Nature and Nurture: Character and Setting as Destiny

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

Why did you throw the jack of hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck I had left to play. -- The Doors

During the O. J. Simpson trial, observers claimed that, on his defendant’s behalf, attorney Johnny Cochran played the “race card.” Dancing with the Stars critics said that, in an effort to endear herself to the show’s audience and judges, contestant Marie Osmond played the “sympathy card.” Historians claim that the cards that Wild Bill Hickock was playing, which contained aces and eights, comprise the “dead man’s hand,” because he was shot to death while gambling with them.

These allusions are based upon the old analogy that compares one’s personal attributes and assets to the hand that one is dealt at birth. Life, according to this view, is not just any game; it's a card game. It’s a gamble. The stakes may vary, but the goal is always the same: to play the cards one has been dealt to one’s best advantage in the hope of winning the pot.

Even before poker, the life = game equation was popular. The Tarot deck is based upon this notion, and, as a result, its devotees claim, the Tarot hand that one is dealt can foretell his or her future, or fortune.

Beowulf, a poem that is interesting for many reasons, shows us the same thing that a study of Greek mythology discloses: humans, like the gods themselves, were subject to the whims of fate. To paraphrase Alexander Pope, Zeus (or Beowulf) might propose, but it was the Fates (or fate) who disposed of the issues, or determined the outcome of the events, of the day. In the days of ancient Greece, the Fates, envisioned as three sisters, were the ones who decided how events would play out. In Beowulf, the Fates have become fate, an impersonal force, much as the Norse goddess Hel became the impersonal place, hell, in Christian belief. Nevertheless, in both the worlds of the ancient Greeks and of the medieval Norsemen, Geats included, it was not the gods or humans who had the final say as to how incidents or actions, including their own, would turn out. There was a power higher than theirs, to which their own wills were subject.

Beowulf was told and retold for centuries before it was finally committed to paper. The person who wrote it down for posterity was a Christian, and, upon the pagan folkways and beliefs evident in the poem, the scribe overlaid references to Christian faith and doctrine. As a result, there is an uneasy alliance between the pagan and the Christian world views that is incompatible and conflicting. Some may suppose that this duality of vision weakens the poem, but it may be argued that the juxtaposition of these two Weltanschauung, in fact, enriches the narrative. The poem shows what the Norse philosophy of life and social values were before their Christian conversion and what they were becoming during, and would be after, this conversion. For example, before, Beowulf attributed his victories over his foes to fate; afterward, he credits them to God’s will. This twofold attribution of success indicates that, gradually, the idea that it is an impersonal fate that determines the affairs of humans was being replaced by the belief that God’s will is the determinant of such outcomes. In other words, fate becomes God's will. The doctrine of predestination develops this idea with rigorous logic, making humans little more than automatons whose behavior consists of little more than actions that are programmed from the beginning--that is, from eternity--by the will of God.

In the pagan world, the cards one is dealt would have been said to have been dealt by the Fates or by fate. In the Christian world, it is God who deals the cards.

A person might be dealt any of the 22 Major Arcana cards or the 14 Minor Arcana cards of the Tarot deck. All of these cards signified and brought about particular things. Today, people don’t usually think of a person as having any particular set of cards of such a predetermined nature in the hands that fate or God deals to him or her. Instead, whatever personal attributes and assets a person has or accumulates are usually considered the cards that he or she has been dealt. Over time, the cards in a person’s hand may change as one is lost or another is acquired. Were we to apply this concept to Beowulf, we might say that his cards included courage, unusually great strength and stamina, martial prowess, longevity, wisdom, loyalty, compassion, great wealth, popularity, and kingship. When circumstances warranted his doing so, he might play one or more of these cards. In his fights with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon, he played his courage, strength and stamina, and martial prowess cards; as king, he played his loyalty, compassion, and wisdom cards.

