Expressions of Horror: Emotional Storylines

Copyright 2012 by Gary L. Pullman

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King admits, “If I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out.” These two emotions--horror and disgust--are viewed by many as the two main emotions--some might argue the only emotions--that horror fiction evokes.

However, King doesn’t believe that himself, nor, it seems likely, does any other writer or editor of horror stories, any writer or director of horror films. Like any other genre of literature, horror fiction makes use of a range and variety of emotions--and mental states or conditions--among which are the following:

Desperation (Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard embodies desperation when she begs stranger to assist her in Lady in a Cage.)

Humiliation (In Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer is humiliated when his father discovers that the mannequin that his son stole and dresses is a male, rather than a female, mannequin.)

Grief (Both Dr. David Callaway and his daughter Emily express grief following the death of David's wife [Emily's mother]).

Curiosity (Caroline Ellis’ curiosity as to what lies behind the locked attic room gets her killed in The Skeleton Key.)

Anxiety (Marion Crane exemplifies this emotion at the start of Psycho, both before and after she absconds with her boss’ money and particularly when she is followed by the state police officer after she has left town with the stolen loot.)

Madness (Norman Bates’ close ups at the end of Psycho, when he has, for all intents and purposes become his dead mother, illustrate this emotion.).

Vulnerability (Jane Hudson personifies this condition in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.)

Sadistic delight (Tuesday Wells reflects sadistic delight as a murderess in Pretty Poison.)

Wonder (Marte in Day of Wrath emotes wonder.)

Innocence (Regan MacNeil is the very picture of innocence--before and after she is possessed in The Exorcist.)

Hysteria (Heather Donahue, in tears in The Blair Witch Project, expresses hysteria as she videotapes herself.)

Ecstasy (Catherine Ballard, in Crash, experiences ecstasy.)

Shock (Juno is shocked when she accidentally kills her friend Beth in The Descent.)

Revulsion (Andre Delambre is repulsed at his personal appearance after he becomes a human fly in The Fly; the human body, especially its sexual parts and aspects, is a source of repulsion for characters in body horror films, such as many of David Cronenberg's movies.)

A series of such emotions can, in fact, create what might be called an emotional storyline. The looks of anxiety, indecision, anxiety, relief, disturbance, repentance, shock, fear, and horror on Marion Crane’s face in Psycho, for example, both complement the film’s action and are complemented, in return, by the film’s action as these expressions tell--or show--the story, in their own way, as much as the overt action and dialogue do. The same is true of other horror films--or for movies in general, for that matter. Often, in fact, such emotional storylines follow formulas such as the one suggested by the expression “curiosity killed the cat” (The Skeleton Key is an example: Caroline Ellis’ curiosity as to what lies behind the locked attic room gets her killed.)

Renewal

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Like any other artist, the writer faces the challenge of keeping his or her writing fresh. How to make the tenth or the twentieth or the fiftieth novel, short story, or screenplay interesting to increasingly jaded readers or moviegoers, especially when faced with a myriad media, thousands of narratives and dramas, and a handful of plot possibilities, that is the question.

And it is this question that I will explore in this post.

Adopt a fresh perspective. Look at your art through the eyes of another artist. That’s what the makers of Alien did, inviting a painter and sculptor, H. R. Giger, to create the images upon which the film’s extraterrestrial predator is based. The result? Giger’s contribution pumped new life into the then-faltering science fiction-horror genre, making it exciting again. (And don’t some of George Lucas’ Star Wars aliens look a bit like the demons in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights?)

Offer something for everyone. This is the Dean Koontz approach to writing. His novels contain not only horror or science fiction, but also adventure, romance, mystery, and fantasy--something for everyone.

Get inside the characters’ heads. It’s not all about blood and guts and things that go bump in the night--or, at least, it shouldn’t be. Let your readers or audience know your characters--enough to love, hate, or sympathize with them--and the thrills and chills will skyrocket when danger threatens. (A good time to get inside their heads is when they’re alone or performing mundane tasks. In fact, a character should never be alone--even when he or she is alone--because he or she should be thinking and remembering and anticipating things that have happened and things that are likely to come, placing him- or herself, of course, in the center of these things.) Stephen King is especially adept at characterization, as his sales suggest.

Add a symbolic level of meaning. A story that is exhausted at one reading is usually one that doesn’t delve below the surface; in other words, it’s literal throughout, with nary the suggestion of meaning beyond the here and the now, which is universal, lasting, and, well, poetic. My post concerning The Descent offers a good example of a symbolic film.

Mix it up. Alfred Hitchcock said that a story is 85 percent chase, but the object of the chase changes. Sometimes, the good guys chase the bad guys (or the monsters) or vice-versa, but the guy (or the gal) can chase the gal (or the guy); a quest for a rare or precious artifact or relic can occur; a detective can seek clues among red herrings as he or she seeks to solve a mystery; a husband (or wife) can pursue a villain who’s kidnapped a wife (or husband)--or a child. There is only one limit to the types of chase a story can feature--the writer’s own imagination.

Introduce the unfamiliar. Maybe it’s the dreamscape inside a sleeper’s mind, or a virtual reality world, or a lost world, or a land that time forgot, or the hallucinatory consciousness of a psychotic patient, or the aesthetic theory of a sociopath, or the neighborhood (now long gone) in which you or your ancestors grew up, or. . . again, the possibilities are endless. (The unfamiliar can be informational, too: the habits of spiders, the anatomy of the marine life of one’s choice, the habitat of an extraterrestrial being, the physics of subatomic particles). Each in its own way, A Nightmare on Elm Street and King Kong employ this technique, both to great effect.

Alter reality. We take things for granted, believing that such-and-such a thing means this and nothing else and that our view of the world is more-or-less correct. Upset the metaphysical, the ontological, the epistemological, the ethical, or some other applecart; terror (and horror) may well ensue, as it does, for example, in 1408.

Adapt to a new environment. Create an imaginary world full of danger. Then, toss your protagonist (and a handful--or a horde--of other characters) into this dangerous environment so that they must adapt and survive or die. It’s evolution all over again, but in a completely different world or environment. Harry Harrison’s Deathworld Trilogy is an example of this approach.

Correct wrong assumptions. Base part of the story upon the incorrect assumptions that a character or a group of characters make concerning the significance of a person, place, or thing and then, when the time is right, redirect the story by having a character or a group of characters learn the correct meaning of this person, place, or thing. A whole series of false assumptions and corrected interpretations could advance the storyline and keep the plot interesting and fresh for readers.

In reading this post, one might think, the examples don’t show anything new. That’s true, but only because they are examples of novels and films that have already been done. You have to apply the principles I identify in your own way in order to freshen your fiction, just as the writers and works I cite did when they applied these principles. When all is said and done, the world around us (and inside us) is the source of innovation (and inspiration), but you and you alone must be the source of originality.

Monstrous Variations

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

There’s a limit, perhaps, to the number of horror villains that the genre’s writers can imagine. Fortunately, there are also variations on most, if not all, of them. Mr. Hyde, of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, seems to be a variation on the werewolf. He’s hirsute and ferocious and more than a bit bestial, but he’s not a werewolf per se.

 

The disembodied, winged phalli of ancient Greece and the Middle East, as I suggested earlier, appear to have put in a more modern appearance, albeit disguised and minus the wings, as it were, as the phallic parasites in the movie Shivers. Instead of flying, they slither, and they seem to have been skinned alive; nevertheless, their viscous meatiness suggest that they are members virile, as do their ability to spread sexually transmitted diseases and to render both sexes horny.

John Kenneth Muir believes that the computer that impregnates Susan Harris in Demon Seed is a stand-in, as it were, for Victor von Frankenstein; so, one might argue, is H. G. Wells’ Dr. Moreau, who is busy vivisecting animals in the hope4 of creating a race of hybrid “beast-men,” and what is the entity in The Entity if not a ghost-turned-incubus?

