Chillers and Thrillers: Pluto

The opening stanza of this celebrated poem sets the tone, suggests that the narrator, or speaker, is uneasy about something; establishes the mood as a somber, gloomy one; and, of course, presents the rhyme scheme, which is both complex and calculatingly hypnotic:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

The speaker tells us that he was half-asleep, after poring over “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” such as, today, one might find, perhaps, in the New Age section of a bookstore--books on the occult, otherworldly, and paranormal. The adjectives, coupled with the poem’s internal and end-rhymes and the repetition of certain images and ideas (especially the phrase “nothing more“), creates a sense of gloom that is pervasive throughout the initial poem, as the same technique, employed in the following stanzas will prove to be throughout the rest of the work.

In this first stanza, the knock at the door seems “gentle,” and the speaker supposes that it signifies “some visitor,” “only this and nothing more.” His supposition seems reasonable, but it does introduce the question as to why he might thing that it could be anything more than merely “some visitor”? (It is important to observe that the speaker not only asks the questions that are posed buy that he also answers them; both the questions and the answers to them are his own.) What else does he, perhaps, suppose the tapping, rapping at the door might signify and why? With this seemingly innocent, casual comment on the speaker’s part, especially considering that the hour is midnight--the so-called witches’ hour--and that he has been studying “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,“ an air of mystery and a hint of the malevolent enter the poem, which will become more and more pronounced.

In the next stanza, Poe, through the speaker, sets the scene, informing the reader that it was--and here’s another gloomy adjective “in the bleak December,” which is to say, the winter of the year, a season often associated with death. He reinforces the idea of death by using terms and images associated with it. Each coal in the fireplace is a “dying ember,” which is reflected upon the floor as if it were a “ghost.” It is obvious that death is much on the speaker’s mind--so much so, in fact, that he includes images of death in the description even of so mundane a phenomenon as a fire smoldering in his fireplace. The death of the fire is a slow one; the speaker marks the death of “each separate dying ember.” It is as if the fire represents the slow dying of his own hope or faith as well as his own sanity, which becomes more and more discernable as the poem progresses. He also tells the reader the motive for his having burned the midnight oil, poring over these “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” He was hoping to ease his grief at having suffered the death of his beautiful, beloved, whom he describes as “the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,” whom he recognizes is gone from his presence for ever, “nameless here for evermore.” He does not seek solace from his grief by reading the Bible or some other religious holy book, it should be observed; rather, he has sought to find “surcease of sorrow” in the study of “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”:

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.

So absorbed has the narrator been with his grief that, upon awakening to the tapping at his door, he is startled by the rustling of the curtains. The adjectives that he uses to describe the curtains’ rustling are those which he chooses; as such, they tell us about his own mental state, since, obviously cloth cannot experience emotions--it is he who feels and (using a Freudian term) projects his feelings onto the curtain, characterizing them as “sad” and “uncertain,” just as, earlier, he described the smoldering coals of his fire as “dying embers,” each of which reflected its “ghosts upon the floor.” The speaker’s word choice, as demonstrated in the adjectives that he uses in descriptions of the mundane objects and phenomena in his environment, together with his personifications of those objects and phenomena, do more to characterize him, showing his thoughts and feelings, than they do anything else. It is he who feels himself to be dying, not the fire, and it is he feels sad and uncertain, not the rustling curtains. The reader must wonder why the mere rustling of curtains should “thrill” the speaker, filling him with “fantastic terrors never felt before” and make himself stand, repeating, over and over, “"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--/ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --/ This it is and nothing more,” as if to convince himself of the truth of this explanation of the rustling curtains. The reader is apt, at this point, to wonder about the narrator. At best, he seems unduly frightened and worried; at worst, he seems to have a questionable grip on his sanity.