Human destiny is complex and impossible to know in advance. Life seems to be a gamble. We also sometimes do not know the full extent of our personal attributes and assets until we are, as it were, called upon by circumstances to use them. We are not always privy to every card in our hands; sometimes, some must be played from a face-down position. Luck (in pagan terms) or divine will (in Christian terms) has a role to play as well. By using such metaphors and analogies as life = gamble, life = game, and one’s personal attributes and assets = a hand of cards, we reduce these complex sets of incidents, circumstances, and actions to simpler, more understandable ideas. Whether any of these ideas is objectively true is perhaps unknowable, but they are, at least, true to one’s sense of how things are and of how things work. They seem to explain. They make sense to us emotionally, if not rationally.

What does all this have to do with character and setting? Writers play God (or fate) when they write stories. The writer is the one who deals the cards that the characters must play, giving or withholding this personal attribute or that individual asset. It was the writer--and the group of storytellers before him--who gave Beowulf his courage, unusually great strength and stamina, martial prowess, longevity, wisdom, loyalty, compassion, great wealth, popularity, and kingship, just as it was Charles Dickens, for example, who gave Ebenezer Scrooge his greed and stinginess, his callous disregard for others, and his capacities--at first unrealized--for compassion, sympathy, and love.

The cards that writers deal to their characters represent the genetic inheritance of these imaginary persons. But genetics is only one influence, as scientists remind us, that affects--and determines--behavior. We’re products of our environments as much as we are the products of our genes. Both nature and nurture make us who and what we are and who and what we become.

If the personal attributes and assets of the individual character represent his or her genetic inheritance, as it were, what represents the character’s environment? In fiction, the setting is the time, the place, and the cultural milieu into which the character is born. The setting may be past, present, or future. It may involve a tyranny, a theocracy, a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy. It may be secular or religious. It may be amoral, moral, or immoral. It may be a universe or the microcosm of a total institution, such as a boarding school or a prison. It may be a metropolis or an island. It may be urban, suburban, or rural. It may be a rain forest or a desert, a castle or a shanty, this world or another planet in a galaxy far, far away; it may even be heaven or hell. Obviously, if a character were born into or lives in any one of these settings, his or her development would differ--in many cases, radically--from his or her development in another setting. Beowulf, both because of the cards he’s dealt and the time and place in which he lives, is a very different character than Ebenezer Scrooge!

By giving characters specific attributes and assets and by setting their lives in particular times, places, and cultural milieus, writers mimic the genetic and environmental aspects of human existence, providing their imaginary people with the gifts of nature and nurture that actual humans receive from evolution, geography, and culture. Whereas, for people, these gifts are likely to be seen as the effects of accident, luck, or grace, there’s no doubt as to who provides them to fictional characters, and they are given deliberately so that each character can fulfill his or her role in the drama the author has determined to create. The writer, depending upon one’s perspective, is, for his or her characters, fate or god.

Characterization via Tarot

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Using the Tarot deck as a shorthand system for establishing the bases of characters can be as effective as any other approach. Whether the mysticism behind the Tarot deck or the Jungian brand of psychoanalysis, which shares some of the same notions concerning human nature and the human condition as the Tarot tradition proposes, is true or even valid is debatable at best. However, fiction, by definition, is itself not true; it needs only to be true to life, or believable, and whatever approach to personality and human behavior appears plausible is likely to be acceptable to most readers. Psychology, after all, is an inexact science, with many schools of thought concerning why people behave as they do, and fiction has always been pragmatic in electing to use whatever theory, of psychology or any other discipline, might promote its own literary aims. Before psychology existed as a study, writers referenced the theory of the four humors to explain human conduct, and some students of human behavior refer, even today, to the ideas of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. Horror writers need be no different than other writers.

So, what can horror writers gain from Tarot? The positive aspects of the cards (especially those of the major arcana) provide traits useful for characterizing the good guys and gals of your narrative, while these qualities, reversed (opposed or blocked), suggest possibilities for the characterization of the bad guys and gals.

I won’t go through all 21 of the major arcana cards. Information about them is readily available. To illustrate my point, I will suggest how three of these cards could be employed to create protagonists, antagonists, and other sympathetic or unsympathetic characters.

