A red herring is a device used to distract from the original idea, often seen in literature, movies, and puzzles. It can take the form of a character or object that misleads the reader/viewer. Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes stories often use red herrings. Alfred Hitchcock’s films also use this device, as does the movie Saw.
A red herring refers to a device or diversion used to distract the viewer from the original idea. Red herrings are often seen in movies, adventure games and puzzles. However, the most common use of such a device is in literature, particularly crime and thriller stories.
Simply put, a red herring is an object that has no use in the story other than to distract the reader from the real culprit. He can take the form of a character, whom the reader may believe to be the murderer, only to later discover that he is innocent. Or it can take the form of an object that readers assume to be the clue to a discovery, but which turns out to be useless.
Agatha Christie’s books often use a red herring to distract the reader from the real culprit. For example, in Cat Among the Pigeons, two similar crimes lead the reader to believe that a particular character is a murderer, but the two murders in the book are revealed to be unrelated, and thus the character is in fact free from guilt. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the reader is led to believe that the two main characters hate each other, but this is revealed to be a way of hiding the fact that they conspired to kill someone. Sherlock Holmes stories often use a red herring as a central part of the plot, as does Edgar Allan Poe in many of his stories.
In the movies, a red herring can often be found in Alfred Hitchcock’s stories, where characters and things turn out to be anything but what the viewer expects them to be. One of the best examples of the use of a red herring in contemporary cinema is found in the film Saw. Throughout the entire film, two characters spend time imprisoned in a room where a third character lies dead. Throughout the film, both characters appear to be guilty of a series of murders, until it is eventually revealed that the third person in the room is not actually dead. He is, in fact, the killer.
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