The Horror of Abandonment

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman 

 

Although the evil in Cujo takes the form of a rabid dog, this poster suggests the true evil of the movie based on Stephen King's novel: the adulterous affair that arises from neglect and represents an abandonment of the adulteress's husband and son; it is her unfaithfulness that tears her family apart.

A major theme of horror stories, in both film and in print, is abandonment. Often, such desertion is symbolically represented by an abandoned house or by empty rooms. It is also frequently suggested by images of crumbling stone castles or manor houses or by dilapidated houses or other symbols of neglect, including yards overrun with weeds, uncut grass, and overgrown sheds or other structures. In itself, isolation can also be representative of abandonment: a remote cabin in the woods, a castle atop a lone promontory, an expanse of empty beach, an uninhabited island, the middle of a desert, a narrow trail through a rain forest, an oil rig at sea.

The type of edifice or landscape can also imply what has been abandoned or what is at risk of abandonment: a church may suggest that religious faith has been abandoned; a hospital, the attempt to control or cure a rampant disease; a manor house, a family and its connection to the community of which it was once a vital part; a military barracks, war or peace (depending on the reason for abandonment); a strip mall, a dearth of customers.

In every case, the common element is change: something has occurred that has caused the clergy or the congregants, the medical staff or the patients, the family members, the troops, or the business owners or the customers to leave their beloved or customary place of worship, medical center, home, installation, or shopping center. The “something” is apt to be the story's villain, whatever form it takes.

Being abandoned is horrific because it results in the loss of social, psychological, commercial, medical, and other forms of support vital to the abandoned individual's or individuals' safety, health, and welfare. Being abandoned forces the abandoned to fend for themselves, even when they do not have the expertise to do so. In a highly technologically advanced society, no one can know all things or do all things. Assistance in many, not a few, endeavors is both essential and necessary. Most cannot diagnose and treat health complaints, especially horrific injuries or potentially fatal diseases; resist or defeat an army; or provide the products of the marketplace crucial to individual and communal survival.

We are, each and all, much more dependent than we might like to admit; we owe our continued happiness, safety, health, and welfare to others much more than we do to ourselves. That is the message of horror stories in which a villainous force or being lays waste to the infrastructure of religious, psychological, social, medical, commercial, and other means of support essential to human life. We like to think of ourselves as independent, as able to fend for ourselves, as self-sufficient and autonomous individuals.

Horror stories that rely on the theme of abandonment beg to differ; they take, as their implicit or explicit task, the teaching of the lessons of our mutual dependence, of our need for one another, of our need to rely on each other rather than to deceive ourselves with the erroneous belief that we are, each and all, self-reliant. The recognition of such a reality should promote humility and compassion and generosity. In horror stories, it is characters with these attributes who, generally speaking, survive, while the arrogant, the indifferent, and the parsimonious do not. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, these are wise, worthwhile lessons, to be sure.