In most stories, the protagonist is apt to be an embodiment of the Fool, who seeks a new start, embracing life’s possibilities as he (or she) embarks upon a journey, actual or figurative, sometimes without planning all that well, if at all, for the eventualities that are likely to be encountered. The Fool has a profound, albeit perhaps rather naïve, faith in the notion that he’ll be able to get by, that his needs will be fulfilled, that he will be all right regardless of how much he plans, works, or strives. In fact (especially in a horror story), he may not be, of course, and his shortsightedness and spontaneity might help to bring him to misfortune.

Reversed, the Fool is apt either to have trouble getting started upon his adventure (that is, he may suffer from the failure to launch syndrome), or he might get stuck in his ways, failing to find the inspiration that motivates him to continue the adventure he’s undertaken.

When you think about the Fool, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Gordie LaChance and his buddies, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio, the boys in Stephen King’s The Body (and the movie, Stand By Me, based upon it), come to mind.



The Sun character is the successful, triumphant man or woman who, having discovered a great truth (or maybe several great truths) about life enjoys pleasure and fulfillment. He or she enjoys his or her day in the sun.

According to Jung, the Devil archetype represents the repression of desires, impulses, and other aspects of one’s unconscious that are condemned by society.

Opposed. This character is subject to emotion and superstition and is apt to reason falsely, taking evidence out of context or reaching warped or twisted conclusions about the facts before him or her.

Blocked, the Sun character suffers from confusion, perceiving things as through a glass darkly, and he or she may have trouble interacting with youngsters.

When you think about the Sun, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg is an example, as is Smallville’s Lex Luthor.




The Devil card does not refer to Satan or a lesser demon. Rather, this card alludes to unbridled ambition and a lust for power. He or she can be authoritative, powerful, even manipulative and controlling.

Opposed, the Devil character can succumb to temptation.

Blocked, this character is repressed and timid in the face of risk and unwilling to take chances.

When you think about the Devil, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Victor Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau are examples.

Revisiting the Numinous

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Through images and emblems associated with a vanished craft or practice, a writer of fantasy or horror fiction can, as it were, visit another, mystical and magical world. Such a trip can help him or her to envision, and, therefore, to create an otherworldly setting in which to place historical, fantastic, or horrific characters who, as the mad scientists of their day, ply secret trades.There are several sources of such images and symbols, including alchemy, demonology, Gnosticism, heraldry, Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and various Tarot decks. Links to some of these sources are included at the end of this post, for those who are inclined to step, as it were, into a different time, when a vastly different, pre-scientific mindset held sway.

This article discusses alchemy’s imagery in general. However, much of what is said could apply to any other occult enterprise.

Images of alchemy capture the romance of a medieval enterprise, wherein adepts sought to transmute base metals into gold. Quaint laboratories, equipped with preposterous apparatuses of all kinds, including furnaces and forges, kilns and fireplaces, both with and without chimneys; stocked with flasks and beakers, bottles and vials; and operated by men in rich capes and robes, recreate a world--and a worldview--that is now long gone.

Woodcuts carved with figures and symbols similar to those of the Masons or those on Tarot decks also romanticize the practice: the hermaphrodite, the dragon, the bare-breasted Gorgon, the demon, the angel, the caduceus, the serpent, the lion, the microcosm and the macrocosm, Artemis with her tiers of supernumerary breasts, personified suns and moons, and hundreds of other images as bizarre and wonderful are catalogued in groups as fanciful as they are fascinating, suggesting secrets long forgotten if, indeed, they were ever really known. These emblems, like the fully equipped and functional laboratories, suggest the popularity of the craft and the devotion to which its practitioners practiced it.

Viewing such images, it is almost impossible not to see the appeal that alchemy had, promising gold, promising moral and spiritual perfection, promising the otherworldliness of both fabulous wealth and spiritual wellbeing, and promising a wonderful and magical, if laborious, time of it along the way. Alchemy promised a better world, both internally and externally, if one persevered, worked hard, and stayed dedicated to the task at hand. It did deliver, of course, on both its pledges, but not the way alchemists believed it would; it gave us chemistry, instead of lead’s magically becoming gold.

