The Outsider

“Thought only gives the world an appearance of order to anyone weak enough to be convinced by its show.”

This epigraph at the front of the book comes from the essay “The Country of the Blind” by Colin Wilson. The implication is that human reason imposes a thin shell of apparent order on the universe, hiding the chaos underneath. This is particularly relevant to Ralph’s characterization, as he relies too heavily on that surface to make sense of the world and consequently makes critical mistakes.

“‘Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?’

‘They rarely do.’”

This exchange foreshadows Holly’s argument that serial killers like Ted Bundy are no more explicable than the outsider. Ralph accepts Terry as a monster but rejects the evidence of the outsider because it violates his sense of order. The description of Terry as a “monster” plays on the metaphorical usage of the word in a deeply ironic way; although Ralph doesn’t know it, the outsider is literally a monster that doesn’t look like one.

“Until the real killer of Frank Peterson was found—if he ever was—the people of Flint city were going to believe that Terry Maitland had gamed the system and gotten away with murder.”

Once an accusation is made, it tends to stick—sometimes even when the accused is formally exonerated. Most people won’t be in the courtroom to see the conflicting evidence in Terry’s case, but over 1,000 scenes, paralleling Ralph’s insistence on empirical evidence.