It seems unlikely that Charlie would become like her uncle, however she exhibits none of the same compulsions he proved unable to control, nor shows the same stomach for violence that he had. After all, before accidentally killing him, Charlie did threaten to kill him if he harmed her mother. Her only confidant is the detective Graham, whose vocation is to confront and defend the world from this evil (by preserving the prevailing hegemony’s status quo), but even he’s not able to see everything she can and, further, appears ignorant to the sexual tension between the two Charlies as he obliviously makes his own overtures to her.Īfter the closing scene, one could imagine Young Charlie growing into a world-weary cynicism not unlike the one espoused by her uncle. We’re told, through exposition by his sister Emma, that the symptoms began after a childhood accident from which he never quite recovered.įor Young Charlie, the realization of evil’s existence makes an irrevocable change in her life - though she does her best to contain and shield her family from it. On the train to Santa Rosa (which arrives in a cloud of black smoke), he feigns illness to keep a low profile from the other passengers, but he is sick in another sense. Uncle Charlie is that sickness made manifest. And Young Charlie can feel it like a psychic force before her uncle’s arrival. There are glimpses of it in the seedy bar where Young Charlie’s friend Louise works - the closest Santa Rosa comes to looking like the outside world we see at the beginning. It’s suggested by the conversations about ways to get away with murder between Young Charlie’s father and his neighbor Herbie. The uncovering of that evil may have coincided with the arrival of Uncle Charlie, but it was always there - or at least the capacity for it. Asked to summarize the overall theme of Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock offered: "Love and good order is no defense against evil.” Hitchcock shows us that, even in the American suburban home of the idyllic nuclear family, there is a sickness of evil lurking beneath the surface.
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