Although I myself don’t necessarily subscribe to the notion, some believe that aliens, or extraterrestrial beings, are really demons in disguise. In fact, this seems to be Dean Koontz’s stand on this issue, at least as far as his novel The Taking is concerned. Stephen King’s novel It gives a new shape--and identity--to the ancient god Proteus, with the monster of his novel able to change shape at will or to assume the identity of anyone It’s met. Modern devotees of Wicca have supplanted traditional witches. Ghosts are, often enough, embodiments, so to speak, of guilt associated with past deeds--or misdeeds.

I’m not talking pastiche here, not merely open imitation, for satirical purposes or otherwise, but a creative retooling of earlier horror monster along the lines of Renee Magritte’s retooling of the mermaid icon in his painting Collective Invention. I see examples in a lot of places, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Medusa-like Ovu Mobani demon in Marti Noxon’s “Dead Man’s Party” episode. A flash from its eyes paralyzes humans, just as the Medusa’s gaze turned her victims to stone.

Likewise, the half human, half-serpent demon Machida in David Greenwalt’s “Reptile Boy” is and is not a male version of the ancient Greek snake-woman known as the lamia. For one thing, he’s a he, not a she, and he doesn’t eat babies (as far as we know), apparently preferring nubile teens like Cordelia Chase, Buffy Summers, and the high school girl who is chained in the basement of the fraternity house in which his devotees, male college students who belong to the fraternity that worships him, reside. Buffy’s Machida demon is at least as original a departure from the ancient Greek lamia as Magritte’s fish-woman is on the ancient Greek siren, or mermaid, and it is such innovation that keeps horror fiction’s stable of fiends and monsters fresh. Variety is the spice of monsters, as it is of life.

From Story Idea to Story

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

A common question that aspiring writers ask the pros is "Where do you get your ideas?" Stephen King claims he gets his in a little shop in Utica, but the true answer to the question is that he gets his ideas from the same sources as every other writer, aspiring or pro: from dreams, mental images, newspaper headlines, reading, anecdotes told by others, personal observations, song lyrics, classroom lectures, history--the list is all but limitless.

But what one more than likely means, perhaps, to ask by this question is "How do you develop your ideas into stories?" The answer is simple, really: bring together person, place, and thing.

• The person is the story's main character, or protagonist.
• The story's place is its setting.
• The story's thing is its theme.

What brings the three of them together is the story's conflict and the main character's attempts to resolve this conflict, which includes both his reason, or motive for doing.

Another way of= saying the same thing is to say that a writer develops a story idea into a story by answering six questions: who? (protagonist), what? (conflict), when? and where? (setting), how? (resolution), and why? (motivation and theme). Here's an example:

Idea: A girl is possessed by the devil.

• Who? Father Damien Karras, a priest who doubts his faith (protagonist)
• What? fights the devil (conflict)
• When? and where? in a Georgetown townhouse (setting)
• How? using exorcism (resolution)
• Why? to save a possessed girl's soul and retain his own teetering faith in God (motivation and theme).

That's how it's done and why.

(There's a fill-in-the-blank way of developing the scenes of a story, too, which I explain in "The Fill-in-the-Blank Guide to Writing Fiction").

For a Writer, Too, Two (Or More) Heads Are Better Than One

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Lawrence E. Miles, Lars Pearson, and Christa Dickson, includes a sidebar concerning “Spike’s Nature” in which the author (presumably Dickson, since she waxes poetic about “the sight of James Marsters half-naked [sic]) suggests that the series’ writers view the same character differently, creator Joss Whedon seeing the vampire as redeemable and Doug Petrie as unredeemable. Other writers also have their own points of view concerning Spike’s nature: “Any attempt to work out whether he’s good, bad, or just going through his second adolescence is doomed to failure,” the author or authors conclude, “because frankly it’s hard to find three episodes in a row which all agree” (203).

In an earlier post, “Writing as a Schizophrenic,” I suggested that one way to layer a character (that is, to give him or her several, sometimes conflicting traits, making him or her a round and dynamic, as opposed to a flat and static, character) is to develop schizophrenia. Not real schizophrenia, of course. Vincent Van Gogh’s ear aside, there’s a limit at which an artist should draw the line when it comes to making personal sacrifices for the sake of his or her art (or the man or woman of his or her dreams). I meant imaginary schizophrenia or, even better, the sprouting of several heads, each with a mind of its own. By adopting different perspectives (political, religious, philosophical, and otherwise) and different points of view even among these perspectives (Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, conservative, moderate, liberal, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheistic, agnostic, dualistic, monistic, materialistic), one could add depth to one’s depiction of a character.

The authors of Dusted suggest another way of accomplishing the same enrichment of one’s characters: imagine him or her the way that several established authors might portray the same character. How might Stephen King depict your protagonist, antagonist, or other type of character? How might Dean Koontz represent the same literary person? How about Robert McCammon or Dan Simmons or Bentley Little? By sketching your character as other writers--and famous or at least well established ones, at that--might see him or her, you can yourself develop a richer understanding and appreciation of him or her. If the character is a complex one, you can even create various scenes that show his or her perhaps conflicting characteristics. Perhaps you started with a cartoon-style hero or villain. Now, he or she has developed into a dramatic persona worthy of William Shakespeare (or maybe King or Koontz, Whedon or Petrie).

Implications of the Fantastic

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation. . . [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the works belong to another genre; the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (41).

Indeed we distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”). . . and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”) (41-42).

-- Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre

Whatever one may think about Todorov’s theory of the fantastic, he or she would likely admit that the philosopher does a good job, for the most part, in defining his terms. The fantastic is either the supernatural or the apparently supernatural, depending upon whether it is resolved as explicable in terms of “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion” (that is, as the “uncanny,” or “supernatural explained”) or it remains inexplicable (that is, “marvelous”).

One of the terms that is not as explicitly defined is “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion.” This term is more vague, although, within the context of the other terms’ definitions, its meaning is fairly clear, referring, it seems, to the scientific world view in which the universe is synonymous with nature, cause-and-effect relationships govern all events, knowledge is obtained through the application of the scientific method, and the results of this method of inquiry are codified in theoretical principles often called “laws of nature,” “laws of thermodynamics,” “laws of physics,” and so forth. It is “reality” in this sense upon which the fantastic itself is predicated, Todorov says, and which the fantastic actually supports:

The reader and the hero, as we have seen, must decide if a certain event or phenomenon belongs to reality or the imagination, that is, must determine whether or not it is real. It is therefore the category of the real which has furnished a basis for our definition of the fantastic.

. . . Far from being a praise of the imaginary. . . the literature of the fantastic posits the majority of a text as belonging to reality--or, more specifically, as provoked by reality (167-168).

It is also for this reason that the literature of the fantastic ultimately reaches its end, or, as Todorov declares:

Today, we can no longer believe in an immutable, external reality, nor in a literature which is merely the transcription of such a reality. . . . Fantastic literature itself--which on every page subverts linguistic categorizations--has received a fatal blow from these very categorizations (168).

In short, as I myself suggest in “Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?”:

The prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

 However, in general, individuals follow, rather than lead, developments in cultural and theoretical paradigm shifts. The cultural Weltanschauung changes, usually centuries before, the individual’s world view, and what is accepted among the elite of specialized communities such as those of academics, scientists, and philosophers usually becomes accepted much more slowly, often centuries later, in fact, if ever, by the general public. For this reason, outmoded views of the “reality” of which Todorov speaks continue to inform and to direct, if not determine, their thoughts, behavior, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps, their feelings. For them, such divisions as those listed below will continue, more or less, to hold sway:

The Fantastic (or what might be called the “supernatural undecided”): The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Shining (film version; directed by Stanley Kubrick), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King), The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson). 

