Creating Hostile or Threatening Settings

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Writers of horror fiction have several ways by which to suggest threatening or hostile environments.

1. Writers can depict a setting that is, in itself, bizarre.

I know a homeowner, Bruce, who cut down all the trees in his yard. He'd had a swimming pool installed in his backyard, and he was frustrated when, each fall, his trees dropped their leaves, littering his lawn and the surface of his new pool. His solution was to chop down not only the trees in his backyard, but all his trees, including those in his front and side yards. At no charge, he even volunteered to cut down the trees of his neighbor, but the neighbor declined his offer. 

Most of us, I believe, would have said no thanks, because most of us love trees. They're big, beautiful symbols of life—and they provide shade. So what if they drop their leaves every autumn? Everybody poops. (Yes, dead leaves are essentially tree droppings.) 

But, when we're confronted with trees unlike any most of us have ever seen, trees that are not only unfamiliar to us but also strange-looking? Then, maybe we'd give Bruce a call.

A case in point: the dragon tree (Dracaena cinnabaril), which thrives on Yemen's remote Socotra Island an on the Canary Islands. Named for its red sap, this tree looks as though it was planted upside down, its limbs resembling roots at the end of which grow clumps of stubby leaves. In bloom, their blossoms grow among their leaves, looking pretty much like yellow versions of the former. Unfortunately, the population of these trees has been greatly reduced and now consists mostly of only mature trees. Scientists describe the tree's status as “vulnerable,” which places it between “near threatened” and “endangered.”

Another bizarre inhabitant of Socotra Island is the cucumber tree (Dendrosicyos socotrana). It has “a bulbous trunk and a small crown,” bearing 10-inch “round leaves” with “slightly toothed” bristles and inch-long yellow fruit.

The bottle tree (Pachypodium lealii Welw) is also a rather odd-looking specimen, resembling a turnip planted upside down. This tree grows is indigenous to the Namibia.

The Juniper Tree (Juniperus phoenicea), which grows on Spain's El Hierro Island, literally bends over backward. Some, such as the one shown here, resemble human figures. Coming unexpectedly upon such a tree at dusk might send a chill up one's spine.

This bizarre specimen, the Tree of Tule, a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) makes its home in a Oaxaca, Mexico, churchyard. Did it not exist, a description of its appearance might seem unbelievable. Some see the shapes of jaguars, elephants, and other animals in the bark of the ancient tree's trunk, which gives it the nickname “The Tree of Life.”

 This West Australian boab tree (Adansonia gregorii ) allegedly doubled as a jail. Prisoners would be kept inside the tree overnight on their way from one place to another.

California's boojum tree (Fouquieria columnaris) is tall, exceedingly slender, and nearly leafless. Imagine walking up on a forest of these in the middle of the desert on a moonlit night. According to Seri beliefs, “touching this plant will cause strong winds to blow (an undesirable state).”

This kapok tree's strange trunk appears to consist of three branches that have grown woody “webbing” between one another. The trunk is broad enough so that two or more thick branches, each pointing in its own direction, can grow from the same side of the trunk.

The time-space continuum warp featured toward the end of my urban fantasy novel A WholeFull of World of Hurt, which was inspired by Steve Ditko's illustrations of the enchanted realms through which Marvel Comics's Dr. Strange traveled on his astral journeys, is (like Ditko's own mystical lands) a good illustration of this approach. The execution of this technique doesn't have to involve the use of surreal imagery, though, as Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King's Rose Red and The Shining, and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine indicate.

2. Another way to suggest threatening or hostile environments is to make the familiar seem strange. The strange appearance of the trees we described (above) may not, in itself, be frightening enough to horrify readers (but their looks are a start!). Writers need to associate the odd-looking trees with bizarre origins or give them a back story (such as a legend) that gives them a horrific provenance. Imagining answers to questions about some of the trees described above may offer some possibilities.

What, precisely, is threatening the existence of the dragon tree? Could the tree's name derive from a source other than the accepted one? Could it have grown from the spawn of actual (now extinct) dragons, which would account for its blood-red sap? Perhaps such trees are capable, under the right circumstances, or spontaneous combustion.

Are the human shapes discernible in the bent-over-backward juniper trees actual humans who've been incorporated into tree branches, perhaps through dark magic? Were they dancers in some sort of fantastic ritual?

Do the animal shapes amid the bark of the Tree of Tule actually come to life at times? Do its elephants, jaguars, and other beasts spring from its bark to do the will of those who conjure them, returning to their passive, woody state after fulfilling their summoners' deadly missions? 

Is a character among your adventurers a criminal whose past catches up with him or her when the band passes the Boab Prison Tree? Is it more than a jail? Maybe the tree practices its own brand of vigilante justice, acting as judge, jury, and executioner concerning violent offenders who've escaped justice (until they encountered the Prison Tree). 

Why would someone generate a desert vortex—and who planted the mysterious boojum tree that creates such an effect? A Seri? Someone else? Research the Seri, and if their beliefs don't seem, by modern standards, strange enough to intrigue and, more importantly, frighten readers, substitute an imaginary people and their beliefs for those of the Seri. All is possible in fantastic fiction, after all, a genre which includes horror. Don't forget to include a bizarre motivation for the horrific horticulturalists.

Of course, the context in which the trees are introduced also makes them frightening. A writer must build toward his or her character's encounter of the mysterious trees, and the author's account of the tree's nature and origin must be fantastic and dark, if it's to generate fear.

