The Hitchhiker

Ronald Adams is the play’s protagonist and narrator. A “perfectly sane” 36-year-old (94), Adams encounters strange events on a drive from Brooklyn to California. Fletcher renders him somewhat generic, an everyman whose general relatability enhances the effectiveness of the story by helping listeners step into his shoes.

Adams begins the trip as an optimistic and self-assured man, brushing off his mother’s concerns about the dangers of the road. After seeing a strange hitchhiker on the Brooklyn Bridge, however, Adams’s feelings change. As the hitchhiker appears again and again, Adams goes from bemusement to panic, realizing that no one else can see the man with the rain-spattered clothing who seems to be following him from state to state. Despite his fear, he also develops a kind of dependence on the hitchhiker, unable to stop anticipating their next encounter.

Adams’s reality is shattered when he learns that he died on the first day of his road trip. As the play ends, Adams grapples with his loss of identity, descending into a state of confusion and panic. His previously solid sense of self is gone, and he now knows that he has been unwittingly dodging Death, in the form of the hitchhiker, for the past six days.