The Uncanny (“supernatural explained”): “The Red Room” (H. G. Wells), The Island of Dr. Moreau (H. G. Wells), The Food of the Gods (H. G. Wells), The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells), Hide and Seek (film, directed by Ari Schlossberg), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), King Kong (film, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack), Subterranean (James Rollins), Relic (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child), Watchers (Dean Koontz), The Tommyknockers (Stephen King), Swan Song (Robert McCammon), The Funhouse (film, directed by Tobe Hooper). 

The Marvelous ("supernatural accepted" as such): “1408” (Stephen King), “Dracula’s Guest” (Bram Stoker), “A Christmas Carol” (Charles Dickens), It (Stephen King), ‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King), Carrie (Stephen King), Desperation (Stephen King), The Taking (Dean Koontz), Summer of Night (Dan Simmons), Fires of Eden (Dan Simmons), The Green Mile (Stephen King), Silver Bullet (Stephen King), The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The University (Bentley Little).

Such a division also has the benefit of allowing authors, critics, and readers the ability to discern, in short order, whether a writer’s oeuvre tends more toward the fantastic, the uncanny, or the marvelous.

Everyday Horrors: Bacteria!

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Although some bacteria are, from a human point of view, good guys, many of them wear black hats or monster masks. They are the bogeymen, as it were, among the microbes of the microscopic world. As such, as much as any of the other natural wonders featured in Chillers and Thrillers’ “Everyday Horrors” series, bacteria are everyday horrors.

Since I’m no scientist, this article will be more heavily sourced than most that I write, although, of course, I will include my own peculiar takes on the topic as well.

According to Unusual Microbes, bacteria come in all shapes and sizes. There are “big” boys, such as Epulopiscium and Thiomargarita, which are “big enough to be seen with the naked eye.” This bacterium “cheats.” No, it doesn’t take steroids. Instead, “it is mostly vacuole,” using “nitrate ions in its respiration” to enable itself to “respire at great depths.” Like the Leslie Nielsen character in the Creepshow, Thiomargarita can hold its breath for a long time!

At the other extreme is the archaeon, which “is very near the "limit" of what people think might be the smallest possible organism.”

Other capabilities of unusual bacteria, the same website declares, are those which “give birth to live young” (Epulopiscium and Metabacterium), “square bacteria” (Haloquadratum walsbyi), bacteria that can live at extremely hot temperatures (Strain 121, an archaeon can survive a temperature of 249.8 degrees Fahrenheit), bacteria that have survived for millennia in arctic ice, magnetic bacteria (Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum), cannibalistic bacteria (Bdellovibrios), and multi-cellular bacteria (Myxobacteri).

Some bacteria have adopted unusual diets, too, including those that enjoy each other (the cannibalistic Bdellovibrios and the Vampirococcus, which, Wikipedia informs its readers, “attach to their prey in order to digest them and absorb nutrients), dead organisms (Saprophages), and even human flesh (Necrotizing fasciitis)!

The flesh-eating Necrotizing fasciitis is so disturbing that it bears more than a mere mention, so, courtesy of Wikipedia, here goes:

"Flesh-eating bacteria" is a misnomer, as the bacteria do not actually eat the tissue. They cause the destruction of skin and muscle by releasing toxins (virulence factors), which include streptococcal pyogenic exotoxins. S. pyogenes produces an exotoxin known as a superantigen. This toxin is capable of activating T-cells non-specifically, which causes the overproduction of cytokines and severe systemic illness (Toxic [sic] shock syndrome) (“Necrotizing fasciitis”).

As bad as this sounds (and it sounds pretty damned bad!), the symptoms of the condition are even more horrific. According to the same Wikipedia article:

The infection begins locally, at a site of trauma, which may be severe (such as the result of surgery), minor, or even non-apparent. Patients usually complain of intense pain that may seem in excess given the external appearance of the skin. With progression of the disease, tissue becomes swollen, often within hours. Diarrhea and vomiting are also common symptoms.

In the early stages, signs of inflammation may not be apparent if the bacteria are deep within the tissue. If they are not deep, signs of inflammation, such as redness and swollen or hot skin, show very quickly. Skin color may progress to violet, and blisters may form, with subsequent necrosis (death) of the subcutaneous tissues.

Patients with necrotizing fasciitis typically have a fever and appear very ill. Mortality rates have been noted as high as 73 percent if left untreated. Without surgery and medical assistance, such as antibiotics, the infection will rapidly progress and will eventually lead to death.

The cosmological argument, which is better known, perhaps, as the argument from design, contends that the design that seems apparent in the universe suggests the existence of an intelligent Creator. There are several counterarguments to this view, the strongest of which may be the so-called problem of evil. According to this refutation of the cosmological argument, the existence of cancer, birth defects, mental illness, and, one might add, necrotizing fasciitis, among other evils, suggests either that God is cruel or that he is well-meaning but too powerless or incompetent to have created or to have sustained a universe where all is good and there is no suffering. However, there are various replies to the problem of evil as well, one of which states that the temporal evils that humanity endures allow greater eternal blessings. The microscopic impinges upon the macroscopic, just as time encroaches upon eternity and evil may itself become the instrument of greater and timeless good.

Note: Illustrations are from Wikipedia.

Narrative and Dramatic Technique

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Lately, I have become more and more interested in narrative and dramatic technique, in the use of the more sophisticated, less apparent methods by which authors and filmmakers convey meaning and nuance in the tales they show and tell. Some of these techniques include incongruity, juxtaposition, symbolism, metaphor, and imagery. Indeed, on occasion, two or m ore of these techniques are combined, one as the vehicle of the other. For example, image or juxtaposition often conveys symbolism. In Deleuze and Horror Film, Anna Powell offers an interesting and insightful explication of Stanley Kubrick’s use of imagery both to set the tone of the movie and to symbolize the state of protagonist Jack Torrance’s mind:

Inflation and detachment shape the cerebral aesthetic of The Shining and its virtual experience by the viewer. The wide-angle lens and overblown strains of Berlioz plunge us sensorially into a world of inflated grandeur. Extremely wide vistas of the mountainous landscape induce a cold, detached and depersonalized perspective. Humans are unimportant in this vast physical, and metaphysical, terrain. The mechanic motion of an uncannily independent camera surveys the landscape in an omniscient gliding motion. We experience the perspective of an eagle’s eye, or a divine power, as we become-god. Mental detachment and ego-inflation key in the delusions of Jack Torrance. The disturbed writer’s deranged consciousness forms and is formed by the film’s mise-en-scene and cinematography.

The landscape, like the music, has a sublime grandeur yet the ominous chords and the dizzying, extra-human perspective render it sinister. It threatens to engulf the small, insect-like car, leading it ever upwards into a land of eternal snow. As the narrative moves inexorably onwards, it mobilizes a process of becoming-frozen. Jack undergoes a freezing of emotional warmth and empathy. His blood runs cold, both figuratively and literally, as he becomes one with the forces of winter and death (43-44).

Powell’s analysis is powerful and insightful, and Kubrick’s use of the external world to reflect the internal world extends beyond the mountainous countryside to the interior-exterior world of the Overlook Hotel as well, which, like the landscape without, also conveys, even mirrors, the unstable state of Torrance’s mind:

Shining as affective force dominates the mise-en-scene. The interior of the Overlook Hotel is lit and coloured preternaturally. No daylight can penetrate, and fire, candles and electricity replace natural light. Polished surfaces like metal, glossy paint and marble magnify their impact by varying degrees of reflection and refraction. These artificial light qualities objectify Jack’s derangement. They highlight the colours and tones of gold that express and modify the power of light itself. The hotel’s gold function room is the locus of vampiric energy. Its tonal quality spreads through the building to drain the human life force. Light grows brighter and colours grow richer enhanced by the psychic horror it generates.