Bentley Little is a master of this approach. In particular such of his novels as The Resort and The Influence are especially good examples of this approach. Dan Simmons's Summer of Night is also evocative of hostile landscapes, as is Stephen King's It and Dean Koontz's The Taking. Other masters of this technique include Nathaniel Hawthorne ("Young Goodman Brown") and Edgar Allan Poe ("TheFall of the House of Usher")

3. Authors can focus on the disconcerting, possibly sinister, details of an everyday place. An effective technique is to search an image browser using a phrase such as “eerie photos of landscapes.” Conducting such a search, using this same phrase, resulted in these (selected) images. (As my search term suggest, I restricted my search to scenes of actual, existing exterior places—as far as I can determine.) In considering your own gallery, ask yourself what characteristics make the photographs seem eerie. Think about both the literal (physical) and the psychological aspects of the environment.

This photograph shows dense foliage. The trees, bushes, and other forms of plant life are clothed, as it were, in thick growths of leaves that make the eye wander. One's gaze is easily lost in the abundance of detail. The tufts, clusters, and clumps of vegetation among the shadowy “hollows” between the leafy trees lead the eye in many directions and, at the same time, nowhere. We are genetically hard-wired to seek patterns in everything, but this mass of flora exhibits no discernible form or structure; it is a senseless tangle, a meaningless maze, offering no clue as to its location or context. However, our minds are reluctant to accept this symbol of meaninglessness; we are apt to stare, demanding that some meaning assert itself, even if we must invent such meaning ourselves, imagining faces or forms that exist only in our own minds, seeing her a visage, there a figure. Therein lies the possibility for terror: the abundance of foliage is a mirror of the soul, as we project upon it our own tortured fantasies; committing the pathetic fallacy, we envision a menacing place, a hell, of our own design. Denied orientation, we become confused and distraught; when meaning isn't forthcoming, we become anxious and unsettled.

At first, this slight, tree-lined berm may appear pleasantly bucolic, but this sense of sylvan beauty dissipates under closer inspection. What, we may wonder, lies buried under the extended mound? A monstrous worm, a serpent worthy of Ragnarok, a dragon? The trees, especially those in the foreground, are barren, and their sharp-pointed branches are stubby, as if they've been snapped off—but by what? Even more eerily, the row of trees on either side of the berm stand like sentinels, appearing to direct our steps, to channel us, suggesting that we take this elevated pathway to a point unknown. Are we the human equivalents of cattle being directed, along an arboreal chute, to the slaughter? How might these various perceptions—a grave for a snakelike monster, snapped-off branches, sentinel-like trees, a channeling landscape—add up to? What single scenario could unify and explain them? When we believe—or even feel—we have lost our autonomy, we experience panic.

A dark and foggy wood stimulates the imagination by depriving us of the light which is necessary for vision. In fog, as in darkness, our visibility is limited. We cannot see clearly or, sometimes, at all. Effectively blind, we can no longer be confident of our surroundings or of what threat to us may lurk ahead (or, for that matter, to either side or behind us). Dense clusters of branches and foliage also impedes vision. A remote location cuts us off from the aid of others. This photograph uses darkness, fog and the obstruction of abundant tree growth to obscure our vision, a remote site to isolate us, but it also seems to mock us. In a place devoid of human contact, we see a bench among clumps of grass, a bench green with lichen, moss, or algae, an artifact of human technology being overcome by nature. Shall this be our own fate? Cut off and alone, shall we succumb to our fate, our corpses taken over by invading plants? Perhaps we know why we began our journey, before we became lost, near nightfall, but where are we now? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say, but, certainly, we are alone. Deprivation of sight and the company of others, we feel vulnerable and helpless.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child succeed admirably in employing this approach in many of their novels, including Still Like with Crows, Crimson Shore, and White Fire. Bram Stoker's short story "The Burial of the Rats" is a tour de force.

Techniques for Devising Plot Twists

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

By analyzing movies which end with an unexpected twist, one may discern various techniques that writers have employed to accomplish this feat. With some overlap among a few instances, here is one classification of such techniques:

Denial: the apparent experience never happened. Example: April Fool's Day (1986): It seems that a serial killer is murdering people, but the apparent deaths are all results of practical jokes (it's April Fool's Day, after all) perpetuated by pranksters who could be gainfully employed, if they weren't so immature, as Hollywood special effects wizards.

Inversion: life is but a dream (or an hallucination). Example: When  a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone—and the killer is in the house! The Descent (2005) also relies upon inversion for its plot twist, as does HighTension (2005) and Identity (2003).

Substitution: one person, place, or thing is replaced by another person, place, or thing. Example: Fallen (1998): The hero says he almost died in an ordeal, but he is possessed by the killer while he's speaking, so, in fact, it's the killer who almost dies, while the hero is already dead. Fridaythe 13th (1980) also uses this technique to generate its plot twist.

Marvelous: that which seems, in Tzvetan Todorov's terms, to be uncanny actually turns out to be marvelous (in other words, that which appears to be natural is really supernatural). Example: Carnivalof Souls (1962): A woman who believes she is the lone survivor of a car crash sees strange ghouls chasing her, but she's dead all the while. The SixthSense (1999) and TheOthers (2001) also employ the marvelous to create their plot twists.

Multiplication: e pluribus unum, reversed. Example: Scream (1986): A serial killer who stalks teens turns out to be two killers.

Impersonation: The Cabinet ofDr. Caligari (1920): A man relates his tale of madman Dr. Caligari, who along with his zombie-like henchman, committed a string of murders, but the narrator is the real madman, and he's telling his tale in an insane asylum; Caligari is, in fact, his doctor in the asylum. Angel Heart (1987), Sleepaway Camp and Saw (2004) also use impersonation to generate their plot twists.

