Mid Term
Crystal O’Leary
Prof Sconfienza
Sociology 100-501
March 12, 2012
Secret Window Mort Rainey is a writer he is going through a divorce. Mort is hiding out in a cabin in Tashmore Lake in upstate New York. One day while sleeping on the couch there is a knock at the door and when Mort goes to answer it there is a man standing there saying to him you stole my story Mort looks at him with sleepy eyes and says “I don’t know you and I did not steal your story.” Shooter tells him “you have three days to settle this,” Mort tells him “there is nothing to settle” tells his dog Chico to go inside closes the door. Next thing I see he is at the computer trying to write a book and also remembering when his wife found a secret window she was so happy, “she was going to put a garden outside of the window, he start looking for something in the desk draws it is a pack of cigs.
Mrs. Grevey is cleaning the cabin she asks if he wants something to eat. His answer is no. Mort looks out at her then he said to the dog “I did not steal the story.” Chico goes outside and he goes and lies back down on the couch, a few hours go by he wakes by falling of the couch, Mort sees the door open and a note stuck to it realizes that someone has been here he does not see his dog so Mort goes looking for him and he finds the dog on top of a shed with a screwdriver stuck in him, he screams I will get you shooter. Mort speaks to the sheriff then goes
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Into the city and asks a friend Ken Karsch for help with this Shooter person. Back home Mort has another run in with Shooter they argue over who wrote the story first Mort is get upset says he wrote the story first, Shooter wants proof and fast tells him to get the copy of the book from his wife Amy’s house. Mort seems to be getting more unraveled with this Shooter hang around; he is smoking and doing a lot of sleeping.
Amy calls waking Mort up again she wants to know” if he is okay” yes is his reply he asks her if she remembers the book Secret Window she said “yes and that she did not like it because of the ending.” Mort seems to be getting very upset with the thing that are going on around him again he goes and lays down on the couch, wakes up hours latter to the phone ring it is his soon to be ex-wife (if he would just sign the papers). Amy on the line telling him their house burned down! He goes to the city to see the damage the fire did, and who is waiting for but Amy and Ted her boyfriend he gets angry this has nothing to do with Ted so why is he here They have words and Mort leaves.
Next thing is they are sitting next to each other in the insurance office. Mort and Ted have words again this has nothing to do with Ted he is ask to leave that makes Mort happy for the moment. Ted is waiting for Mort outside and they have more angry words between each other Ted tries to hit Mort but he moves and Ted hits the window of the car instead. He is heading home and remembering how he found his wife and her lover in the hotel; you can see the angry and rage when he comes face to face with them.
Ken is calling on the phone he tells him that Mr. Greenleaf doesn’t remember seeing him or John Shooter talking, he tells Mort that he is coming back out to talk to Mr. Greenleaf again
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and that he should come along, he tells him that they can meet at the café .This is really bothering Mort that no one has seen this man but him. He decides to go into town and see if the package that is being delivered. The package is there for him to pick up, on his way out of the post office he talks to the sheriffs niece which makes him a little uncomfortable. As he is getting into his jeep the sheriff stops him and says that he needs to talk to him all Mort wants to do is get out of town, he tells the sheriff he will call him later. Mort wakes up from another long sleep and realize he was to meet Ken at the café and he was late, when he gets to the café the waitress said no one had been there looking for him he could feel everyone looking at him and it was making him feel very uncomfortable. He leaves and heads back to the cabin, as he gets out of the car he see John Shooters hat he takes it inside and puts it on the chair, he see Mr. Greenleaf’s Jeep outside, Mort goes towards the truck and sees Mr. Greenleaf and realize he is dead he then looks in the back set and there is Ken also dead, panic starts to set in he doesn’t know what to do.
Mort turns to go back to the cabin and there is John Shooter telling him he killed both of these men and the he was going to have clean up the mess. Next thing I see is John Shooter walking away telling Mort he needs to fix the ending of the story and that he wants his hat back.
Mort takes the Jeep and the bodies and push them over a cliff, as he is doing this his watch get caught and he almost goes over the cliff with them. Back at the cabin he is thinking about everything that has happen he put on Shooters hat and looks in the mirror, the phone rings
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again and he is irritated grabs the phone and it is Amy on the line asking “him again if he is alright” which only upsets him even more. He hangs up the phone Amy decides that it is time to have it out with Mort and get the divorce papers signed so that everyone can move on. She tells Ted she is going alone and will be back later. Mort is finally starting to realize that he is John Shooter; even as he is talking to Shooter he is starting to remember everything that he as John shooter has done. Amy gets to the cabin and starts towards it she sees all the papers flying around picks one up and sees it is the story Secret Window. She goes in the house calls for Mort no answer looks at the place and sees that it has been trashed.
Amy calls for Chico the dog he doesn’t come because he is dead she again calls for Mort as she goes up the stairs Amy sees that it is also trashed but she notices the manuscript that is John Shooters and then she sees the word shooter engraved into the wood of the desk, in wood of the walls on the window and then she turns to see Mort standing behind the door and the words shoot her engraved on the door. He says he has to fix the ending to the story buy now John Shooter is in control and he is going to fix the story. Shooter attacks Amy she runs to her car and he pulls her out of the car you can see the rage in his face, drags her back to the house, she falls and hit her head he is ready to kill her when he hears a car and knows it is Ted coming for Amy kill two birds with one stone. Mort stay out of sight until Ted comes out and he hits him hard that he should have taken his head off; instead he shoves the shovel into his throat. Amy keeps trying to tell him he is Mort Rainey not John Shooter but it falls on deaf ears and he kills her.
He buries them in the garden that corn is growing in. The Sheriff comes out to see Mort and tells him that he knows he kill all those people, but does not have enough proof to arrest him, but Sheriff Newsome tells Mort when he needs to go into town not to come to his town go somewhere else. Mort agrees to the Sheriffs demands and has the Sheriffs is leaving Mort say to him it is all about the ending.
As an unobserved observer tell this story I think we as humans do have breaking points, and the strain of life and conflicts that happen in our lives can push us to the edge. Many people are strong enough to get through but others are not. Mort Rainey is one of those people when he found his wife with another man at a motel and saw them sleeping together naked it just made him snap and a new person came into play and that was John Shooter. He was going to take care of everything that Mort could not do. I also believe that if Mort had not found his wife with another man than things might have been different; he would not have cracked and fallen to pieces and invented another personality to do the things he wanted to do but did not have the courage to do it. John Shooter killed all those people to keep order in Mort Rainey’s life. I think once Mort started to remember what happen and that he really was John Shooter and that it was he who did the killings it sent him completely over the edge where there was no coming back.
In the one moment Mort Rainey became John Shooter for good, and without proper care he will continue to kill for Mort to keep him safe. It is really scary to think that there are people out there just like Mort even if it is rare to have two personalities.