It also influenced literature, along the way. According to David Meakin’s Hermetic Fictions: Alchemy and Irony in the Novel, alchemy is featured in such novels as those by Emile Zola, Jules Verne, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, James Joyce, Gustav Meyrink, Lindsay Clarke, Marguerite Yourcenar, Umberto Eco, and Michel Butor. Some believe that L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz might also be predicated upon alchemy.

Familiarizing oneself with such an outmoded and, indeed, long abandoned, view of the world, both physical and metaphysical, renews one’s appreciation of the modern world, reminding us that our own systems of knowledge and belief have not been the only ones people have embraced and that, indeed, ours may, one day, seem quite as quaint as those we’ve left behind. If one can recreate a sense of the reality in which alchemists (or any other esoteric group) believed in his or her story, when it is appropriate to do so, he or she will, in doing so, have already escorted the reader into another, enchanted world.

But becoming acquainted with alchemy--or demonology, Gnosticism, heraldry, Masonry, Rosicrucianism, or various Tarot decks--also pays other dividends to writers of historical romances, fantasy, or horror. Mostly, these benefits are intangible, but they are no less genuine for that. Revisiting the past, to see the world as it was seen in a time antecedent to our own, helps us to get a sense of what Meakin calls “the sacredness of the living Mother-Earth, in whose womb minerals grow and mature like embryos” (15).

What’s more, according to Carl Jung, steeping oneself in the images and ideas, the attitudes and beliefs, the symbols and concerns of such an enterprise can help to generate a sense of the mysterious, or even the eerie and the sublime. “Any prolonged preoccupation with an unknown object,” Jung says, “acts as an almost irresistible bait for the unconscious to project itself into the unknown nature of the object” (quoted in Hermetic Fictions, 19). Meakin adds, “The alchemical penchant for contradictory images serves to intensify this sense of amazement” (19).

Surely, this is similar to what little girls do in investing their dolls with their own thoughts and emotions in order to give to these inanimate objects, as it were, a bit of personality and life. As children, we are adept at such projections of the self onto external objects, but, as adults, many of us tend to become less adept at doing so, or to forget altogether how to do so (unless, perhaps, we are alone on a dark road or in a cemetery at night). Moreover, such projection recreates the intent of the alchemist himself, for, as Meakin observes, “to project life into things is to invest them with magic” (19).

None of us is intelligible in and of ourselves, but we must seek to explain ourselves in terms of external things, by projecting ourselves onto the objects of the environment, and thereby incarnating the world, as it were, a process which would seem to be have been the origin of pantheism. We spiritualize the world, making it a fellow to ourselves. Then, we use it to explain our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. In doing so, the horror writer, seeing the monster within, projects his or her own, inner demons upon cloud, mountain, forest, plain, desert, or sea. These phantasms then, in turn, return, as it were, to haunt us. The horrors that haunt the dark roadway or the nighttime cemetery haunt these places only because they haunt us.

According to Meakin, alchemy is especially adept as a means by which we can project ourselves onto the cosmos, because it is open not only to the objective world, but it is also open to other “symbolic systems” of thought and belief; its “archetypal centrality,” he says, “is reflected in the breadth of diffusion, the adaptability of alchemical doctrine, and its power to annex other doctrines and symbolic systems: its essential syncretism, in short” (21).

Christianity has proven at least equally adaptable, if less syncretistic, as many have observed, including Camille Paglia, who writes, in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson: “Christianity has made adjustment after adjustment, ingeniously absorbing its opposition. . . and diluting its dogma to change with changing times” (25). Any great system, past or present, must have this capability, if it is to not only survive but also thrive. Paglia believes that Christianity is in peril, due to “the rebirth of the gods in the massive idolatries of popular culture,” so much so that it is “facing its most serious challenge since Europe’s confrontation with Islam in the Middle Ages” (25). Christianity seems likely to survive this “challenge,” as it survived that of its encounter with Islam (a “confrontation” that has arisen anew in our own time), in which case it will continue to inspire art, including horror fiction.