Impersonation via split personality: a character masquerades as someone else. Example: Psycho (1960): Norman Bates seeks to cover up his mother's murders. The problem is that, years earlier, Norman killed his mother and developed a split personality: he has become both himself and his mother. This same technique generates the plot twist in Hideand Seek (2005).

Mistaken identity and Irony: through mistaken identity, something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. Example: Black Christmas (1974): When a sorority house must deal with a series of threatening telephone calls and the disappearances of some of their sisters, it is discovered that the man who dies, who is assumed to have been the killer, was not the murderer; the actual killer is still inside the house.

Duplicity: an actual situation is misrepresented to deceive someone. Example: The Wicker Man (1973): A policeman investigates a missing child on a British isle that celebrates pagan customs, but the story of the missing girl was fabricated to lure the cop to the island so that he could be sacrificed to the gods after being enclosed inside a burning "wicker man." Diabolique (1964) also uses duplicity to create its plot twist.

Jumped Conclusion: someone other than the suspect is guilty of a crime. Example: Friday the 13th (1980): In 1957, Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake; a year later, two counselors are murdered and the camp is closed. In 1979, the camp reopens, and a mysterious killer—possibly Jason, whose body was never found—begins to stalk the camp's counselors once again, but it's not Jason; it's his mother, Mrs. Vorhees. Substitution also creates the plot twist in Fallen (1998).

Unanticipated consequences: an act that is believed to effect a specific result has unanticipated consequences. Example: The Ring (2000): Rachel, a reporter investigating a video tape rumored to bring death to anyone who watches it, finds out that it is somehow tied to a mysterious young girl named Samara, whose body Rachel retrieves from a well, thereby freeing her spirit to kill again, rather than putting the ghost to rest, as Rachel believed would happen.

Irony: something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. (In a sense, most twist endings are ironic in one way or another. However, this category is reserved for plots that are intrinsically ironic: the irony results from the very nature of the storyline, rather than an element added at the end.) Example: When a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone, and the killer is calling from within the house. The Mist (2007) also uses irony to create its plot twist.

Learning from the Masters: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In Chapter 47 of their latest novel, Fever Dream, authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child shed light upon their technique for creating mysterious and engaging thrillers.

To NYPD’s Captain Laura Hayward, a stand-in, at this point in the story, for the reader, who may be as mystified as to the protagonist’s actions as Hayward herself, the investigation that her boyfriend, homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent (“Vinnie”) D’Agosta, and his friend, the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, are conducting concerning the murder, twelve years ago, of Pendergast’s wife, Helen, seems to be “a typical Pendergast investigation, all hunches and blind alleys and conflicting evidence, strung together by highly questionable police work” (235).

However, from the author’s perspective (and from Hayward’s as well, once Pendergast explains his and D’Agosta’s findings to date), “the bizarre story” has “an internal logic,” for Preston and Child, of course, have plotted the story in full, in advance of their writing a single word of it. However, because they withhold relevant information from the reader, supplying key material in a piecemeal fashion, the authors deny both D’Agosta, Pendergast, and the reader the very context that the writers have had from the beginning. As a result, “the bizarre story” they tell, through Pendergast, has “an internal logic” to them, but not to the reader (or, initially, to the investigators or to Hayward, before she is clued in).

Of course, eventually, Preston and Child must allow their protagonist, with the help of D’Agosta, to figure out at least something of what is going on--in other words, to causally connect the pieces of evidence and the clues that the investigators discover--and, to gain Hayward’s confidence when he needs her to take over D’Agosta’s role as his assistant, following the lieutenant’s being gravely wounded, Pendergast shares his theory concerning the significance of the evidence:

. . . Pendergast explained his late wife’s obsession with Audubon; how they had traced her interest in the Carolina Parakeet, the Black Frame, the lost parrot, and the strange fate of the Doane family. He read her passages from the Doane girl’s diary: a chilling descent into madness. He described their encounter with Blast, another seeker of the Black Frame, himself recently murdered--as had been Helen Pendergast’s former employer at Doctors With Wings, Morris Blackletter. And finally, he explained the series of deductions and discoveries that led to the unearthing of the Black Frame itself (235).

In Fever Dream, the authors also suggest an analogy (not an especially original one, but one which is, nevertheless, illuminating) concerning their narrative technique. Due to his association with Pendergast, D’Agosta has learned, “long ago. . . to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight” (138). As if the investigators were in a darkened room throughout their investigation, most of the contents of the room (the facts and clues of the investigation) are unseen (unknown, overlooked, or not understood). Therefore, facts, clues, and other pertinent information are brought to light (discovered or recognized as relevant) only a little at a time, as the flashlight’s beam (perception, comprehension, analysis, and evaluation) exposes them--and, when it does expose them, these pieces of evidence are usually not in any apparent logical or systematic order. As a result, both to the investigators and the reader at the moment that the evidence is gleaned), it may well seem that the investigators are, indeed, pursuing “hunches,” following “blind alleys,” and collecting “conflicting evidence” blindly and haphazardly. It is only after they have gathered the evidence, determined its significance, and interpreted its meaning that D’Agosta and Prendergast (mostly Pendergast) can develop a theory that fully illuminates their findings so that their work (or their “bizarre story”) begins to have “an internal logic.”

In his discussion with Hayward at his estate, following D’Agosta’s grave injury, Pendergast, in fact, models his method, deducing the meaning (and thereby providing the explanation for) “the central mystery of the case, the birds,” linking Audubon’s illness (the cause of his genius as a painter) to Helen’s discovery of the same link between Audubon’s genius and his sickness:

“And all she wanted with the painting was confirmation for this theory?” [Hayward asks Pendergast].

