As a teacher yells at her on her first day, “‘Your new friends are an impediment to learning at this school and that’s just in class. Quinn is able to use violence as the Final Girl and is not characterized by any sexual activity or relationships, unlike her two new friends, Janet and Ronnie, who are defined by both their relationships and sexuality throughout the novel.ĭisplaced from city life, Quinn exists on the outskirts of both the ingroup and the outgroup in Kettle Springs. Dika characterizes the Final Girl as “a capable character, with potential for awareness and for action,” distinguishing her “from the rest of the young community, who are less aware and whose display of sexual activity is less circumscribed” (91). More importantly, she is the lens through which the audience witnesses the interaction between the generations. Quinn Maybrook–a newcomer to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri–serves as the main character and Final Girl in Clown in a Cornfield. Cesare uses his Final Girl as an outlier in a secluded setting to frame conflict between the generations, highlighting technology as the focal point of of that conflict he also incorporates key components of Vera Dika and Carol Clover’s slasher conventions in order to demonstrate how the generational divide pervades both everyday interactions and the bloody climax of the novel. Adam Cesare’s 2020 novel, Clown in a Cornfield, is a slasher novel that critiques the generational divide and presents the shrinking empathy between the older and younger generations. As new technological innovations are introduced to everyday living, quality of life improves but generational differences become more apparent–especially with the pervasiveness of the term “millennials” across media.
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