Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in cinema studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in American cinema. In the following essay, she discusses the effect of the "hitchhiking game" and the relationship between the two main characters.

In Milan Kundera's short story "The Hitchhiking Game," a young couple, on vacation, spontaneously find themselves engaged in a fantasy "game," in which they pretend that she is a hitchhiker he has picked up along the road. This "game," which begins playfully, turns out to have dire consequences in irrevocably transforming the relationship between the young man and the young woman. The fantasy begins to bleed into reality, leaving both parties feeling completely different about another by the end. But the meaning of the "game," and its ultimate effect on each of them, is very different for the young...