Pendergast nodded. “That painting is the link between Audubon’s early, indifferent work and his later brilliance. It’s proof of the transition he underwent. But that doesn’t quite get to the central mystery in this case: the birds.”

Hayward frowned. “The birds?”

“The Carolina Parakeets. The Doane parrot.”

Hayward herself had been puzzling over the connection to Audubon’s illness, to no avail. “And?”

Pendergast sipped his coffee. “I believe we’re dealing with a strain of avian flu.”

“Avian flu? You mean, bird flu?”

“That, I believe, is the disease that laid Audubon low, that nearly killed him, and that was responsible for his creative flowering. His symptoms--high fever, headache, delirium, cough--are all consistent with flu. A flu he no doubt caught dissecting a Carolina Parakeet” (236).

Nor is Pendergast through with demonstrating his powers of deduction, for he next links the birds to the Doane family’s artistic brilliance and the madness to which they later succumbed, citing significant “similarities” between the family’s behavior and Audubon’s own conduct:

“But all that still doesn’t explain how those parakeets [the Carolina Parakeet specimens Helen stole from the Audubon collection] are linked to the Doane family” [Hayward declares to Pendergast].

“It’s quite simple” [Pendergast explains]. The Doanes were sickened by the same disease that struck Audubon.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There are simply too many similarities, Captain, for anything else to make sense. The sudden flowering of creative brilliance. Followed by mental dissolution. Too many similarities--and Helen knew it. That’s why she went to get the bird from them [the Doanes]” (237).

He is also certain that Helen had known the same cause-and-effect relationship between the birds and the flowering genius (and madness) of both Audubon and the Doane family, which is why she visited the museum housing specimens of birds personally preserved by Audubon and why she visited the Doane family, stealing both museum specimens and the parrot that the Doane family had found and adopted as a pet. Helen had meant, Pendergast contends, to “extract from them [the birds] a live sample” of the avian virus, both to “keep it from spreading” and “to test it. . . to confirm her suspicions” that the virus was what had caused the artist’s and family members’ artistic genius and subsequent madness. Helen’s knowledge is attested to, Pendergast says, by the precautions she had taken to avoid infecting herself with the virus:

“. . . She wore leather gloves, and she stuffed the bird and its cage into a garbage bag. Why? Initially, I assumed the bag was simply for concealment. But it was to keep herself and her car from contamination” [Pendergast tells Hayward].

“And the leather gloves?’

“Worn no doubt to conceal a pair of medical gloves beneath. Helen was trying to remove a viral vector from the human population. No doubt the bird, cage, and bag were all incinerated--after she’d taken the necessary samples, of course” (237-38).

Preston and Child do not merely have characters discuss past investigative findings. The authors also use dialogue between their characters to present rhetorical questions pertaining to as-yet-undiscovered aspects and implications of the investigation, as in this exchange between Pendergast and Hayward, wherein the reader is advised, as it were, of three other, related questions implicit in the case:

“Isn’t there another question you’re forgetting?” Hayward asked.

Pendergast looked at her.

“You say Helen stole the parrots Audubon studied--the ones that supposedly sickened him. Helen also visited the Doane family and stole their parrot--because, as you also say, she knew it was infected. By inference, Helen is the common thread that binds the two events. So aren’t you curious what role she might have had in the sequencing and inoculation?” (238)

Masters of their craft, Preston and Child show how, in skilled hands, authors can provide data without context, piece together a theory that, using deductive and inductive reasoning to analyze causes and effects and to infer implications concerning the significance and meaning of such evidence, explains criminal undertakings and their perpetrators’ motives and goals while, at the same time, keeping unresolved questions that are important to the developing case before the reader’s mind. Whether an aspiring author writes horror fiction or thrillers, he or she can learn a good deal from the example of such masterful storytellers.

"The Judge's House": An Example of Gothic Technique

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Bram Stoker, the author of the novel Dracula and the short story “Dracula‘s Guest,” also wrote many horrific short stories other than “Dracula‘s Guest,” one of which is “The Judge’s House,” which, having fallen into the public domain, may be read, free, on several websites.
 
“The Judge’s House” is the subject of this post. However, before turning our attention to it, a few words concerning its author and the story in general seem to be in order.
 
Stoker, who as born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, died in London, England, in 1912. Between these fateful years, he wrote not only Dracula, which secured his literary fame, but also ten other novels and numerous short stories, yet, except for Dracula (and more as a character than as a work of fiction), he is largely unknown and underappreciated.
 
According to Michael Kelahan’s “Introduction” to Dracula’s Guest & Other Tales of Horror (New York, NY: Fall River Press, 2010), Stoker graduated “with honors in mathematics” from Trinity College, in which he enrolled “at age seventeen.” (The protagonist of “The Judge’s House” is a mathematics student, too, possibly at Cambridge University.) A ghost story, “The Judge’s House” is (like H. G. Wells’s “The Red Room,”) a study in Gothic technique, the use of setting to create suspense, and the application of a particular narrative formula—that of the horror tale—to a work of fiction. It is these points—technique, suspense, and formula—that I propose to discuss as I summarize Stoker’s haunting tale.
 
To differentiate my comments from my summary of Stoker’s story, I include my comments in red font.
 
The story begins with protagonist Malcolm Malcolmson’s intentional isolation of himself from both his friends and “friends’ friends,” the better to devote himself to his preparation for an upcoming mathematics examination. To this end, he travels for three days, to Benchurch, where he rents an out-of-the-way, uninhabited Jacobean residence that appears “more a fortified house than an ordinary dwelling.” The house has stood idle for “a term of years,” with the result that it has acquired an unpleasant reputation, or “absurd prejudice.”
 
