Copyright 2018 by Gary L.
Pullman
Horror writers with
longstanding records as bestselling authors are not exempt from
writing novels with unsatisfying endings. When the novelist is
Stephen King, whose novels typically run as many as eight hundred
pages (sometimes more), an unsatisfying ending is more than annoying;
it's horrible.
Many of King's novels do
end poorly, as It, Under
the Dome, Revival,
and many others attest. After reading hundreds of pages in which
reality seems fairly real (other than the presence of the
centuries-old, shape-shifting “It”), only to discover that the
universe isn't a product of the Big Bang, as astronomers apparently
mistakenly believe, but that it resulted from a gigantic turtle's
need to vomit—well, readers are apt to think the effect is anything but agreeable. In fact,
readers might think they'll be sick enough themselves to vomit a
universe of their own. Likewise, the ending of Under
the Dome is beyond
frustrating. After plodding through hundreds of pages (many of which are
devoted to King's Democratic progressivism and his obsessive hatred of
Republicans and of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick
Cheney in particular), readers discover that the invisible and
impenetrable dome that cuts off Chester's Mill, Maine, is the result
of a gigantic, mischievous female adolescent alien who placed an inverted dome over the town, much as a mischievous
Earthling might invert a bowl over an anthill. Consequently, readers are likely to
work out until they've acquired sufficient strength to rip this
ridiculous novel page from page. While writing Desperation,
King seemed to find nothing amiss with the views of Christian
fundamentalists. He even sought out one of them, a pastor, as his
adviser. But, as The Regulators,
the companion novel to Desperation,
indicates, King likes to turn
the tables on himself. He does just this in Revival.
He'd had no problem with the beliefs and teachings of Christian
fundamentalists when he wrote Desperation,
but, while writing Revival,
he said he couldn't stomach the Christian fundamentalists' idea of
hell, as it's described in the Bible. He doesn't cite chapter and
verse, but here are a few passages,
from the King James Version of the Bible, concerning hell, that most
Christian fundamentalists would probably accept:
For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto
the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and
set on fire the foundations of the mountains (Deuteronomy 32:22).
The sorrows of hell compassed me about . . . (Samuel
22:6).
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of
the pit (Isaiah 14:15).
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell
(Mathew 5:29).
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able
to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both
soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon
this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).
Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell? (Matthew 23:33).
And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better
for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into
hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched (Mark 9:23).
And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments . .
. (Luke 16:23).
For . . . God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness,
to be reserved unto judgment . . . (2 Peter 2:4).
According
to these verses, hell, an expression of divine wrath, is a locked pit
below the earth. Made of several layers, it's a place of eternal darkness
and everlasting fire, in which the damned, who are cast therein
bodily, are beset by sorrows and live in constant torment (although
both body and soul can be destroyed in hell). It's occupied by both
fallen angels and by human sinners, and it's set against the kingdom
of heaven, which shall overcome it.
This
is the conception of hell that King finds ridiculous. In its place,
he offers something so extremely absurd that it's laughable, and it
is with this, his own conception of hell, which he believes is
superior to the Biblical depiction of hell, that he concludes
Revival,
describing hell as a gigantic anthill full of gigantic, ravenous
ants. Huh?
Somehow,
King sees a huge anthill in which huge ants crush sinners with their
huge jaws as superior to the depiction of hell provided in the Bible,
the King James Version of which
is, without argument, one of the greatest literary masterpieces of
the English language. With judgment this poor, it is truly a wonder
that King ever managed to write his much better, earlier work.
The
endings of the stories by Bentley Little, another prolific horror
novelist, are as bad as those of King's worst books. They're
tacked-on, rather than being integral to the plot, and, typically,
they explain nothing concerning what has transpired in the hundreds
of pages preceding them. They seem to hint at an explanation, but, as
there is no actual explanation at which to hint, the intimation itself is nothing more
than a half-hearted, meaningless gesture. Read virtually any of
Little's novels, including the one for which he won the dubious Bram
Stoker Award, and you'll see what I mean—but be prepared for a
major disappointment. For example, The
Resort
suggests the bizarre incidents which occur at the present resort are
somehow linked to those which occurred at an earlier, nearby resort,
which now lies in ruins. How and why the two resorts might have
shared some common causal link is unclear because unexplained.
Therefore, readers are within reason to assume that there never was
such a link. Likely, they will feel cheated of the time, effort, and
money they spent in reading the novel.
Horror
master Edgar Allan Poe offered a solution to the dilemma of the
sloppy ending 172 years ago. In “The
Philosophy of Composition” (1846), he explains how he wrote his
narrative poem “The Raven.” First, he decided how the story would end. Then, he selected
everything—every word, every image, every figure of speech, every
point of the plot, every character, every line of dialogue, every
nuance of the setting—so that the final result, the story's effect,
would be inevitable, given what came before and led up to it. It
seems clear that neither King nor Little (nor many other writers, of
the horror genre and of other genres, have any idea where their
stories are going or why, but write only in the moment, making up the
plot as they go.
Poe
applied his technique not only to “The
Raven,” but to most of his stories and other narrative poems.
One story for which the ending isn't as clear and fitting as the
conclusions of his other tales is “Ligeia.” As Kevin J. Hayes
points out, in The
Annotated Poe:
The
ending leaves many questions unanswered. The reappearance of Ligeia
can be interpreted as a phantasmagoric illusion [an image projected
by the so-called magic lantern, a type of early projector], an
opium-induced hallucination [the narrator uses laudanum], a
psychological fantasy, a modern recurrence of a traditional
transformation legend, or an actual event. . . .