However, Christianity lacks the dynamic, numinous character that it had for the Swedes, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and other Germanic and European worshipers of the Norse deities who were, in their time, as Beowulf suggests to us, themselves confronting the church’s faith during the early Middle Ages. To them, Christianity must have seemed as awesome and strange as alchemy might to modern men and women who acquaint themselves with alchemists’ strange and, indeed, astonishing beliefs, thoughts, hopes, fears, and feelings.

In other words, alchemy (or, again, any other esoteric tradition, especially if it is distanced by time as well as by doctrine) can help the writer of historical romances, fantasy, or horror regain a sense of the numinous, of the uncanny, of the eerie, of the sublime, thereby enriching his or her own bizarre, perhaps supernatural, fictional worlds, much as C. S. Lewis, in his coming to the Christian faith, like Beowulf’s readers, from the pagan world, saw, in the cold Northern wastes of Teutonic mythology, the shadow of joy he was to experience more fully in “mere Christianity,” enriched the world of Narnia or J. R. R. Tolkien enriched the world of Middle-earth.

For those who’d like to visit such a world, here are a few links that will take you there:

The Alchemy Web Site

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction
Gallery of Alchemy and Magic

History of Art: From Paleolithic Age to Contemporary Art
The Vessel of God

Bon voyage!

Sources

Meakin, David. Hermetic Fictions: Alchemy and Irony in the Novel. Bodmin, England: Keele University Press, 1995.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Print.

Flowers of Evil: Horror Film Anthologies

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Although the anthology continues to appear among horror films, it hasn’t been seen much since Creepshow, Cat’s Eye, and Twilight Zone: The Movie. The formula for the anthology is simple, but effective. A common theme, cast of characters, or premise unifies the separate stories (often, three to five) which follow. Sometimes, the separate stories are directed by the same director; other times, each is directed by a different director. The technique allows the telling of several, rather than just one, story, permitting variations upon the same theme or a variety of perspectives concerning a single series of incidents.

Creepshow (1982) features five stories which are linked by the wind’s turning of the pages of a horror comic that a boy’s father makes him discard. As the wind flips the pages to a new story, the respective stories are dramatized on the screen. In “Father’s Day,” a murdered father returns from the grave on the anniversary of his murder to avenge himself upon his daughter, who killed him. In "The Lonely Death of Jordy Verill," Verill (played by Stephen King) is consumed by a parasitic fungus that arrives upon a meteorite that crashes into his farm. In “Something to Tide You Over,” a cuckolded husband seeks to avenge himself upon his unfaithful wife by burying her in the sand of a beach so that the rising tide will drown her, but things don’t go as planned, and he is the next to suffer the same fate. “The Crate” is a takeoff from the Pandora’s box myth: a woman opens a crate, unleashing the monster inside. In “They’re Sneaking Up On You!,” an employee gains revenge upon his employer by allowing the apartment in which his boss (who is terrified of germs and insects) lives become overrun with cockroaches. A final segment has the boy gain revenge upon his father for making him toss out his horror comic, using a voodoo doll he has ordered from an advertisement in the comic book to give his father a literal pain in the neck.

In Cat’s Eye (1985), which is also known as Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye, General, a cat, roaming a city to locate a girl whom the animal seeks from a supernatural threat, becomes involved in the three stories that follow. Two of the three tales are based upon the short stories “Quitters, Inc.” and “The Ledge” from King’s anthology, Night Shift). In “Quitters,” an unscrupulous business makes sure its clients quit smoking by resorting to the cutting off of fingers whenever they light up after taking the pledge to quit, and, in “The Ledge,” an unfaithful man is allowed to live--if he can walk a five-inch ledge around a high-rise building; he succeeds, turning the table on the man he has cuckolded, and the bet, reversed, begins anew. The feline takes center stage, so to speak, in the last of the three stories in Cat’s Eye, as its valiant rescue of the girl who wants to adopt the stray convinces her mother to let her keep the animal, an idea that the mother had initially opposed.