The effect of his repeating to himself that it is only “some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door” seems to calm him, as he says that “presently my soul grew stronger,” and he is able to end his hesitation about answering his visitor’s knock, although the hesitant manner in which he finally does answer, begging his visitor’s forgiveness and explaining why he is late in answering the knock, indicates that he remains frightened and apprehensive. When he finally does open the door, he sees “darkness there and nothing more.” The reader can imagine his shock and terror at finding no visitor there. He has told himself, again and again, that the tapping and rapping at his door and the rustling of the curtains at his windows have a simple, natural explanation and portend nothing more than the appearance of “some visitor.” Now, faced with “darkness . . . and nothing more,” that theory has been shown to be wrong.

His fear, as the next stanza shows, increases immensely as a result, and he next hypothesizes that the cause of the sounds he’s heard may be supernatural or otherworldly; he suspects that his “visitor” may have been the dead Lenore! However, when he goes back into his room and hears a louder tapping than that which he has heard before, this time coming from his window lattice, he attributes the sound to the effect of the wind. To explain the sounds that he hears, the speaker alternates between attributing the cause of those sounds to the supernatural or otherworldly and to the natural and mundane. He also seems to recognize that he is in an excited, frightened state of mind, because he tells himself, “Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’”

The speaker’s state of mind is conveyed by his behavior as much as by his speech. Now, he throws open the shutter to his window, as if to take by surprise whatever thing, natural or monstrous, that may wait outside his room, thereupon meeting the raven. The speaker personifies the bird, just as he has the fire and the curtains. It is a noble bird, which makes “not the least obeisance. . . but, with mein of lord or lady,” takes up its perch above the speaker’s door, as if the speaker’s room were its own and the speaker, rather than the bird, were the master of the house:

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

The speaker is first amused by the solemnity of the “stately Raven”--notice the capital “R”; this is no mere raven, but The Raven--a god in avian plumage--but his amusement soon gives way to dread as he imagines that this “grim and ancient Raven” is a representative from the land of the dead, a lord from “the Night’s Plutonian shore.” Again, these are the speaker’s own thoughts. He continues to personify the bird that has entered his chamber, attributing not merely human but divine attributes to the bird, seeing it as an emissary of the dead, as a messenger sent, perhaps, by the Roman god of the dead, Pluto, himself.

When the anxious speaker asks the bird to tell him what it is called in the land of the dead, the bird answers, “Nevermore.” The reply seems to put the speaker’s fears to rest, for he muses upon the notion of a bird that can seemingly talk but whose reply is but a meaningless absurdity. Again, the speaker vacillates, hesitantly, back and forth between rational thought and mad imaginings:

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

The speaker is quick to note that the bird’s vocabulary seems to consist of but this one word: “But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only/ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.” Although, in response to the speaker’s question, the raven’s reply had borne “little relevancy,” it is interesting to note that the same response soon will come to have greater and greater significance for the speaker (who, after all, frames the questions to which the same reply is always to be made). Indeed, this single-word answer to his questions will come to terrify him, intensifying his despair of ever again seeing his “lost Lenore.”

The reader should remember, throughout the reading of the poem, that the raven answers always with the same word; it is the speaker who must frame the questions so that the bird’s response appears to be significant and appears, it might be added, to reinforce the speaker’s own preconceptions about the what, if anything, follows death. Only in the speaker’s mind is the raven The Raven, because it is he who poses questions to which “nevermore” may be regarded as being a significant response. As the speaker himself confesses, it is he who ponders possible meanings for the bird’s “croaking ‘Nevermore’”:

. . . Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

The speaker, at first, cannot discern whether the raven is sent from God or from the devil, whether it is a messenger from heaven or from hell. When he asks it whether there is “balm in Gilead,” or a salve that is capable of healing his anguished grief at Lenore’s death, the raven replies, not surprisingly to the reader, “Nevermore,” whereupon, not liking this answer, the speaker believes the raven must be a bird from hell, although one that is able to discern the future, and he asks--almost begs to know--whether he shall ever hold Lenore in his embrace again, whether, in short, there is a life after death, during which he and his beloved may be reunited:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Outraged at this reply (which he contrived to be the answer by the way that he formulated his question), the speaker orders the raven from his chamber, but the bird ignores his command, remaining on his perch above the door:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Now, the same bird that the speaker has characterized variously as merely an “ebony bird,” as an emissary from “the Night’s Plutonian shore,” as a messenger sent by God or the devil, and as a demonic prophet, now regards it as the very embodiment of wisdom, for it occupies (not, in the mind of the narrator, by sheer chance, the reader may assume) “the pallid bust of Pallas,” or Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Here, we take our leave of the speaker, leaving him obsessed with the idea that, in having (apparently subconsciously) answered his own questions about the likelihood of his attaining “surcease of sorrow” by being reunited with his “lost Lenore,“ he has determined, just as he had believed all along, that there is no existence beyond death, and that the proper attitude to take concerning the belief in the survival of death is a despairing disbelief. His “lost Lenore” was lost even before the raven appeared to him, to reinforce his beliefs that death is the end of life and that there is no hope in an existence beyond the grave.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

A History of Hell, Part II

In their exhaustive survey of human civilization, historian Will Durant and his wife Ariel introduce many topics, including some that touch upon matters of interest to the writer of horror fiction, such as hell. This post provides a brief summary of the points that Will Durant (not yet joined in his venture by his wife) makes concerning this rather otherworldly theme in Volume III, Caesar and Christ, of The Story of Civilization.

Etruscan soldiers believed that they could free one relative’s soul for every foe whom they slew in battle.

The Etruscan concept of the afterlife included the judgment of the dead, an eternity of torment in hell or of bliss in heaven, and a purgatory of sorts. Their ideas concerning the suffering of the damned haunted Virgil and Dante.

By far, most of the dead, in Greek belief, went to Hades, but a few spent eternity in paradise, in the Islands of the Blessed or (in Roman mythology) the Elysian Fields.

Hades, for whom the underworld realm of the dead was named, ruled the subterranean world, and was armed with a mallet by which he could stun the dead.

Although the Romans sometimes conceived of Hades as a place of punishment, they generally thought of it, as did the Greeks, as a twilight realm in which the dead existed as shadowy figures.

Dreary Hades as the final destination of almost all the dead disappointed the Roman poet Virgil, and, in The Aeneid, along with “ideas of reincarnation and a future life,“ he sought to describe three alternatives: “a rewarding heaven, a cleansing purgatory, and a punishing hell.”

Plutarch wrote of the existence or evil spirits who were the source of all chaos and wickedness in nature and humanity and, like Virgil, believed in both heaven and purgatory as well as hell. He believed that even Nero, after his soul had been purified in purgatory, might enter heaven and hoped that the vast majority, rather than a tiny minority, might enjoy a blessed eternity. He rebuked the Stoics for seeking to replace faith in hell with a doctrine of death as annihilation.

Jesus of Nazareth argued that, upon damnation, hell is eternal, punishing, and irrevocable. In hell, he said, the fire is not quenched, nor is the worm sated. Not the least comfort or compassion is permitted.

The book of Revelation declares that God’s great enemy, Satan, and his followers, the demons, reside in hell, but will be loosed upon the earth in its final days before being defeated forever and cast, along with the souls of the damned, into hell again, this time for eternity.

What can we learn from this part of the survey of the ideas of the afterlife and the underworlds? We see that many of the earlier ideas concerning judgment, purgatory, heaven, and hell continue and are developed more specifically. In addition, we learn that Jesus held a strict view of a literal and eternal hell of endless punishment and suffering and that God’s enemy, Satan, and his demons reside in hell along with the souls of the damned. The idea of the afterlife as a shadowy place full of shadowy figures living insubstantial half-lives is gone, replaced with the idea that the souls of the dead are fully alive and subject either to endless bliss or to eternal torment.

In “A History of Hell, Part III,” we will summarize Will Durant's survey of hell as it was conceived during The Age of Faith.

Friday, January 11, 2008

A History of Hell, Part I

In their exhaustive survey of human civilization, historian Will Durant and his wife Ariel introduce many topics, including some that touch upon matters of interest to the writer of horror fiction, such as hell. This post provides a brief summary of the points that Will Durant (not yet joined in his venture by his wife) makes concerning this rather otherworldly theme in Volume II, The Life of Greece, of The Story of Civilization.