A ploy of the horror writer is to refer to an unsettling or unsavory reputation regarding a supposed place of evil, as Stoker does here. The servants in H. G. Wells’ short story “The Red Room” likewise declare that the castle that the protagonist visits is said to be haunted, and they give credence to the rumors, believing them to be true. In the movie based upon Stephen King’s short story, “1408,” the hotel’s manager also warns the protagonist (numerous times) that the room in which he wants to spend the night is haunted. In all three cases, the cautions fall upon deaf ears, as is, again, the traditional response (or non-response) of the main character to such warnings. Of course, such statements are a means of foreshadowing: through them, the author has all but promised the reader that something terrible will happen soon.
 
Asking the advice of the inn’s landlady, Mrs. Witham, as to what “stores and provisions” he is apt to need during his proposed three-months’ stay, he horrifies her by announcing his intention of staying in “the Judge’s house,” which, she assures him, was home to a “judge who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences” and confesses that she would not stay in the house for even “one hour,” even for “all the money in Drinkwater’s Bank.”
 
Many tales of haunted houses associate the domicile with past evil or with a previous owner, such as the judge, who committed despicable acts or atrocities. The suggestion of such associations is that the past evil or previous owner is somehow the cause of the present evil.
 
The servants in Wells’ story also tell their guest that there is no way that they would stay in the haunted room and plead with him not to do so, either, just as Mrs. Witham suggests to Malcolm that renting the judge’s house is ill-advised. Such counsel is another of the haunted house conventions, and it is as operative in contemporary tales as it was in Gothic literature.
 
The student tells her that, although her concern touches him, she need not worry about him, because he will have no time to worry about “mysterious ‘somethings,’ and his work is of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow his having any corner in his mind for mysteries of any kind.”
 
Typically, the protagonist is a hardheaded realist and thoroughgoing skeptic. Often, he or she is a scientist. A mathematician is an appropriate alternative, and, we should remember, Stoker himself was a student of mathematics during his college days.
 
Malcolm takes up residence in the house’s enormous dining room, where Mrs. Witham, a charwoman named Mrs. Dempster, and “several men and boys” set him up with furniture and provisions, Mrs. Witham suggesting that he put a screen around his “bed at night,” to ward off chilly draughts of air, although she herself would be too afraid of the “things” that might “put their heads round the sides, or over the top” to spy upon her as she slept. Her talk so disturbs her that she flees the house, much to Mrs. Dempster’s disdain. Unlike the inn’s landlady, the charwoman is, she says, unafraid of “all the bogies in the kingdom.”
 
Mrs. Witham is characterized as a superstitious person, prone to fear even imaginary “bogies,” as her opposite, or foil, the skeptical Mrs. Dempster refers to things that go bump in the night. Her foolish fears suggest that, perhaps, Malcolm is right to be skeptical about the reputation of the judge’s house. Perhaps we should be skeptical as well.
 
Mrs. Dempster’s own bravery derives, she suggests, from her knowledge that apparent “bogies” are really nothing more than natural phenomena that are misunderstood or unidentified:
 

“I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” she said; “bogies is all kinds and sorts of things—except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles, that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of the night.”

Mrs. Dempster is much of the same mind concerning “bogies” as Malcolm, and, as a recipient of charity who is forbidden, upon the pain of the loss of her benefits, from sleeping anywhere other than the home that has been provided for her, free of charge, she has good reason to refuse to stay the night at the judge’s house. However, her situation may seem a bit too convenient to readers. Although true, her reason for not spending the night in the isolated house prevents her from witnessing or, worse, experiencing any of the phenomena that allegedly occur on the premises at night. She can, in short, afford her skepticism, for it costs her nothing and need not be put to the test.
 
Moreover, her doubt adds another element to Stoker’s story that is typical of its genre, which is that incidents that are alleged to be supernatural must be explainable, in principle, at least, by reference to natural causes so that it is possible to read the same story from two perspectives—the natural and the supernatural—at the same time.
 
After the charwoman cleans the house and lays Malcolm’s meal, she returns home, leaving the student to his studies. He prepares for the examination until eleven o’clock at night, when he pauses to stoke the fire and make some tea. As he enjoys the beverage, he hears “for the first time what a noise the rats” are “making.” He supposes that the rats have been quiet until now because they’d been intimidated by his presence and the fire, but have since grown accustomed to both and are “now disporting themselves as” is “their wont.” Sure enough, as he finds later, in examining the room more closely, there are rats in the walls: “Here and there as he went round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with bright eyes glittering in the light” of his lamp. What impresses him most, however, is the “great alarm bell on the roof,” which Mrs. Witham had mentioned to him previously, in passing: it is suspended “in a corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace.”
 
The presence of rats, especially following Mrs. Dempster’s earlier declaration that “bogies is all kinds and sorts of things—except bogies”—“rats and mice” included, provides a natural explanation for seemingly otherworldly incidents as an alternative to a belief in the supernatural.
 
Returning to his studies, Malcolm forgets the rats, the alarm bell rope, and everything else, until, hours later, he is disturbed by the sudden cessation of the noise of the rats in the walls. He is even more disturbed to see “on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of the fireplace. . . an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him.” When he pretends to throw something at the rodent, it amazes him by refusing to budge and, instead, displays “its great white teeth angrily. . . its cruel eyes” shining “in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.” Unfortunately, when Malcolm rushes at the animal with a poker, “to kill it,” the rat retreats “up the rope of the alarm bell,” escaping, and setting off a “noisy scampering of the rats in the wainscot.”
 