An earlier example of the horror anthology includes The House That Dripped Blood (1971), in which a Scotland Yard detective investigates a series of bizarre deaths that occurred in the same house. Four segments make up the anthology. In “Method for Murder,” a writer, moving into the house, is haunted by one of his novel’s villains. In “Waxworks,” two men are obsessed with the figure in a wax museum that reminds them of a woman whom they both knew. In “Sweets to the Sweet,” a governess takes issue with her employers’ treatment of their daughter and their denial of permission to let her have a doll. In “The Cloak,” an actor acquires strange powers after buying a cloak from the proprietor of a weird costume shop.

As with any genre (or subgenre) of fiction, individual anthology films tend to be of lesser or greater artistic quality, one indication of which is the appropriateness of the frame story to the stories that follow it. A few of the more artistic of these films are described in Fantastic Cinema Subject Guide: A Topical Guide to 2500 Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy by Bryan Senn and John Johnson.

In Asylum (1972), a former psychiatrist, having gone mad, is now a patient in a mental asylum, wherein another doctor is challenged to interview patients and identify the former psychiatrist among them. The interviews result in the stories that follow. A frozen, dismembered corpse returns to life to attack an unfaithful, murdering husband. A tailor’s magical suit restores life to the dead. A dual personality leads to murder. Miniature robotic killer dolls go on a murder spree.
In the frame for After Midnight (1989), a psychology professor teaches his students the “psychology of fear” by relating three terror tales of psychotic killers. In one of the following stories, a terrifying frightening joke backfires; in the second story, a group of teenage girls encounters a psychotic murderere and his killer dogs; and, in the third story, a female employee of an all-night answering service is plagued by a maniacal telephone caller.

The plotting of a horror anthology is a good creative writing exercise which may be done in small groups or on an individual basis. The first task of such an enterprise would be deciding upon the opening and closing stories that would frame the segments between the them. After determining how the movie (or, for that matter, a print anthology) would open and close, the individual segments would then be plotted. Alternatively, the opening and closing stories could be provided by the instructor, and the students could then plot and write the segments between them. Another alternative would be for the instructor to provide the bare bones of the sandwiched stories and then have the students write the opening and closing tales that would frame the central stories. In any case, Dead of Night, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Night Gallery, and The Offspring offer set-ups that could be used, and the students’ follow-on stories could be compared with those that actually made the cut, as summarized in Fantastic Cinema Subject Guide.

In the set-up, or frame, for Dead of Night (1945) an architect has a recurring dream in which he enters a country cottage full of people whom he has met in a previous dream; while they gather to discuss his predicament, each relates a weird supernatural event in his own life. In Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Dr. Terror, a fortune teller, uses Tarot cards to reveal the deaths, from supernatural causes, of five men on a train. In the finale, five passengers aboard the train learn that the last card that Dr. Terror turned up was the Death card, and, upon disembarking from the train, they see a newspaper headline proclaiming that they were killed in a train wreck. In Night Gallery (1969), each painting is linked to a tale of terror. In The Offspring, a reporter visit’s a small town to hear four tales of evil from the local librarian.

It is fun and better, perhaps, to create one's own set-ups, or frames. Some possibilities, courtesy of yours truly, might be:

• A series of actresses audition for the title role in a slasher movie, Scream Queen.
• Seeking employment as a writer on a TV series concerning the paranormal and supernatural phenomena that occur in a small town, a scriptwriter pitches three stories to the show's producer. Various types of baseball pitches might suggest both the anthology's title and the storylines for its segments: Fast Pitch, Slow Pitch, and Slider.
• On a twist on The Arabian Nights' set-up, a hitchhiker's life depends upon her amusing a psychotic driver with a series of horror stories.
• A TV show's crew films what happens inside supposedly haunted houses.

There are as many possibilities as one can imagine for creating such set-ups for episodic movie segments which, together, comprise an anthology, which adds to the fun and the rehearsal value of such a creative writing exercise.

Source Cited

Senn, Bryan. Fantastic Cinema Subject Guide: A Topical Index to 2500 Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Films. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1962.