Comments
Poe made concerning the story's problematic ending indicate that he'd
intended the story to have a supernatural ending. A friend of his,
Pendleton Cooke, asked about the story's resolution. In response, Poe
“suggested how he might have improved it”:
One
point I have not fully carried out—I should have intimated that the
will did
not perfect its intention—there should have been a relapse—a
final one—and Ligeia (who had only succeeded in so much as to
convey an idea of the truth to the narrator) should be at length
entombed as Rowena—the bodily alterations having gradually faded
away.
It
seems that Poe, unlike King, Little, and a host of other writers,
learned his lesson about writing sloppy endings. He was careful, from
then on, to plan more carefully the outcomes of his stories, the vast
majority of which have the unified structure and the single effect
for which he has become famous. For example, “The Pit and the
Pendulum” is based an article, “Anecdote towards the History of
the Spanish Inquisition.” According to this article, “when
General Lasalle entered Toledo, he immediately visited the Palace of
the Inquisition,” where he tested a torture device, which he found
to be in good order.
As
Hayes observes, the way in which the article recounted the story was
ineffective from “a dramatic point of view,” so Poe reversed its
chronology:
Though
fascinated by the story, Poe nevertheless recognized what was wrong
with it, at least from a dramatic point of view: it was backwards. By
having Lasalle arrive in the first sentence, the article destroys all
possibilities for tension and terror. Poe turned the story around,
describing what happens to one particular prisoner while saving
Lasalle's timely intervention for the final paragraph.”
Poe
had learned the lesson that he would teach in “The
Philosophy of Composition” and exemplify in the majority of his
own short stories, essays, and narrative poems: in the words of the
bard, “All's well that ends well.”
4. Rescue a damsel in distress. Perhaps Dean Koontz uses this technique for generating horror plots more than any of his contemporaries, especially in his more recent novels, including The Husband and The Good Guy. In Koontz’s universe, a woman can seldom protect and defend herself, or even find her way through life, without relying upon a strong, competent, able-bodied, and taciturn man. The women’s ineptitude in this regard often cause rather improbable plots on Koontz’s part. Nevertheless, his stories tend to be suspenseful, fun reads. In The Husband, Mitch Rafferty, a gardener, receives a telephone call from his wife’s kidnapper. He tells Mitch to watch a man who is walking his dog across the street. The man is shot and killed on the kidnapper’s orders, demonstrating that he is dead serious about killing Mitch’s wife, Holly, if Mitch tips off the police or fails to provide the hefty ransom that the abductor demands--one which is way beyond Mitch’s financial scope. Fortunately, as it turns out, Mitch’s brother is wealthy, but, of course, the plot twists and turns to the point that the reader wonders whether Mitch will ever rescue Holly or even manage to stay alive himself. The Good Guy’s storyline is similar. This time, the blue-collar worker is Tim Carrier, a stone mason. He’s having a drink at a local bar when a man arrives and, mistaking him for the hit man he’s hired to kill a woman, hands him his $10,000 fee and a photograph of the intended target, Linda Paquette, a Laguna Beach writer (like Koontz himself). Minutes later, the hit man, Krait, enters the bar, mistaking Tim for his client. Tim hands him the money he’s just received, telling Krait that he’s changed his mind about having Paquette killed. Then, he finds the intended target, and he and Paquette flee, the killer on their trail. Fortunately, Tim’s past has well prepared him to be Paquette’s protector, for Krait is an able and relentless, conscienceless killer. Koontz’s modern knights in white armor will uphold the tradition of chivalry, no matter how dead it may be in the everyday world in which the rest of us have to live.
6. Bring up the past (and relate it to the present). The past is prologue to the present. Stephen King employs this technique in It, in which an ancient evil makes a reappearance in Derry, Maine, every 27 years. In its last previous appearance, it was defeated by the Losers Club, who reunite as adults to take it on when it makes its next appearance in town. In Summer of Night, a novel that is similar in both plot and theme to King’s It, Dan Simmons’ ancient evil, associated with the House of Borgia, seeks to establish itself in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, but it encounters the determined resistance of five pre-teen boys and a street-smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Bentley Little also employs the technique of bringing up the past and relating it as prologue to present catastrophes on several of his novels, including The Resort, in which a former nightmarish resort, although razed long ago, somehow determines the fate of a present, nearby resort and what befalls its staff and guests. A movie that takes this tack is Poltergeist, wherein, because a housing development has been built upon an Indian burial ground, there is hell to pay.
Stay tuned: We will explore additional horror plot staples in subsequent posts.
Another King novel, Desperation puts its protagonist, twelve-year-old David Carver, through his paces, as indicated by this diagram. As a younger child, David had promised God that he would serve him, no matter what God required of him, if God would heal David’s friend, who was dying. God honored David’s prayer, and, now, years later, God has a mission for David: save the captives of the demon Tak, who, having escaped burial in an abandoned mine, possesses the bodies of various residents of Desperation, Nevada. David manages to do so, at the cost of his little sister’s and his mother’s deaths and his father’s near-loss of his sanity. David concludes that “God is cruel.” However, another character, John Edward Marinville, something of a stand-in for King himself, it seems, advises David that God is beyond human understanding and that, although his actions may seem “cruel” to human beings, God possesses many attributes, including, especially, love.
During the course of the seven-year-long series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, protagonist Buffy Summers suffers many a conflict, not only with demons, but with inner demons as well, as the diagram representing her struggles suggests. It is her lot in life to have been “called” as the “chosen one” by The Powers That Be, to protect the world from vampires, demons, and other monsters that slither, creep, or crawl out of the Hellmouth (located beneath her high school’s library) each week. Instead, Buffy longs to live a “normal life” in which, as a teen, she can moon over boys and whine about homework. Over the years, she is unlucky in love (to put it mildly), and a number of people she loves, including her parents (her father through divorce, her mother through death) are taken from her. She herself dies not once but twice along the way.
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