Were the rat of a normal size, it wouldn’t be nearly as intimidating as the “enormous one,” and Stoker’s anthropomorphic description of the rodent’s gaze as implying that the animal feels various emotions—all negative, of course—prepares readers for the narrator’s suggestion, later on, that the huge rat may, in fact, be associated with—or may even be—the judge himself.
 
Malcolm goes to sleep just before dawn and is dead to the world until Mrs. Dempster’s preparation of his breakfast awakens him. He goes for a walk, to study his books in a pleasant wood, stopping by the inn to say hello to Mrs. Witham on his way back to the judge’s house. When he tells her of the enormous rat, she refers to it as the devil, which Malcolm finds so amusing that he laughs, causing the elderly woman herself to chuckle as well.
 
Mrs. Witham’s half-serious, half-joking identification of the huge rat with the devil suggests another possible true identity for the rodent, besides that of the late judge, even though both Malcolm and she laugh at the absurdity of her suggestion. Readers may chuckle, too, or even roll their eyes; still, through Mrs. Witham’s statement, Stoker has suggested the possibility of a much greater source of evil, Satan himself, thereby elevating the suspense of the tale with but a few exchanges of dialogue between the main character and one of his new acquaintances, the inn’s landlady.
 
That evening, the rats’ commotion and noise is greater than it had been the previous evening. As on the previous night, the rats later become suddenly silent and Malcolm is disturbed to see the “enormous rat” staring at him again, “with baleful eyes,” from the “old high-backed carved oak chair beside the fireplace.” This time, the student throws a textbook at the rodent, but it doesn’t flee until he runs at it with the poker, at which point it scampers, again, “up the rope of the alarm bell,” its escape seeming to occasion “the renewal of the noise made by the general rat community.”
 
In most horror stories, the bizarre events of the action take place at night or, at least, in the dark, and Stoker’s haunted house story is no exception. Again, the reference to the rats allows a natural explanation for seemingly supernatural events. Notice, too, Stoker’s repetitions of similar events during successive days and nights. Most horror stories, past and present, offer some variation or other upon this strategy, repeating, with minor variations, one or more uncanny or fantastic incidents, or a series of such incidents, to heighten suspense while, at the same time, creating verisimilitude (or seeking to do so) by rendering the extraordinary ordinary—or at least familiar—through the recurrence of these incidents.
 
Thinking that he will trap the rat, Malcolm arranges his equipment so that it will disclose the spot through which the rodent disappears and then returns, again, to his studies:

Accordingly he lit another lamp and placed it so that it would shine well into the right-hand corner of the wall by the fireplace. Then he got all the books he had with him, and placed them handy to throw at the vermin. Finally he lifted the rope of the alarm bell and placed the end of it on the table, fixing the extreme end under the lamp. As he handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was, especially for so strong a rope, and one not in use. “You could hang a man with it,” he thought to himself. When his preparations were made he looked around and said complacently:
 
“There now, my friend, I think we shall learn something of you this time!”

As I point out in other of my posts, the turning point of many horror stories occurs as the protagonist learns the origin or the nature of the threat that he faces. Through Malcolm’s talking to himself, Stoker suggests the nature of the turning point in this story and suggests, also, that it will hinge upon discovery or revelation.
 
When the sound of the rats again abruptly ends, Malcolm looks up to see the huge rat again, throws several books at it, and finally drives it off. The rodent retreats, Malcolm sees, through a hole in one of the paintings on the wall. Examining which books he threw at the rat to identify which tome caused it to withdraw, he sees that it was none of his mathematical treatises, but a holy book:

He picked up the books one by one, commenting on them as he lifted them. “Conic Sections he does not mind, nor Cycloidal Oscillations, nor the Principia, nor Quaternions, nor Thermodynamics. Now for the book that fetched him!” Malcolms took it up and looked at it. As he did he started, and a sudden pallor overspread his face. He looked around uneasily and shivered slightly, as he murmured to himself:
 
“The Bible my mother gave me! What an odd coincidence.”

Indirectly, by pointing out through his narrator, that it is the Bible, and not human beings’ own rational faculties, as symbolized by the mathematics textbooks in the protagonists’ posession, that drives the gigantic rat from the room, Stoker indirectly endorses the mystic’s point of view over that of the common-sense realist. Mathematics had not the power to banish the apparently supernatural villain, but the Bible, which contains a decidedly supernatural and, from a naturalistic standpoint, fantastic, worldview, exorcises the demon, so to speak. Although there is a bit of humor in Stoker’s description of the books, there may also be a suggestion that his readers would do well not to dismiss the otherworldly worldviews of religious and metaphysical or mystical sources of wisdom.  (At the same time, maintaining the tension between possible natural and supernatural explanations for the extraordinary incidents that take place—or appear to take place—in the story, the protagonist suggests that the Bible's frightening away the rat might be merely "an odd coincidence.")
 
After sleeping, Malcolm returns to his studies, paying Mrs. Witham another visit in the afternoon, finding her in the company of a gentleman identified to him as Dr. Thornhill, who admits to having come in answer to Mrs. Witham’s request that he see and advise the student. Malcolm is to avoid late nights and limit his tea intake. The physician also tells his patient that the rope up which the enormous rat runs is actually “the very rope which the hangman used for all of the victims of the Judge’s judicial rancor!” After Malcolm leaves, the doctor informs Mrs. Witham that he had deliberately planted the image of the hangman’s rope in his patient’s mind so that, should Malcolm suffer “some strange fright or hallucination,” he will use the rope to sound the alarm so that he may be assisted. He predicts that the student will sound the alarm this very night.
 