A distinctive light quality reinforces the cold white of the larder / cold storage room, lit by a fluorescent tube that drains all other colours. This space is the cold heart of the building, where Jack is trapped until his final murderous apotheosis. . . . As well as the qualities and tones of colours, light evokes tactility, we virtually feel the snow’s bitter coldness. This is effected by Kubrick’s use of cold blue light and a back-lit mist that rises as the snow’s surface evaporates. In his dying, Jack becomes completely overwhelmed by blueness and light in a becoming-ice (45-46).

In a previous post, I explained how, in “Dracula’s Guest,” Bram Stoker’s inclusion of potentially hallucinatory perceptions as part of descriptions within descriptions of persons (characters), places (settings), and things, from the point of view of the story’s protagonist, creates almost-subliminal tension and anxiety in the reader as this device produces, in the reader’s consciousness, a cognitive double-take, so to speak. In another article, posted previously, I explain how H. P. Lovecraft’s various descriptions, always in different terms, of the same monstrous entity increases the horrific character of the monster in the reader’s imagination as he or she strives, in vain, to make sense of the puzzling series of differing descriptions of the same creature.  In yet another previously posted essay, I comment upon the disturbing effect of Stephen King’s offhanded inclusion of nonsense words and phrases in the otherwise-normal dialogue of a character, Junior Rennie, who is losing his grip on reality (and, as it turns out, is suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed brain tumor).  All of these techniques are ways by which horror writers have conveyed both convey meaning and nuance as well as horror and repulsion in the tales they tell.

Writers have discovered or (more often) created yet other techniques, too, for suggesting subtle shades of horror and tones of terror. My essay, previously posted, concerning the symbolic nature of the ogre-like monsters in The Descent (they appear to represent aborted fetuses who torment the women who descend into the more extreme depths of feminist demands for “choice,” even when such exercises of free will result in haunting guilt concerning one’s decision to end the lives of children growing in the womb) indicates yet another authorial means of conveying horrific meanings within a text or, in this case, a film.  Ray Bradbury often effects horror through characterization. The protagonist of his short story “Heavyset“ is frightening, indeed, simply because of who he is. Shirley Jackson, like Flannery O’Connor, uses a measured cadence to march her readers ever forward, through her often absurd situations and past her usually grotesque characters; her matter-of-fact, somehow insistent rhythm keeps readers reading as much as if they were participants in a parade.  In “Bad Girls,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith accidentally kills Deputy Mayor Allan Finch; before this horrific incident, the viewer is warned about imminent danger as Faith and Buffy walk down a dark alley, splashed with crimson as, on a nearby construction sawhorse, an amber caution light flashes.

Horror writers can learn from authors of other genres of fiction, too, appropriating for their own purposes the narrative and dramatic techniques that their peers have developed in the service of their own storytelling ends. Images can bracket the action of a story, forming bookends, as it were, and transforming a narrative or a drama into a frame story, as the car wrecks that begin and end Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool do.

Imagery can provide an antithesis to the nature of a character, as do the thick glasses that the visionary Hollywood producer Stanley Motss wears in Wag the Dog. Images can symbolize the transcendent subhuman nature of a character, as the soulless Man With No Eyes’ mirrored sunglasses do in Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke or a character’s transcendent qualities, as the snapping turtle that “won’t let go” even when it’s “deader than hell” does, in the same film. The mirrored sunglasses prevent anyone from seeing the “walking boss’” eyes and suggest that he has no eyes to see--in other words, that he is inhuman. The eyes are the mirrors of the soul, but rather than mirroring the Man With No Eyes’ Soul, the sunglasses mirror only the eyes (and the souls) of those whom the walking boss’ sunglasses reflect. The turtle symbolizes Luke’s own refusal, as it were, to “let go” his hold on his fellow convicts, whom he inspires even more after he is “deader than hell” than he did when he was alive in their midst. Horror writers can use similar devices to frame stories or typify, or even deify, characters.

Morality “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Stephen King has been writing for a long time. His first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974. A natural-born storyteller, King has also learned a multitude of storytelling tricks over the years. I’ve mentioned a few already, in previous posts concerning Under the Dome. Here’s another: misdirection, or what I like to call the bait-and-switch technique.

Car dealers like Big Jim Rennie know and practice this trick, offering a limited number of low-price new cars to the public but announcing, when potential customers arrive, that all these vehicles have been sold; however, for just a little more (usually thousands of dollars), the dealership can put the buyer in a similar car. The low-price model is the bait; the switch occurs when the dealer offers to sell a different model for a higher price.

The bait-and-switch scene in Under the Dome to which I refer takes place shortly after the riot at Food Town (the “food fight,” as I like to call it). (Incidentally, the reader learned that the purpose of the riot was to provide the basis for beefing up the town’s police force by as many as eight additional special deputies; Big Jim wants his own well-armed militia, just as President Obama has called for his own private civilian police force, which, the president says, should be as well armed as the U. S. military.) During the riot, one of the thugs who works for Big Jim threw a rock that smashed Georgia Roux’s jaw and knocked out a quarter of her teeth. Torie McDonald collected the teeth and took them to Dr. Joe Boxer, the only dentist in Chester’s Mill, hoping that he could reimplant them. However, Joe, who works strictly on a cash basis, refuses to cooperate, unless he’s paid in advance, as always, for his services, even though he was just treated free of charge by physician’s assistant Rusty Everett for minor injuries that he’d sustained during the food fight. Joe is more concerned with getting home so he can stash the basketful of frozen waffles he’s stolen from the supermarket during the looting of the store than he is with helping a fellow resident of Chester’s Mill. Rusty, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara, and high school history teacher Chaz Bender try to persuade Joe to perform the operations, even to the point of threatening him with violence. This incident comprises the bait portion of the bait-and-switch scene. The reader expects to see this conflict through to its conclusion, looking forward to seeing whether and how Rusty, Barbie, and Chaz persuade Joe to do the right thing.

The switch portion occurs as Chief Peter Randolph, accompanied by Deputies Freddy Denton, Jackie Wettington, and Linda Everett and Special Deputies Junior Rennie, Frank DeLesseps, Carter Thibodeau (the last two of whom are among the same men who, assisted by Georgia Roux, beat and raped Samantha Bushey) arrive, weapons drawn, to arrest Barbie--seven police officers to arrest one man! To prevent his being killed for “resisting arrest,” Barbie immediately raises his hands, surrendering, and keeps them raised even after Thibodeau charges forward and punches the captive in the stomach, doubling him over. The chief announces, “I’m arresting you for the murders of Angela McCain, Dorothy Sanders, Lester A. Coggins, and Brenda Perkins.” Angela and Dorothy (“Dodee”) were killed by Junior; Lester and Brenda, by Junior’s father, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, but Barbie is being framed for their murders. The colonel had anticipated his arrest on one trumped-up charge or another, although it is doubtful that he suspected he’d be taken into custody for the murders of four individuals.

The use of situational irony, which is what the bait-and-switch technique really amounts to, takes the reader by surprise enhancing the effect of the follow-on situation that is presented in lieu of the one that the initial situation suggests will occur. In this scene, King demonstrates that he is adroit at its use. So completely has he drawn the reader into the conflict between Joe, Rusty, Barbie, and Chaz, concerning the replacement of Georgia’s teeth that the reader is unprepared for the arrival and arrest of Barbie by Chester’s Mill’s finest (although Barbie himself has foreshadowed this incident several times well before this scene takes place).

As I mentioned in a previous post, the central theme of this novel seems to be provided in a quotation of Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” I also mentioned King’s tendency to divide his characters into two camps, so that there is a dichotomy of “us” against “them.” Often, in the past, such dualities have consisted of children vs. adults, of Democrats vs. Republicans, of women vs. men, of religious folk vs. secular folk, and although some such divisions continue in Under the Dome, King’s latest novel shows a maturation of his thinking concerning politics, religion, and social issues. He seems to have come to an understanding that the world is not so easily divisible into good and evil, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. He seems to have developed a broader, deeper view of life, in which even a Republican like Julia Shumway can be heroic; where adults can recognize children’s talents and treat them as individuals rather than as pesky stereotypes; where religious faith need not be grotesque and absurd; and where men and women, despite the battle of the sexes, can battle alongside one another, for either good or evil.

In the past, King has largely defined evil as a threat to the community. Many of his novels, from ’Salem’s Lot onward, have an invasion plot, in which the menace arrives from outside, to infect and corrupt a small town which, although not perfect, not Eden, has been, nevertheless, a good place to raise one’s children or in which to grow up. In Under the Dome, the evil doesn’t come from outside; the evil is already in Chester’s Mill, chiefly in the form of Big Jim Rennie, but in many others as well, including his son Junior; Pete Randolph, Deputy Frank Denton, and their special deputies Georgia Roux, Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau; in the drug addict Phil Bushey (“The Chef”) who abandoned his wife Samantha and their child Little Walter; in the apathetic dentist, Joe Boxer; and in Big Jim’s fellow selectmen, Andy Sanders and, to a lesser degree, the pain pills-addicted Andrea Grinnell. Through these individuals, King defines, or redefines, evil. Evil is a love of power, such as afflicts Big Jim Rennie. Evil is bullying others, a pastime, with fatal consequences, enjoyed by Junior Rennie and his cronies. Evil is Phil Bushey’s abandonment of his wife and son. Evil is emotional, physical, and sexual assault, such as Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, with Georgia Roux’s assistance, committed against Samantha Bushey. Evil is siding with evil because it benefits oneself, as both Andy
Sanders and the Reverend Lester Coggins do in cooperating with Big Jim in his political and criminal undertakings. Evil is Joe Boxer’s callous indifference to human suffering, unless, of course, the one who is suffering can pay up front and in cash for Joe’s dental services. Evil is the love for power or self-aggrandizement, which frustrates the power of love.

At the end of the bait-and-switch scene, one of King’s characters summarizes the distinction between good and evil that is foundational to Under the Dome, and the difference is entirely pragmatic, even, perhaps, quantifiable at times. Goodness is helping others; evil is hurting others. Although philosophers, theologians, and social scientists may argue about what it means, exactly, to help someone else and what it means, exactly, to hurt someone else (can perceived help really be harmful, for example, as when one enables another person to remain in a condition, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, that is injurious to his or her health?) and whether, to help someone else, it may be necessary to also hurt him or her (as dentists and physicians must hurt patients on occasion in order to treat them), King’s distinction, voiced by Rusty Everett, concerning Barbie’s medical treatments of wounded rioters and looters, seems a good starting point for such a basic understanding of morality:

[Deputy Linda Everett says, to her husband, physician’s assistant Eric, or “Rusty,”] “Four people, Eric--didn’t you hear? He killed them, and he almost certainly raped at least two of the women. I helped take them out of the hearse at Bowie’s. I saw the stains.”

Rusty shook his head. “I just spent the morning with him, watching him help people, not hurt them” (526).

Perhaps, in this exchange, King suggests another instance of evil. Linda is confronted with two versions of Barbie: helpful or hurtful. The former is supported by the testimony of her husband, a physician’s assistant whose dedication to the community is unquestioned, if not unquestionable. The other version, that of the hurtful Barbie, is supported by the allegations of Chief Randolph and the likes of Special Deputy Frank DeLesseps, and Junior Rennie. The only evidence specified against Barbie is the discovery of his Army “dog tags in Angie McCain’s hand.” The evidence is enough to convince Linda, but not enough to persuade Rusty, who finds their discovery in the hand of one of Barbie’s alleged victims “convenient.” The willingness or unwillingness to believe allegations against someone is a matter of faith, and the conclusions to which one comes concerning such allegations is often a matter of choice rooted in human understanding, or in the understanding of human nature, and there is yet another of King’s divisions of “us” and “them” involved in this matter, as a brief discussion--or debate--between Linda and Rusty, as Barbie is being “hustled out to the Chief’s car and locked in the backseat with his hands still cuffed behind him,” makes clear:

She stopped. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you? Did you miss what just happened here?”

“Rusty, she was holding his dog tags!”

He nodded slowly. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

Her face, which had been both hurt and hopeful, now froze. She seemed to notice that her arms were still held out to him, and she lowered them.

“Four people,” she said, “three beaten almost beyond recognition. There are sides, and you need to think about which one you’re on.”

“So do you, honey,” Rusty said (527).

Although some of King’s dualistic divisions are more superficial than others and are based upon stereotypes, the moral distinction he makes at the end of his bait-and-switch scene stands out as one that is profound. Although not entirely free of difficulties and more or less debatable, his stance that one can determine good from evil based upon whether a person’s behavior is helpful or harmful to others is worthy of serious thought, as is his suggestion that choice itself, including the choice to believe or to disbelieve the potentially injurious allegations that people make against others as an action which can be hurtful and, therefore, evil, if it is based upon deceit, ignorance, naiveté, the need to please others, self-aggrandizement, an uncritical acceptance of others’ statements or evidence, or any of a number of other false foundations, is good or evil. The surety for such decisions, King suggests, is not merely knowledge of the facts (or alleged facts), the evidence, as it were, but also of the person. Linda is wrong to believe that Barbie is guilty of murder and rape because of the (planted) evidence she’s made aware of, whereas Rusty is right to believe in Barbie’s innocence, despite such “evidence,” for he has worked alongside the man and has seen, with his own eyes, Barbie’s compassion, courage, and commitment to helping, not hurting, others.

As is often the case with King’s fiction, there is much more to the action than a moment’s chill or thrill. What King’s chief rival, Dean Koontz, says, not about Under the Dome, and not about morality, but about the exercise of the intellect, is true of human behavior in general and, as King indicates, helps to separate good from evil and right from wrong: “Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.”

Team Spirit “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Following the riot at Food Town, in which most of the injured are the police themselves, including several of the special deputies who raped Samantha Bushey, Brenda Perkins tries to put into effect the plan to blackmail Big Jim Rennie so as to thwart the selectman’s attempt to jail Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara on one trumped-up charge or another.

Unfortunately, since neither Julia Shumway, the owner and editor of the local newspaper nor Romeo Burpie, the owner of the largest independent department store in America, are home when she comes to call upon them to hide the incriminating documents that her late husband, former police chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins had compiled against Big Jim, she entrusts them to Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell. Attempting to kick her addiction to pain pills cold turkey, Andrea is in no shape to deal with such a responsibility. Soon after accepting the documents and agreeing to conceal them, Andrea passes out; when she awakens, she doesn’t remember Andrea’s visiting her.

For her own part, Brenda has hidden the laptop computer upon which her late husband had saved the original, electronic files inside her home safe, and, against the advice of Barbie, she decides to confront Big Jim by herself, accusing him of manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine. For her trouble, she receives death at the murderous hands of Big Jim.

Her belief that “Big Jim would” not “actually hurt her” is, the omniscient narrator points out, in a bit of the foreshadowing with which King’s novel is replete, “a dreadful miscalculation on her part, but understandable; she wasn’t the only one who clung to the notion that the world was as it had been before the Dome came down,” (488) a sentiment that echoes politicians’ own insistence that post-9/11 America is forever different than pre-9/11 America and that, as a result, changes have to be made and personal freedoms must be lost--for the good of the country, of course, just as everything that Big Jim does is (according to him) for the good of the town he governs.

