Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
Some horror fiction, both
on the page and on the sound stage, features threats which are both
objective and subjective. Just as objective threats can vary, so can
subjective ones. If there is the threat of a loss of limb, or of
mobility, or of stamina, or of life itself, there is also the threat
of such losses as trust, of scruples, of faith, or of sanity.
These dual threats are
depicted or dramatized through conflict: the villain or the monster
is the agent by whom the objective threat is presented, and the
physical threat, in turn, causes the subjective threat.
The outcome of conflict
involving these two types of threat is resolved in one of at least
seven ways:
- The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
- The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
- The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
- The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
- The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
- The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
- It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.
In the hands of skilled
writers, these seven permutations can seem to multiply, as various
twists are put upon each threat and each possible outcome.
Edgar Allan Poe's short
stories often involve both objective and subjective threats. The
outcome of the stories' conflicts vary across the spectrum of
possibilities.
1. The protagonist
wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
Hop-Frog and Tripetta, of “Hop-Frog,”
not only overcome the threat of violence and possible death at the
hands of the cruel king they serve, escaping after immolating the
villain and his courtiers, but they also overcome the subjective
threats to their pride and self-respect posed by the king's
dehumanizing conduct toward them. Their victory is double; they
regain both their physical freedom and their autonomy and
self-esteem.
2. The
protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the
subjective, threat. The protagonist of Poe's
“The Tell-Tale
Heart” imagines that an old man with a “vulture's eye” is a
menace. He vanquishes this perceived objective threat by killing the
old man. However, the police, alerted by a neighbor who'd heard the
victim's screams, arrest the killer, and readers realize that the
protagonist has not vanquished the subjective threat of his own
madness—nor is he likely to escape the additional, real objective
threat of prison or, possibly, hanging.
3. The
protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but
overcoming the subjective, threat. William
Peter Blatty's The Exorcist
is a good example of this variation. Father Karras is questioning his
religious faith until, in an act of self-sacrifice, he bids the devil
to forsake a girl he's possessed and possess him instead. However,
when the devil makes the jump from the girl into the priest, Father
Karras foils his adversary by leaping to his death from the
upper-story window of the girl's bedroom, in which the exorcism had
been being conducted. Although the objective threat of possession by
the devil overcomes Father Karras, the priest retains his faith.
4. The protagonist
loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective
threat. During the American Civil War,
Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring of the Union Army succumbs to his
on imaginary fears when, on an isolated portion of terrain over which
he stands guard, he encounters a dead enemy soldier. Byring fancies
that he sees the Confederate soldier's body moving slowly, stealthily
toward him. A captain and a surgeon find Byring the next morning.
He has driven his own
sword through his heart, after hacking the dead Confederate's
cadaver. The enemy soldier's weapon lies on the ground, unfired, and
his body is rotten enough to indicate that he has been dead some days
before Byring “killed” him. The fight hinted at in Ambrose
Bierce's “The
Tough Tussle” has been entirely Byring's own; he has survived
neither the objective struggle with the corpse nor his delusion that
the body was alive, that the dead Confederate soldier was, indeed,
sneaking up on him under the cover of darkness to kill him.
5. The protagonist
overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the
subjective threat remains unknown. The
protagonist of Poe's “The
Pit and the Pendulum” avoids the objective
threat—execution—when the Inquisition that has imposed the
sentence of death upon him is defeated by its enemies and he is
rescued. It is unclear whether he also triumphs over the terrors of
helplessness and the horrors of physical and emotional abuse. The
story's ending does not say or even imply.
6. The protagonist
overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the
subjective threat remains unknown. In H. G.
Wells' short story “The
Cone,” the protagonist, Raut, avenges himself upon Horrocks,
the adulterer who has cuckolded him, by causing his wife's lover to
fall into a furnace. The objective threat to his wife's violated
fidelity has been ended, but the murderer himself may not as easily
be rid of the humiliation and rage that appear to have driven him to
this desperate act. Even if he does vanquish these emotions, he may
have to struggle with another subjective threat, for he seems
horrified at the terrible crime—the sin—he has committed: “God
have mercy upon me!,” he prays, saying, “O God! what have I
done?”
7. It remains unknown
whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the
subjective threat. Legs and his companion
Hugh Tarpaulin escape the mad, self-proclaimed King Pest and his
courtiers, who have taken refuge from the plague in the basement of
an undertaker's shop, but it is unknown whether the rash sailors also
escape the plague that has disfigured the afflicted. They might, in
fact, be taking the disease aboard the very ship from which they
earlier departed, for the narrator of Poe's “King
Pest” informs readers,
the
victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud,
rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the
“Free and Easy,” followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh
Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and
puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.
If they have not escaped
the plague, it is doubtful that they will escape the terror that it
will bring and, if the rest of the crew they infect understand that
it was they who infected them, it is unlikely that they will escape
the ire of their fellow seamen; indeed, a new objective threat may
arise, one which costs them their very lives. They may have merely
escaped one type of death to flee into hands of a death of another
kind.
These seven variations on
the theme of an objective threat coupled with an often-related
subjective threat provide a fertile foundation for a multitude of
treatments so that no story needs to be like another, even if they
are based on the same dynamics—or, indeed, a specific dynamic
within the seven-fold group of dynamics. Likewise, the same writer
can produce a story from any one of the objective-subjective threat
pairings or from the same one, treated differently.
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