The reference to the hangman brings another element of eeriness to the book, and the doctor’s advice that Malcolm limit the amount of tea that he consumes provides another possible natural explanation for the protagonist’s apparently extraordinary experiences at the judge’s house: too much caffeine.
 
Back at the Judge’s house, Malcolm returns to his studies, and all is well until a storm begins to rage, causing the rope attached to the roof alarm to rise and fall and reminding the student of Dr. Thornhill’s declaration that the rope was the one that “the hangman used for victims of the Judge’s judicial rancor.”
 
Reminders to characters are, of course, reminders to readers as well, and such reminders maintain, if and when they do not also actually heighten, suspense by bringing to readers’ conscious awareness to threads of the narrative that have been woven into the story in previous scenes. Again, the judge is characterized as irrational and as motivated not by a belief in justice but by “rancor.”
 
As Malcolm considers who might have been hanged on the judge’s orders, the enormous rat again descends the rope, “glaring at him steadily.” It swiftly retreats, stirring the other rats in hiding to commotion, and Malcolm is reminded that he has “not investigated the lair of the rat or looked at the pictures, as he had intended.” He lights a lamp and conducts his investigation. What he sees first startles, then frightens, him:
 

At the first glance [at the painting with the hole in it through which the large rat had vanished] he started back so suddenly that he almost dropped the lamp, and a deadly pallor overspread his face. His knees shook, and heavy drops of sweat came on his forehead, and he trembled like an aspen.

The reappearances of the larger-than-life rat are coupled with advancements of the story’s plot, serving as reminders to Malcolm to undertake actions that he has previously decided, but has since forgotten, to take. Earlier, the rat’s appearance reminded him to seek its avenue of escape; now, its appearance reminds him to “investigate the lair of the rat.” By coupling the rat’s multiple appearances with the protagonist’s forgotten intentions, Stoker prevents the rodent’s reappearances from becoming tedious to the reader, seeming, as they do, to serve a purpose; indeed, one begins, perhaps, to wonder whether the rat’s arrivals and departures are entirely coincidental or may be directed by unseen powers, even, perhaps, the ghost of the judge in whose house Malcolm has taken up temporary residence.
 
Gathering his nerve, he inspects the picture again, and sees that the painting is a portrait of the hanging judge, whose “face was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual mouth, a hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird of prey. The rest of the face was a cadaverous colour,” and “the eyes were of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression.” The eyes disturb Malcolm, for, in them, he sees “the very counterpart to the eyes of the great rat.” Malcolm returns his attention to the painting:
 

The Judge was seated in a great high-backed carved oak chair, on the right-hand side of a great stone fireplace where, in the corner, rope hung down from the ceiling, its end lying coiled on the floor.

If the eyes are the mirrors of the soul, those of the rat, as a creature that lacks a soul, must seem terrible indeed, and alien. Again, the rat is linked to the judge, for in the stare of the rat Malcolm imagines the gaze of the judge.
 
Understanding that the picture represents “the scene of the room” as it presently stands, Malcolm is “awestruck,” and, feeling as if someone is “behind him,” looks “over the corner of the fireplace” and sees the enormous rat “in the Judge’s arm-chair, with the rope hanging behind,” staring at the student “with the Judge’s baleful eyes, now intensified and with a fiendish glare.”
 
He drops the lamp, which seems to awaken him, as it were, from his trance-like state, and, as he attends to the lamp, he calms himself. After a drink of brandy, he is able to return to his studies. Another sudden silence makes him aware of the sound of “the creaking of the rope,” and he witnesses the huge rat gnawing through the rope, which, as it falls to the floor, severed, makes Malcolm aware that his ability to summon “the outer world to his assistance” has now been “cut off.”
 
Up to this point, Malcolm has, by choice, isolated himself from others; now, his isolation is forced, his free will in the matter giving way to determinism and the fear that such loss of control (or apparent control) often entails. Moreover, Malcolm is unable to summon assistance (and readers can be quite sure that, sooner, rather than later, the protagonist is going to require it).
 
Angry, Malcolm throws a book at the rat, but the rodent drops to the floor and flees. The student decides to hunt for the animal and, removing the shade from his lamp, illuminates a greater extent of the room, including its “upper part.” The light reveals a sight that terrifies the student:
 

In the centre of the picture was a great irregular patch of brown canvas, as fresh as when it was stretched on the frame. The background was as before, with chair and chimney-corner and rope, but the figure of the Judge had disappeared.

 
At this point, unless Malcolm is hallucinating, any purely natural explanation for the incidents that he has witnessed firsthand and at length is impossible. Therefore, readers must assume, the story must be regarded as supernatural, for this incident is truly marvelous. Indeed, it may turn upon so supernatural a phenomenon as metempsychosis, a sort of reincarnation, wherein a human soul is reincarnated in the form of another living organism (as in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Metzengerstein,” for example).
 
Liberated, as it were, from the painting, the judge now occupies the room’s “great high-backed carved oak chair” and wears his judicial robes and “a black cap,” which he dons at the stroke of midnight. Rising from his chair, the judge retrieves the severed rope, fashioning one of its ends into a noose. Cutting off Malcolm’s path to the door and his escape through it, the judge attempts to toss the noose over the student’s head, but Malcolm manages, many times, to avoid it.
 
As the judge relentlessly pursues him, rats swarm the portion of the rope that yet hangs from the ceiling, their numbers and weight causing the roof alarm to sound. However, the “sound was but a tiny one.” Nevertheless, it enrages the judge, and he seizes Malcolm, who is now paralyzed with dread; secures the noose about the student’s neck; lifts him onto the great “oak chair”; ties the free end of the severed rope to the portion that yet hangs from the ceiling; and then pulls away the chair upon which he had stood Malcolm.
 