Such a “miscalculation” has dire consequences for Brenda, as it may for Americans in general who, it appears, live “under the dome” of environmental terrorism (and political terrorism): “Brenda Perkins heard a bitter crack, like the breaking of a branch overloaded with ice, and followed the sound into a great darkness, trying to call her husband’s name as she went” (495). She is a damsel in distress, to be sure, but she is one without a rescuer or a defender.

The reader hopes that her fate doesn’t parallel Americans’ own, especially given the numerous parallels that King’s novel draws between current events in the United States (and around the world) and the incidents that occur in his massive story. As always, King’s work is something of a cautionary tale concerning real-world situations and events, many of the latest ones of our own devise. “It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma,” Edgar Allan Poe, in a technologically and politically less complicated time declared, “which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.” Let’s hope that the master of the macabre was right.

Under the Dome appears to offer a turning point in King’s understanding of politics, morality, and group dynamics. It seems to be a watershed novel, in which the author deepens and broadens his understanding of the complexities of civilization, culture, and society, no longer assuming the existence of simplistic dualities of Democrat vs. Republican, adult vs. child, or other forms of us vs. them. Watching current events from the relative safety of the Florida Keys seems to have taught him quite a bit about life during the time, “November 22, 2007-March 14, 2009,” that he wrote his latest novel. He’s a better storyteller because of his maturation, because he offers a more balanced perspective concerning the themes he takes up in this volume.

One of the themes of Under the Dome, common to many of King’s novels, is that it takes a village (or at least a group) to defeat the monster. In fact, one of the sections of Under the Dome has as its title “We All Support the Team.” Of course, in a contest, athletic or otherwise, one team must compete against another. In his early novels, the two teams were often heroic children (teens or preteens) and either corrupt, indifferent, or incompetent, usually unaware, adults. It was, consequently, the children who led the way and, usually, the children who defeated the monster.

There is a bit of this thinking in Under the Dome as well, as this exchange between Norrie Calvert, Joe McClatchey, and Benny Drake, who are smoking stolen cigarettes under Peace Bridge, when Norrie spots Brenda Perkins (whose death was recounted ea a couple of pages back but who is, courtesy of the miracle of the flashback, alive and well at the moment and approaching the children’s hideaway):

“Let’s get going,” Benny said.

“We can’t get going until she’s gone,” Norrie said.

Benny shrugged. “What’s the big deal? If she sees us, we’re just some kids goofing around the town common. And know what? She probably wouldn’t see us if she looked right at us. Adults never see kids.” He considered this. “Unless they’re on skateboards.”

“Or smoking,” Norrie added (502).

However, some adults are not only aware of children but also entrust them to accomplish vitally important tasks. Julia Shumway has convinced Joe’s mother to allow him and his friends to deliver a “gadget” that Barbie considers vital to their cause.

In general, in this matter, King appears to have matured as both a thinker and a writer, no longer dividing his fictional worlds into an “us“ against “them,” black-or-white dichotomy of innocence and experience, righteousness and evil, heroes and villains. Instead of an us-children against them-adults, he posits two teams of adults (or four, if one takes Big Jim’s view that “ants,” “grasshoppers,” and “locusts” make up the population of Chester’s Mill: on one side, the team of Dale Barbara, Julia Shumway, the late police chief Howard Perkins and his recently murdered widow Brenda, Romeo Burpie, and others, standing against the team of Big Jim Rennie, Andy Sanders, Pete Randolph, Junior Rennie, the late Lester Coggins, and their followers.

Big Jim explains the situation to Lester, just before killing him:

“Every town has its ants--which is good--and its grasshoppers, which aren’t so good but we can live with them because we understand them and we can make them do what’s in their own best interests, even if we have to squeeze em a little. But every town also has its locusts, just like in the Bible, and that’s what people like the Busheys are. On them we’ve got to bring the hammer down. . . “ (260).

The reader must take Big Jim’s analysis with a grain of salt, perhaps, because, obviously, he is the most corrupt of all the characters in Chester’s Mill. The context of the novel allows one to identify the groups named by Big Jim: the ants are the productive citizens, the hardworking blue-collar folks who produce the goods and provide the services that keeps the town’s economy humming; the grasshoppers are the merchants, entrepreneurs, and financiers who control and regulate the means of production, including human resources, profiting from the goods and services that the working class create; and the locusts are the poor and needy, often emotionally damaged, sometimes drug-addicted or alcoholic citizens who deplete the town’s treasury. In Machiavelli’s terms, the ants and the locusts are the masses; the business owners, the aristocrats; and the governing party (unmentioned by Big Jim except as “we”) are the monarch and his royal “family” and patrons.

Jimi Hendrix, or King’s quotation of the late musician, provides the perspective of Barbie’s team: “When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, the earth will know peace.” Barbie, Julia, and Romeo, like Howard and Brenda Perkins, act out of a true concern for justice, liberty, and respect for one’s fellow, all of which values stem, ultimately, from love (for if one has not love for oneself and one’s neighbor, neither justice, liberty, nor respect is likely to be considered of any importance; rather, one is more likely to operate according to the principles of Big Jim and his cronies.)

Big Jim’s understanding of the motivation of high school girls’ basketball clarifies the values he and his team members hold even more than his brief speech to Lester Coggins concerning ants, grasshoppers, and locusts. Big Jim is attracted to girls’ basketball because “young female players are invested in a team ethic that the boys,” being more interested in showing off their skills as individual players, “rarely match” (445). Because of this devotion, “The girls took the sport personally, and that made them better haters,” the omniscient narrator asserts, explaining that they “loathed losing. They took loss back to the locker room and brooded over it. More importantly, they loathed and hated it as a team. Big Jim often saw that hare rear its head. . . .” (446). (One need only recall Georgia Roux cheering on the town’s special deputies as they beat and raped Samantha Bushey to understand what King is describing; bullies often delight in their power to inflict pain and suffering on others and tend to band together as a pack, or “team,” against lone individuals. Corrupt politicians, King seems to suggest, are no different.)
A season-ticket holder, Big Jim frequently attends these games, and, in the process, he has chosen a champion worthy of his admiration:

Before 2004, the Lady Wildcats had made the state tournament only once in twenty years, that appearance a one-and-done affair against Buckfield. Then had come Hanna Compton. The greatest hater of all time, in Big Jim’s opinion. . . .

. . . Hanna had taken the game over with the single-minded brutality of Joseph Stalin taking over Russia, her black eyes glittering (and seemingly fixed upon some basketball Nirvana beyond the sight of normal mortals), her face locked in that eternal sneer that said, I’m better than you, I’m the best, get out of my way or I’ll run you. . . down. . . ( 446-447).

In his portrait of Hanna, whom Big Jim admires as the athlete par excellence, because of the girl’s “out-of-my face ‘tude” no less than for her amazing athletic prowess, King highlights the girl’s arrogance (“I’m better than you, I’m the best, get out of my way or I’ll run you. . . down”) as the key energizing element in her personality; it is this arrogance, or pride, that fuels both her hatred and her drive, and it is one that, sharing with her, Big Jim recognizes and respects. However, as a self-avowed Christian (a confession open to serious doubt), Big Jim should heed the Bible’s declaration that “pride goeth before a fall.”
　

Quick Tip: Setting as Character

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Our surroundings, to a large extent, reflect who we are. After all, when one has reached the point that he or she can choose décor and furnishings that he or she prefers rather than can afford, a homeowner is apt to select items that he or she likes. For example, according to an article in USA Today, writer “Dean Koontz’s home office is filled with things he treasures.”

What might an author who has written in such genres as horror, science fiction, and action-adventure thrillers “treasure”? Koontz is reported to appreciate and enjoy not only “family photos,” but also “Japanese scroll paintings, a collection of art-deco Bakelite radios,” and, of course, “a dog bed in the corner for his [latest] golden retriever.” His “24,000-square foot” residence, which was “inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, is “notched into a hillside” overlooking Newport Beach, California, where it exudes a “Zen-like atmosphere,” despite Koontz’s own Roman Catholic faith.

