Hughes addresses the loneliness that both men and women feel in post WWII American society in which both genders are isolated by the reversal of roles Men feel alone and abandoned because their women have gone out of the kitchen and into the workforce while women are experiencing loneliness in their newfound freedom In Ray s film adaptation the same post WWII loneliness is the driving force that ultimately breaks up an ill fated romance Ray uses staging and music scores to emphasize the loneliness and distance between lovers Dix Steele and Laurel Gray Hughes uses protagonist Dix Steele s lack of control over himself and the world women around him as well as his disillusion to further his sense of isolation and loneliness Hughes novel embodies the cultural crisis that was sweeping across post WWII America soldiers men returning to a changed world that they no longer recognized and had no control over The America they had loved and left was now out to get them and it was taking the form of their women In the novel Dix certainly views women this way noting that they women were all alike cheats liars whores even the pious ones were only waiting for a chance to cheat and lie and whore Hughes however takes this view and places it in the mind of a violent mentally ill criminal This in turn makes the reader question whether Dix s views and descriptions of the people and world around him are trustworthy He has isolated himself in a delusional world filled with paranoia In the post WWII era when men came back and realized the world they knew and left behind had changed they were angry
