elevator, hoping that it would not stop, but it stopped on the third floor. Martin watched the door slide open …
How does the story end? Bring out the element of horror in the ending.
Topic: The ending
Answer
It ends with Martin, alone in the building, taking the elevator down. It stops at the third floor and the fat woman is waiting. She steps in, the door closes, and for the first time she speaks: "Hello, Martin." She smiles, and the story stops there.
The horror lies in what is not shown. Sleator gives no violence and no explanation — he simply lets the door shut on a boy trapped in a small box with a woman who has followed him for days and who, impossibly, knows his name. The reader is left to imagine the rest, which is far more frightening than any description, and the smile turns her from a passive presence into something that has been hunting him all along.
For the second part, the examiner wants technique, not plot. The points to make are: the open ending (nothing is explained, so the imagination supplies the worst), the ordinariness of the setting, and the two chilling details — that she knows his name and that she smiles. Quote "Hello, Martin" if you can; it is the hinge of the whole story.