Marvel follows upon marvel now, as the judge, absent from his portrait, appears, apparently as a ghost, in the selfsame chair that Malcolm has beheld since moving into the dining room of the judge‘s house. With each new wonder, it becomes easier and easier to accept the premise that this tale involves the supernatural, after all, the protagonists’ and Mrs. Dempster’s skepticism notwithstanding—and just in time for the ending of the tale!
 
Previously, the story has intimated that the rope might be that of a hangman, and readers have heard, several times, characterizations of the judge as evil and cruel. Now, these hints and foreshadowing of the true nature of the rope and of the judge come together as the judge’s ghost becomes the protagonist’s executioner.
 
The action of the rats on the rope sets the “alarm bell” pealing, summoning a “crowd,” led by Dr. Thornhill. They break through the door and find, “at the end of the rope of the great alarm bell. . . the body of the student,” hanging, “and on the face of the Judge in the picture. . . a malignant smile.”
 
The reader is left in the dark, so to speak, as to what the “crowd” will make of the sight they witness, although it is likely that, among them, will be both believers in the supernatural and skeptics concerning its existence so that the cause of the student’s hanging, whether as the result of his suicide caused, perhaps, by an overactive imagination fueled by the isolated and macabre surroundings in which he was living, or his murder by a malicious ghost, will remain forever a mystery. In either case, the incident is likely to add to the house’s unsavory reputation, or “absurd prejudice.” This ending preserves the tension between natural and supernatural explanations, although, for the reader, natural explanations seem impossible, considering the incidents that he or she has, as it were, witnessed firsthand.

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.

Perspective and Setting: An Overlap of Cinematographic and Literary Technique

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In Film Narratology, Peter Verstraten explains how, in adopting the perspective of the birds as they sweep down from the sky to attack the residents of Bodega Bay, California, Alfred Hitchcock forces The Birds audience to “reflect on the sadist in ourselves” (122).

Other films require us to see ourselves from the victims’ point of view, thereby presumably encouraging us to consider the masochistic element of our personalities. The infamous shower scene in Psycho is a notable example: it puts the audience in the shower with Marion Crane, letting us see the curtain as it is torn aside and the knife’s blade as it flashes toward us.

Indeed, one might argue that the shower scene is sadomasochistic, alternating between the perspective of the murderer and the perspective of the murdered, so that, in effect, we become suicidal, the killer and the killer of, and the killed by, ourselves.

Some stories create suspense by including a killer among a team of investigators as they seek clues and argue theories as to how a murder may have been committed or who may have committed it, with the killer, perhaps, offering his or her own ideas concerning the topic. In her nonfiction book, The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule includes an alternative version of this perspective by including serial killer Ted Bundy among the university students who discuss a mass murder on their campus. Bundy disagrees with their view of the crime and the killer. One of the students considers the murderer “a lunatic” who is “probably lying low as the police investigation accelerated.” Bundy disagrees: “No. . . this was a professional job; the man has done it before. He’s probably long gone by now” (344). Bundy, typically, is telling a half-truth. He, the killer, has definitely “done it before,” but he is far from “long gone”; he is in the midst of the students with whom he debates the issue. His presence is an eerie and disturbing incident among many other such incidents.

In Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema’s “Making Up Monsters: Set and Costume Design in Horror Films,” Tamao Nakahara explains how, in Psycho, “décor becomes the narrative’s organising [sic] image” (141):

In the film‘s trailer, Hitchcock makes a point to associate the killer, Norman Bates. . . with his safe have and with the birds he sews up: “his favorite spot was the little parlour [sic] behind his office in the motel. . . . I suppose you’d call this his hideaway. His hobby as you see was taxidermy. A crow here. . . an owl there”. During the scene in which Norman invites his future victim, Marion Crane. . . into the parlour [sic] for supper, he is visually defined by the way that the frame unites him with the various stuffed birds in the room. As the shots and shot-reverse-shots alternate between Norman and Marion during their conversation, the camera remains generally in the same position for all of Marion’s shots, while those for Norman change angles to frame him with one bird and then another in the set design. While the conversation is light, the camera shows Norman from the waist up to the right of a dresser with a couple of small birds. As soon as the topic of “mother” is broached, the camera angle changes to show him in a low angle medium shot in front of two paintings (one of a nude) and two menacing spread-winged birds near the ceiling--an image that suggests Norman’s conflicted feelings of sexual arousal and self-censure for that arousal. Finally, when Marion suggests putting Norman’s mother away in an institution, the enraged Norman is shown in close-up flanked by two birds abutting against his ears. As if to provide a wall ornament for each mood and emotion, Norman’s sanctuary, and his behaviour [sic] in it, hints at his multiple personalities (142-143).

Although, as Verstraten observes, “the narrative techniques and stylistic procedures in cinema are inevitably fundamentally different than those in literature (or those in comics, music, painting, sculpture, and theater, to name but a few),” and, in some cases, the twain between these “techniques and. . . procedures” in one medium will never meet those of another medium, there are narrative and stylistic techniques that do, in part, overlap, such as do (to some extent) both point of view (in both media) and set design (in cinema) and description (in literature), from which both cinematographic and literary artists can, and should, learn from on another.

Sources

Nakahara, Tamao. "Making Up Monsters: Set and Costume Design in Horror Films." Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, 2010: Print.

Rule, Ann. The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy. New York: Pocket Books, 2009. Print.

Verstraten, Peter. Film Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Print.