Fear of the Outsider: Part One
One of the most compelling themes of New England literature – and a
recurrent motif of the region’s films, too – is “outsider-phobia”.
Fear of the outsider or stranger, one might reasonably argue, is part of
the literary landscape the world over (in Europe, of course, one immediately
thinks of Meursault in Camus’ L’Etranger).
Nowhere, however, is suspicion – even hatred – of the foreign object more
prevalent than in the literary tradition of New England.