According to Greek myth, once they’d died and taken up residence in Hades, kings became judges of the dead.

Tantalus was damned to Hades by Zeus for a series of offenses which includes having stolen the drink and the food of the gods, nectar and ambrosia , respectively, and attempting to serve his own son, Pelops, boiled and sliced, to the gods. His punishments fit his crimes. Forced to stand forever in a lake, the water drew back from him whenever he tried to slake his thirst and the fruits growing from the vines over his head retreated from his grasp. Moreover, a boulder, suspended above him, threatened at any moment to fall upon him.
One of Hercules’ twelve labors was to descend into Hades and rescue Theseus and Ascalaphus from the torment that these heroes suffered there. In some ways, Hercules is a forerunner to Christ, for he “is the beloved son of a god who suffers for mankind, raises the dead to life, descends into Hades, and then ascends into heaven.”

Men can enter Hades through a land of eternal darkness that forms a sort of vestibule to the underworld. Using this gateway, Odysseus entered Hades, where he conversed with the shades of Agamemnon, Achilles, and his mother. Hades, or “Hell,” could be also be reached “through southern Epirus,” by way of “the river Acheron,” which “flowed. . . amid ravines so dark and deep that Greek poets spoke of it as the portal or very scene of Hell.”

Zeus’ brother Pluto ruled Hades. He once complained to his brother that the god Asclepius cured so many of the sick that the underworld wasn’t being populated as well as it once had been, whereupon, lest the gods be inconvenienced by a population explosion among mortals, Zeus slew Asclepius with a thunderbolt.

According to the Durants, Pythagoras taught that, following the death of the body, “the soul undergoes a period of purgation in Hades; then it returns to earth and enters a new body in a chain of transmigration that can be ended only by a completely virtuous life.”

Pluto’s kidnapping of Persephone and his later agreement to allow her to split her time between Hades and earth is understood to represent “the annual death and rebirth of the soil.”

The gods of the underworld were “the most terrible” and were not so much worshiped as appeased.

According to the hymns and rituals associated with the hero Orpheus, after death, the soul, as a shade, is judged in Hades, after which, depending upon the tradition consulted, the shade undergoes eternal punishment; the transmigrated soul of the dead is reborn repeatedly until it attains moral perfection, whereupon it is admitted to the Isles of the Blessed; or the dead or his friends may gain his release from punishment by performing acts of penance.

Although notions of an abode for the blessed dead appeared in Greek myth, mention of such places--the Isle of the Blessed Dead or the Elysian Fields--were relatively rare and those who enjoyed their existence in them were few; the bast majority of the departed lived a shadowy existence as wanderers within the gloomy subterranean world of Hades, where the guilty suffered and the others merely existed as shadows of their former, earthly selves.

Socrates planned to continue his earthly mission as a gadfly in Hades, questioning the dead to see which, if any, of the shades had attained wisdom and helping to enlighten those who, even in death, remained foolish and ignorant.

What can we learn from this part of the survey of the ideas of the afterlife and the underworlds? We see that the ancient Greek idea of Hades, as the abode of the dead, included both judgment and punishment. The themes of purgation and reincarnation are part of the Greek concept of the hereafter. The deities of the underworld may have been the precursors to Jewish and Christian demons, the fierce, feared denizens of the pit. Atonement as a means of righting a wrong is seen in Zeus’ transformation of Orpheus’ lyre into a constellation to expiate the wrong done to Orpheus. In Orphic hymns and rituals, ideas such as eternal punishment, or hell, reincarnation and the transmigration of the soul, and purgatory and the selling of indulgences all have predecessors or parallels to similar doctrines of Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. It seems that, in Greek myth, people, in death, are pretty much the same way as they were in life. Socrates, a gadfly during his living days, intends to be one in Hades as well, testing the wisdom of the shades therein. Jewish, Christian, Norse, and perhaps even Eastern religious concepts of the afterlife, of posthumous judgment, of hell as a place of torment, of purgatory, of atonement, of resurrection, of heaven, and the afterlife seem to stem, in part, from the Greek conceptions of these states and places.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.