According to the USA Today article, Koontz’s home “includes numerous. . . rooms of vast proportions including a 20-seat movie theater; a wine cellar that can hold 2,000 bottles; an elevator; a state-of-the-art gym; two pools; [and] a custom-designed library.” Oh, yes, it also has three bedrooms.

Koontz admits that his house is a “horrible indulgence,” one which derives, he believes, from the poverty and deprivation of his childhood, which resulted from “his cruel, ne’er-do-well alcoholic father, who physically and emotionally abused Koontz and his mother.”

Beneath the immaculate beauty and serenity of Koontz’s dream house--foundational to it, one might say--is the ugliness and brutality of his youth. However, Koontz has made much of the wealth that has financed his mansion by reprising the role of “his cruel, ne’er-do-well alcoholic father” in the guise of the many villainous psychopaths and sociopaths who serve as his novels’ antagonists. It may not be a house which is built upon blood money, but it is a residence--and a very comfortable one, at that--which is built upon Koontz’s own childhood trauma and suffering.

One’s home may or may not be a castle or even a mansion, but even the “shack” in which Koontz says he grew up (“a shabby four-room house,” USA Today tells us, which “did not have a bathroom until he was 12”) may suggest a good deal about the person who lives there. Just as the house that Koontz built as an adult exhibits his success, both as a writer and as a man, so does the “shack” in which he lived as a boy suggest the squalor and misery of his life, then, as the child of the “cruel, ne’er-do-well alcoholic father, who physically and emotionally abused Koontz and his mother.”

It also suggests the environmental forces which, along with one’s genetic inheritance, helps to shape and mold the child, who, as William Wordsworth tells us, “is the father of the man.” In Koontz’s case, his deplorable childhood catapulted him to fame and fortune, rather than to infamy and poverty and to love, rather than hatred, for his fellow man (and, of course, golden retrievers). Koontz’s success is a testament to the greatness of his heart.

Among Ed Gein's "treasures"

Such is not always the case, of course. Ed Gein, the basis for such characters as Psycho’s Norman Bates, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill, is a case in point. Gein’s mother was a stern, disapproving religious fanatic who could have been (but was not) the model that Stephen King used for Carrie White’s mother. While she was yet alive, to physically and emotionally abuse her son, the farmhouse in which Ed lived, with her and (until their deaths), his father (who was, like Koontz’s father, a “cruel, ne’er-do-well alcoholic father, who physically and emotionally abused” Gein “and his mother”) was fairly neat and orderly. However, Gein’s father died, and then Gein, it is believed, murdered his elder brother, leaving him alone with his mother in the remote farmhouse near Plainfield, Wisconsin, where whatever was festering inside Gein developed into a full-blown psychosis characterized by schizophrenia.

Following the death of Gein’s mother, the farmhouse became a horrific parody of its former self, with Gein decorating the walls with masks cut from the faces of the dead bodies he exhumed. He used human skulls for soup bowls. He upholstered chairs with human skin. He adorned the posts of his bed with his victims’ skulls. There were other horrors, too: noses, pieces of human bone, human heads, salted labia, refrigerated organs, lips on a string.

A grave robber, Gein, who was also both a transvestite and an aspiring transsexual, dressed in a vest that sported a female cadaver’s breasts, leggings of flesh, and a mask that had once been the face of one of the 40 dead women he’d exhumed from local cemeteries between 1947 and 1952.

The “house of horrors,” as Gein’s residence became known, was not the only site on the farm that displayed the horrors of its resident’s madness. The shed out back contained a decapitated female corpse that, split down the abdomen, from throat to pubes, was “dressed out” like a “deer, as John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker observe in their 1988 study, Obsession: The FBI's Legendary Profiler Probes the Psyches of Killers, Rapists, and Stalkers and Their Victims and Tells How to Fight Back (367–368).

One of the differences between Koontz and Gein was certainly their mothers. According to Koontz, his mother sought to protect him from his father, often taking the brunt of his physical abuse to protect her son from her husband’s drunken violence, and she showed her son the love that his father denied him. An uncle was also a father figure in Koontz’s life, providing an example, Koontz confesses, of how a man should act.

Gein’s mother was not protective or loving. Instead, she herself was cruel and abusive, and there was no man in Gein’s life from whom he could learn the lessons in manhood that Koontz learned from his uncle. Sadly, the community didn’t pay Gein much mind, except when his neighbors had use for a handyman or Gein was purchasing supplies from one of their stores. Another difference between Koontz and Gein, of course, lies in the temperaments and characters of the men, Koontz and Gein, themselves--in their genetics, yes, but, also, it seems, in their souls.

Ed Gein's "House of Horrors"

This difference, perhaps the critical one, is mysterious and, it may be, inexplicable. Nevertheless, such mysteries themselves can inspire tales of terror, as Koontz points out in How to Write Best-Selling Fiction (1981). Explaining to readers how his ideas for stories are sometimes teased out by his writing a series of narrative hooks (“gripping opening” paragraphs or sentences), Koontz cites the following as the one that inspired him to write A Voice in the Night:

“You ever killed anything?” Roy asked.

He let his imagination play with the sentence, and, Koontz says, “for reasons I can’t explain, I decided that Roy was a boy of about fourteen,” and, before long, he’d roughed out a two-page outline of his novel, after which, he says, “within minutes I knew I was writing a novel about the frightening duality of human nature, about the capacity for good and the capacity for evil, both of which exist in every man and woman” (66-68). His was a familiar storyline, for it was one he’d seen played out before him by his virtuous mother and sadistic father every day of his childhood.

Even when a home is not a house, but a hotel, for instance, as the Overlook Hotel becomes for Jack Torrance and his family, wife Wendy and son Danny. Like Koontz’s father and many of his novels’ own antagonists (and like Gein’s father), Torrance is also a sadistic alcoholic failure. In fact, it is violent temper that has cost him his previous position as a teacher at a preparatory school and the reason that he must accept the job of becoming the Overlook Hotel’s winter caretaker that is offered to him at the outset of the novel. The fact that his behavior has resulted in his family’s displacement from their home and their relocation to a hotel seems to symbolize the spiritual homelessness to which Torrance has subjected not only himself but his wife and child as well and the tenuousness of their lives, both as individuals and as a family. Of course, things deteriorate even more, going from bad to worse in short order, as, no doubt, King’s own childhood did when his father abandoned him, his older brother, and his mother to poverty and hardship when King was two years old.

In Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, Tony Williams argues that The Exorcist’s Regan MacNeil “misses her absent father” and “resents” her mother’s “involvement with. . . Burke Dennings,” whose “foul-mouthed, sexually explicit nature influences her” (107). The family’s Georgetown townhouse suggests that Regan’s mother, Chris, an actress, seeks the good life, as it is defined by the materialistic, rather predatory society in which she lives, even at the expense of her daughter’s welfare and happiness, making Regan ripe pickings for the devil who will soon possess her, causing the preadolescent girl to act out some of the “sexually explicit” behavior about which Dennings speaks. In this case, the affluent, well-appointed townhouse of the up-and-coming actress contrasts sharply with the cost of such affluence which is born by the homeowner’s daughter.

Likewise, “Flowers in the Attic depicts family misfortunes following [the] father’s death and their arrival at Foxworth Hall, the domain of their maternal grandparents,” Williams observes: “Speaking of Foxworth Hall as ‘grandfather’s house,’ she [Cathy Dollanganger] recounts the domain’s effect on her, ‘I always remember even my first impression was one of fear and wonder. . . lost childhood, innocence shattered and all our dreams destroyed by what we would find,’” and her older brother Corey “immediately recognizes” the house “as a domain of witches and monsters.” The children are right, for they are soon imprisoned in the attic, where their only source of light is “sunshine through a barred window” (264-265).

Marion Crane, of Psycho, wants the domestic bliss of simple everydayness, as represented, in her dreams, by her own “house with my mother’s picture on the wall and my sister helping me to broil a big steak for the three of us”; instead, she gets Norman Bates, dressed up like his dead mother, dead animals stuffed and mounted on the wall of the Bates Motel office, and a knife in her shower. The harsh reality of her life (lived on the lam after absconding with her employer’s money to finance a life with her married boyfriend) is far removed from the one of her dreams, a point which is hard to miss, with her blood swirling down the drain in her shabby room at the dilapidated Bates Motel.

The absence of the father or the presence of a cruel and abusive father are only some of the themes that may result from childhood, and, as the example of Ed Gein (and Carrie White) indicate, the mother can be as culpable as the father in abusing his or her parental responsibilities. Whatever the theme, however, setting has, in the form of residences, often mirrored, and, indeed, has sometimes symbolized, the state of residents’ minds. It has done so since Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (and before), and it is likely to be a handy convention for implying the same sort of abusive pasts, madness, and mayhem that continues to produce unsettling, even horrifying, effects in the present.

Your own character, whether he or she is the story’s protagonist or antagonist, may not live in the “shack” in which Koontz grew up or the “house of horrors” that Gein’s residence became, but it should be distinctive and, more importantly, it should mirror, or even symbolize, his or her past or present mental state and, perhaps, suggest the forces that helped, for better or for worse, shape the man or woman he or she is today. So, next time you’re considering your story’s setting, ask yourself where your characters live and what their houses look like, inside and out. Make sure that setting reflects character, the way it often does in everyday life.

Quick Tip: Offer Readers More Than a Story

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

One of the pleasures of reading is experiencing (or, at least, being introduced to) new sights. Reading is travel by armchair. This is so even when one’s reading doesn’t happen to involve travel books. Stephen King takes his readers inside not only the geography of small towns, but also into their psychology and sociology. He helps his fans see not only what it is like to live in a small town but also what is means to live in such a community.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child show their readers what it is like and what it means to work for a big city museum, for a big city police department, for a big city newspaper; they also, quite frequently, show their readers what it is like and what it means just to live in and get around in a big city, whether by foot, in a taxicab, on the subway, or by bus. In their novels that are set in New York City, they always refer to landmarks, streets, and other physical locations. Some are known to many; others only to locals or the well traveled. For instance, in Cemetery Dance, the authors allude to Inwood Hill Park. Native New Yorkers are no doubt familiar with this park, but I had to look it up, first to see if such a place really exists (it does, as do many of the places to which Preston and Child allude) and, second, to see where it is. As it turns out, Inwood Hill Park is in northern Manhattan, along the Hudson River, west of Broadway and south of Knightsbridge Road. The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation describes the park as “a living piece of old New York”:

Evidence of its prehistoric roots exists as dramatic caves, valleys, and ridges left as the result of shifting glaciers. Evidence of its uninhabited state afterward remains as its forest and salt marsh (the last natural one in Manhattan), and evidence of its use by Native Americans in the 17th century continues to be discovered. Much has occurred on the land that now composes Inwood Hill Park since the arrival of European colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries, but luckily, most of the park was largely untouched by the wars and development that took place.

The park continues to honor and cultivate its environment. In 2002, the Urban Park Rangers launched a five-year bald eagle release project in the park, in hopes of re-introducing the bird species to New York City. In the summer of 2007, the park's Dyckman Marina was added to New York State's Hudson River Greenway Water Trail, a project aimed at reacquainting city dwellers with natural bodies of water and encouraging citizen stewardship.

Similarly, a hiking trail and the Hudson River Bike Trail offer visitors chances to appreciate large stretches of the park's natural beauty in an environmentally friendly manner.

Also importantly, the park manages to present modern conveniences like athletic fields, playgrounds, dog runs, and a barbecue area, in harmony with its natural assets. The Park stands as a functional, beautiful space, waiting to be appreciated and used.

Inwood Hill Park contains the last natural forest and salt marsh in Manhattan. It is unclear how the park received its present name. Before becoming parkland in 1916, it was known during the Colonial and post-Revolutionary War period as Cock or Cox Hill. The name could be a variant of the Native American name for the area, Shorakapok, meaning either “the wading place,” “the edge of the river,” or “the place between the ridges.”

Human activity has been present in Inwood Hill Park from prehistoric times. Through the 17th century, Native Americans known as the Lenape (Delawares) inhabited the area. There is evidence of a main encampment along the eastern edge of the park. The Lenape relied on both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers as sources for food. Artifacts and the remains of old campfires were found in Inwood’s rock shelters, suggesting their use for shelter and temporary living quarters.

In 1954 the Peter Minuit Post of the American Legion dedicated a plaque at the southwest corner of the ballfield (at 214th Street) to mark the location of a historic tree and a legendary real estate transaction. A living link with the local Indians who resided in the area, a magnificent tulip tree stood and grew on that site for 280 years until its death in 1938. The marker also honors Peter Minuit’s reputed purchase of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626. The celebrated sale has also been linked to sites in Lower Manhattan.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, colonists from Europe settled and farmed here. During the Revolutionary War, American forces built a five-sided earthwork fort (known as Fort Cock or Fort Cox) in the northwestern corner of the park. It fell to British and Hessian troops in November 1776 and was held until the war ended in 1783. After the Revolutionary War, families returned to the area to resume farming.

In the 1800s much of present-day Inwood Hill Park contained country homes and philanthropic institutions. There was a charity house for women, and a free public library (later the Dyckman Institute) was formed. The Straus family (who owned Macy’s) enjoyed a country estate in Inwood; its foundation is still present. Isidor and Ida Straus lost their lives on the S.S. Titanic’s maiden voyage. When the Department of Parks bought land for the park in 1916, the salt marsh was saved and landscaped; a portion of the marsh was later landfilled. The buildings on the property were demolished. During the Depression the City employed WPA workers to build many of the roads and trails of Inwood Hill Park.

In 1992 Council Member Stanley E. Michels introduced legislation, which was enacted, to name the natural areas of Inwood Hill Park “Shorakapok” in honor of the Lenape who once resided here. In 1995 the Inwood Hill Park Urban Ecology Center was opened. It provides information to the public about the natural and cultural history of this beautiful park. Today the Urban Park Rangers work with school children on restoration projects to improve the health and appearance of the park. Complementing the work of the Rangers is that of dozens of Inwood “Vols” (Volunteers), who assist with park restoration and beautification (“Inwood Hill Park”).

Many of these features of the park are described in Cemetery Dance, both to develop eerie descriptions of atmosphere and to serve the demands of the novel’s plot. In Cemetery Dance, it is very believable as the possible refuge for voodoo priests, devotees of obeah, and zombies that Detective Vincent D’Agosta and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast investigate.

A couple of other references in their novel, to Victor Turner’s The Forest of Symbols and Emile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life, were also obscure, although I have heard of Durkheim. An Internet check, sure enough, turned up links to both volumes. One site even features online excerpts of Elementary Forms. In The Forest of Symbols, Turner investigates the function of ritual; in Elementary Forms, Durkheim takes on such topics as “the origin of the sacred,” “totemism,” “effervescence,” “the theory of religious forces,” and “the ambiguity of the sacred,” among others, some of which seems to inform the theories that Pendergast explores, if not embraces, in the novel as he investigates revenants, voodoo, obeah, and the mystical in general.

King’s depiction of small towns and of small town life, like Preston’s and Child’s depictions of their fictitious museum, real places in new York City and elsewhere, and their references to actual scholarly works of interest to their own narrative topics, enhances readers’ experience, offering something more than the stories themselves, which keeps readers satisfied and coming back for more.