In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

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 can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: 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 (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).

Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, 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.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.

Recommended Blogs

PAULA D. JEWELRY: Hand-made jewelry, vintage jewelry, and jewelry supplies.

An Artistic Place: An artist's blog that expands the definition of the term.

Buried.com: A great resource for all things horror!

Chester's Mill, Maine: Get to know the persons, places, and things of Chester's Mill, Maine, the setting of Stephen King's novel Under the Dome!

Dark Roads: A novel in progress. read each new chapter as it appears, hot off the press of the writer's fevered imagination!

E-Sword: Free downloads of Bibles and study aids.

FANCY THAT BAUBLE: Beautiful handmade jewelry.

HASSLE FREE SMALL CLAIMS AND COLLECTIONS SERVICE: Collect your court-ordered judgments; serve papers.

Horror Writing: Bury Yourself In It: A scientist-turned-horror-writer offers his unique takes on the genre.

Internet Archive: The Way-back Machine.

The James Randi Educational Foundation: A skeptical take on the bizarre, the mysterious, and the occult.

Literature.org: Online literature library--free!

PAULA D. JEWELRY: Fine jewelry.

PIZZA MY DEAR: Las Vegas' finest, where good taste is a sure bet.

Sandra Cormier: A romance author who also paints and maintains a blog that writers, painters, and just us ordinary people can enjoy.

Prayer Post: Prayer requests and applications of Christian faith.

Project Gutenberg: Free downloads of the world's classic literature.

Roadside America: Road trips don't have to be boring (or even sane).

Scribe Scrawlings: Christian book reviews and more.

The Skeptic's Dictionary: A sketrical take on the bizarre, the mysterious, and the occult.

Winki's Home Away From Home: A tribute to a woman of faith.

The Wild Rose Press: Romance in full bloom!

JaneEspenson.com: A Buffy writer shares screenwriting tips.

Quote, Unquote

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

-- Henry James

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

-- Stephen King

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.

-- Dean Koontz

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

-- Rod Serling

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

-- Alfred Hitchcock

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

-- William Shakespeare

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

-- H. P. Lovecraft

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Conservative. noun. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

-- Ambrose Bierce

We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.

You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!

Sometimes I feel like a vampire.

Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

-- Ted Bundy

THE HORROR WRITER’S SHADOW-MUSE: A CAUTIONARY TALE

Shadows crawl across my wall,
Dark remnants of Eden’s fall,
Due to Adam’s sin; again,
My brain reels in garish pain;
I rise, eyes fixed on nothing,
Put pen to paper to sing,
In poetry, my memory
Of primordial, eerie
Things, which, both fanged and clawed,
Squirm and writhe upon my wall. . . .

Our ancestors, daughters of men
And sons of angels fallen,
Produce monsters such as Grendel,
Brute minions, all, of deepest hell;
Some beauteous of face and form,
Others of aspect like the worm,
And others still of shadowy
Appearance, but strange and eerie,
Whose task is mine to give full voice,
Not that vile Satan may rejoice,
But that all the sons and daughters
Of ancient Cain who do yet stir
May be heard--and thus evaded--
By the living who are not dead
To the antediluvian
Origins of death and sin,
Mystery of iniquity
That, like a spider on a wall,
Crawls across us, one and all,
Leaving, in its wake, gossamer
Threads of desire, dark and deep,
Our hearts and souls to keep.

“Out, out, damned spot!” the Lady said,
Unaware that she was dead;
Shadow, spider, and spot alike
Are but mute brutes whose terrors strike
From within, their banshee’s voice
An echo of an ancient choice
As much our own as our heartbeat,
From which there is no retreat
But to return, a prodigal
Son, who once was hell’s spawn and thrall,
A shadow writhing on a wall,
As are, or once were, each and all.

(The next time you see a shadow,
Ask not, as Plato did, to see
Its form, for that which comes from Below
Takes its shape from iniquity!)

-- Gary L. Pullman

Friday, June 26, 2020

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary