The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, has an eccentric style that is marked by his tendency to create similes and metaphors that unite concrete and abstract terms. This practice is so commonplace in his novel as to indicate that it is more than merely a technique; it is essential to his narrative voice and, therefore, part of both his novel’s point of view and its theme.

 
In just the prologue to his novel, he includes the following tropes, each of which combines the physical and the spiritual, the literal and the figurative, the concrete and the abstract:

• a “premonition clung to his [Father Merrin’s] back like chill wet leaves” (3);
• “[the] tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped” (3);
•  “he dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but could not tag it” 4);
• “slippers, [the] groaning backs [of which] pressed under his heels” (4);
• “shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living” (4);
• “The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt” (4);
• “a splintered table the color of sadness” (5);
• “he waited, feeling at the stillness” (5);
• “the fractured rooftops of Erbil hovered far in the distance, poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction” (5);
• “it [“safety” and “a sense of protection and deep well-being”] dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep” (5);
• “some dry, tagged whisper of the past” (5-6);
• “its dominion was sickness and disease” (6); “the bloody dust of its predestination” (7-8);
• “icy conviction” (8). 
  

What, one may ask, does Blatty gain, as an artist, by mixing the sensual and the ideal, the real and the intangible, the concrete and the abstract? The author himself offers a clue, in his novel’s prologue:

The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted snows caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other (4).

This paragraph suggests that Father Merrin does not view reality in dualistic terms, as consisting of matter and of spirit, both of which are real. Rather, he is a monist, someone who believes that reality consists of only one essential element, although this element can appear to have two distinct expressions, that of matter and that of spirit. Truly understood, however, each is a mere shadow, as it were, of the one, true “stuff,” which is “more fundamental” and “totally other,” which is, in religious terms, God. According to Father Merrin's faith as a Catholic, God is omnipresent, or everywhere present at once; therefore, the Spirit of God penetrates, if it does not actually embody, all things, shoes and “spirit” alike. If matter and spirit, like matter and energy, are interchangeable with one another, the body which housed a human soul in the distant past may now be mere bones, an artifact among other artifacts, as Blatty’s inclusion of human bones in his catalogue of other relics at the outset of the novel’s prologue indicates:

The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics and phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that had once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. . . (3-4).

The “he” in the final sentence of this paragraph might seem ambiguous: does it refer to Father Merrin or to humanity? Is it an individual or a universal perspective, the understanding that human skeletal remains do not signify a Luciferian “upward-groping back to. . . God?” The ambiguity is resolved almost as soon as it arises, if it does, in fact, arise at all, by the context of the paragraph in which the personal pronoun appears, for the paragraph speaks not of the priest, but of humanity: “he,” therefore, refers to “man,” not to Father Merrin, whose own point of view is very different, as one may already have discerned, than the worldview implied by metaphysical dualism, which sees both matter and spirit as opposite, if not opposing, realities, whereas Father Merrin sees them as both but “aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other,” or as expressions or, perhaps, indications, of a transcendent divinity.
 
Blatty’s mixing of the concrete and the abstract also has the effect of making the latter seem more substantial, even more sensual, than it might be if it were linked, in simile or metaphor, to other abstract, rather than with concrete, terms. A “premonition” that clings to one’s “back like chill wet leaves” can be felt: it is thick and wet, clammy and cold; a “tell” that has “entrails” is a living thing—or, perhaps, a once-living thing, murdered by the archaeologists as much as by time, in order that it might be dissected, and its ancient artifacts, including the “bones” of “man” examined and catalogued; “stillness” that can be felt is tangible, indeed.
 
By mixing the concrete and the abstract, Blatty breathes life, as it were, into dry and withered concepts and sensations, giving them the “flesh” of sensual qualities that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched; at the same time, his marriage of matter and spirit suggests the monistic metaphysics that Father Merrin believes expresses the reality of a wholly “other” God who transcends both and yet, paradoxically, somehow also brings the two “aspects” of reality and, indeed, of divinity, together in himself, just as, in the same cosmic sense, Jesus Christ brings matter—the flesh—and spirit together as the incarnation of God.
 
It is the notion that God is not physical or spiritual, but other, that Father Karras has not yet understood. Therefore, for him, the physical and the fleshly aspects of human existence are grotesque and offensive, as is seen in Father Karras’s reaction to a homeless man, whom he sees as vile. Karras has come, of late, to doubt his faith, partly because of the concrete embodiment of sin in human flesh and partly because of the reality of evil, which is also often associated with the physical and corporeal aspects of existence. The priest sees the decadence of sin in the person of a homeless man who pleads with him for alms:

. . . He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. . . (51).

Father Karras seems to equate human existence, or its fleshly aspect, at least, with evil:

A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. . . . Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in a paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop: set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. . . (54).

He has not yet attained the revelation that Father Merrin has experienced. Once, like Father Karras, the older, in some ways worldlier, Father Merrin found it difficult to love his neighbor as himself and to see in the human face and form the image and likeness of God; he has since overcome this stumbling block to faith, just as he has come to understand that evil is an offense to the goodness of God, not a quality inherent in mere matter or fleshly existence:

. . . The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man (3).

Indeed, it might be argued that Father Merrin has come to love the downtrodden and the oppressed because of their suffering, because of the evil in the world. Unlike Father Karras, who believes that demons are merely personifications of various evils, Father Merrin knows that the “Legion” of demons that claim to haunt Regan MacNeil are lying, that “there is only one,” the enemy of God, for Father Merrin has encountered—indeed, has fought—him before, in the guise of the demon Pazuzu, and knows that the true identity of the demon represented by the idol with the “ragged wings; taloned feet; bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in feral grin” is none other than Satan himself, the source and living embodiment of evil.
 
Father Karras is a materialist—or is in danger of becoming one. As such, he is obsessed with the physical, the fleshly, disease, and death; he is close to believing that only matter is real; and he has come to believe that evil is explainable in natural terms, as the effects of organic malformations of the brain or other physiological abnormalities.
 
Father Merrin, as a monist, accepts both the material, including the fleshly, and the spiritual as real, believing them to be but two aspects of a higher, unknowable “stuff” that is “totally other” than either of them and that evil is essentially nothing more than an offense to God. He is able to love Regan, despite the horrific onslaught of the demon—or the devil—who assaults her from within, often by the vilest and most corporeal means available to him—Regan’s own body.
 
Father Karras, on the other hand, is reluctant to seek “Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement.” It is only after he understands that God is beyond good and evil but is himself the essence of love that Father Karras can love Regan, in all her humanity, the way that Father Merrin has come to love human beings, whether a Kurd or the daughter of an actress who is temporarily residing in Georgetown. It is then that Father Karras can be the exorcist he has been called upon to be and can deliver the child whose body has been both a source of demonic violation of a temple of the Holy Spirit and a stumbling block to his own faith.
 
By mixing the concrete with the abstract in the peculiar similes and metaphors that appear frequently throughout his novel, Blatty brings together the material and the spiritual, making the former seem as tangible as the latter and suggesting one of his novel’s themes, which is that both aspects of reality find resolution, if not synthesis, in a higher, “totally other” form of being.

Source of quotations: Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.

Lens Crafters, or Yggsdrasil: A World Among Worlds

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 Like other genre fiction (and, indeed, art in general), horror fiction is mostly a matter of metaphor. A story is a mirror, reflecting the inner “person” of the protagonist; a crowd, representing a community or a nation opposed to the protagonist; or the environment, symbolizing nature or nature's Creator. Depending on its underlying metaphor, then, horror fiction (and, again, art in general) is, thus, either psychological, sociological, naturalistic, or theological, aligning with the traditional, if rather sexist, categories of story conflict once known as “man vs. himself,” “man vs. man,” and “man vs. nature,” to which I would add “man vs. God.” In rare instances, all these categories may be represented in a single story.

Although writers certainly often write stories in several, or all, of these categories, I list a few writers and their stories for each of these classes of fiction, as identified by types of conflict, by way of example:

• Psychological (“man vs. himself”): “Berenice,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” (both by Edgar Allan Poe)

• Sociological (“man vs. man”): Misery by Stephen King and Intensity by Stephen King.

• Naturalistic*: “The Strange Orchid” and The Island of Dr. Moreau (by H. G. Wells) and Carrie (by Stephen King)

• Theological: The Taking by Dean Koontz; Desperation by Stephen King; The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

• Psychological, Sociological, Naturalistic, and Theological: “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane

*Naturalistic includes stories which feature paranormal, rather than supernatural, abilities, the difference between the two sources of empowerment, as I use these terms, being that the the paranormal, since it is natural, is or, at some point may become, explicable through the exercise of reason or through scientific knowledge, while the supernatural is, by definition, inexplicable by either rational or empirical means, because it transcends nature altogether.

 

Although it is possible, perhaps, that, one day, writers may invent or, more likely, discover a metaphor in addition to those of the psychological mirror, the sociological crowd, and the naturalistic environment (in Crane's story, the ocean is the environment), it may also well be that these three metaphors exhaust the modalities of understanding the human situation. If such is the case, there remains an avenue for gaining additional insights into our lives as human beings involved in our own minds and behaviors, the actions of others, and the eventualities of existence within the world and to further explore what it entails and means to be a human being in a vast nebula of time and space. This remaining avenue is not one road, but many, which don't simply branch, but also interweave, much as do the branches and roots of Yggsdarsil, the sacred tree of the Norsemen: each worlds unto themselves, they are also, at the same time, each a world among worlds.

Many of these worlds are subjects of departments or schools in colleges and universities throughout the world: fine arts, sciences, and related disciplines, some of which are, more specifically: anthropology, biology, business, chemistry, computer science, earth science, economics, engineering and technology, geography, history, language and literature, law, mathematics, medicine and health, philosophy, performing arts, physics, political science, psychology, sociology, social work, space science, theology, and visual arts. Are there other worthy disciplines that provide a foundation and a framework for artistic development in general and horror fiction in particular? Of course. The ones listed are merely examples.

To use a metaphor, such disciplines are lenses. They focus or disperse the light of understanding each in their own peculiar ways. To see a story's idea or its characters, its action, its setting, its structure, its implications, its conflicts, or its theme through the lens of philosophy is very different than to view the same element of the same story through the lens of law, the lens of medicine and health, or the lens of politics, and those stories that examine the same aspect of a story, of horror or otherwise, as Crane's “The Open Boat” does are stories that enrich perception and, sometimes, understanding. By seeing a story through various lenses, a writer renews the approach of fiction, or literature (or, again, art in general). Stories, even about familiar tropes and themes, become new again, because they offer fresh insights by their authors' willingness to look anew at them, through a variety of lenses. Such renewal is apt to be not good just for the souls of readers and writers but also for genres themselves.

 

Why, through a story, should a writer and a reader explore just one world, when there are (more than) nine?

The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats

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:

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
5. The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
7. 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.

Page and Stage

Writers who want to incorporate cinematic techniques into their fiction need, first, to translate the latter into their literary equivalents. I use the word “equivalents” loosely, of course, as there is not precise equivalence between the techniques of the soundstage and the page.

So, what are these “equivalents”?

The camera = description. Everything the camera “sees” can be communicated, in writing, only by way of description. The camera has the advantage of showing everything at once, if it chooses, or of focusing exclusively, and in minute detail, on only one person or object, close up, leaving it to the viewer to perceive that which is displayed and to sort for him- or herself those people (actors) or objects included in the scene upon whom or which he or she chooses to concentrate attention. Of course, through a variety of other techniques—camera angle, intensity, contrast, special effects, and so forth—the director, the cinematographer, and others involved in shooting the scene—can direct the viewer's attention and direct the audience's focus, but, ultimately, it is up to those who watch the movie to see what they will. novelists have a different advantage. Unlike filmmakers, they can appeal to the senses of touch, smell, and taste, as well s to the two senses available for moviemakers' exploitation—sight and hearing. Literary authors can also take their readers inside the minds of their characters, describing their thoughts and feelings about the sights, sounds, tactile sensations, tastes, and sounds they experience during a scene. (A word of caution: novelists should be careful not to overuse description. Unless a picture, or word-picture, is central to a scene or some other narrative element, such as theme, it should be spare, rather than florid. Because filming a movie is enormously expensive, screenwriters have learned to make every image and word count, and most directors plan every second of the filming of each scene. Economy is the filmmaker's watchword, as it should be that of the novelist. As Mark Twain advised, writers should be careful to “eschew surplusage.”)

The camera = point of view. In film, the movie is shown from the camera's point of view, whether the perspective is that of an omniscient, a first-person, or a limited third-person “narrator.” In literary fiction, the point of view can be more complex and experimental and can more easily involve the shifting or alternating perspectives of two or more characters.

Actor = character. It's only partly true that the actor = the literary character, because the screenwriter also creates the movie character. The writer puts the words into the characters' mouths, and, through such dialogue, the character's personality becomes apparent, as does his or her attitude, emotions, values, principles, beliefs, and so forth. By interpreting and projecting these words on the page, actors bring these qualities to life on the screen, making these intangibles tangible.

Audio bridge = transition. In cinema, there are more techniques to indicate a transition from one time to another or from one place to another than there in literary fiction. In the latter, space breaks on thee page or a phrase, or a sentence is all a writer can use to indicate such a shift in time or place. Filmmakers, on the other hand, can use an audio bridge, defined, in Filmsite's “Film Terms Glossary,” as “an outgoing sound (either dialogue or sound effects) in one scene that continues over into a new image or shot [that] connects the two shots or scenes.” As an example of an audio bridge, the Filmsite's article cites Apocalypse Now's use of “the sound of helicopter blades are linked to the next scene of the spinning blades of an overhead fan.” Films also use a number of visual transitions to indicate a change in scene, including the “cut, fade, dissolve, and wipe” (“Film terms Glossary”).

Cut – transition. A cut is “an abrupt or sudden change or jump in camera angle, location, placement, or time, from one shot to another” and may be accomplished in numerous ways.

Fade = transition. A fade can also be accomplished in a number of ways:

[A fade is] a transitional device consisting of a gradual change in the intensity of an image or sound, such as from a normally-lit scene to darkness (fade out, fade-to-black) or vice versa, from complete black to full exposure (fade in), or from silence to sound or vice versa; a 'fade in' is often at the beginning of a sequence, and a 'fade out' at the end of a sequence; a cross-fade means fading out from one scene and into another (often with a slight dissolve or interruption) (“Film Terms Glossary).

Dissolve = transition. A dissolve is “the visible image of one shot or scene is gradually replaced, superimposed or blended (by an overlapping fade out or fade in and dissolve) with the image from another shot or scene.” For example, in Metropolis, this technique “dissolves that transform the face of the heroine Maria into the face of an evil robot.” (“Film Terms Glossary”).

Wipe = transition. A wipe occurs when “one shot appears to be "pushed off" or "wiped off" the screen by another shot replacing it and moving across the existing image.”

There are other film techniques that correspond, roughly, with literary techniques, which is not surprising, since filmmakers, limited to sight and sound, have had to devise ways, using these two methods of storytelling to communicate what novelists accomplish through linguistic means. Now that the stage has largely replaced the page as the storytelling medium of choice for the general public, at least, novelists, in telling their tales, might want to adopt, as far as possible, some of the techniques their cinematographic friends have developed. That mean, first of all, thinking in terms of showing, rather than telling. Thinking as a screenwriter, rather than as a novelist, should facilitate this objective. Again, there is no precise match between the techniques of filmmaking and those of writing novels, but these media's approaches to storytelling are close enough to allow an approximation on the part of the novelist. For example, a novelist cannot use an audio bridge (unless, perhaps, in an audiobook). However, he or she can simulate the use of this technique. Here's an example, using the audio bridge in Apocalypse Now (mentioned above):

The helicopter's whirling rotors were louder and much faster than the leisurely turning blades of the softly humming ceiling fan.

By using sights and sound to appeal the senses of vision and hearing, this transitional sentence imitates an audio bridge, indicating a shift in time and place, as the story's scene changes.

Similar approaches can be taken to suggest many of the other cinematographic techniques motion picture crews use to tell—or show—their stories.

Novelists who want to emulate screenwriters should familiarize themselves with the terms associated with moviemaking and adapt them to the process of writing novels to develop their own set of similar approaches to storytelling. Filmsite's “Film Terms Glossary” is a good resource for this purpose. Novelists who seek cinematographers' techniques for characterization, plot development, story structure, narration, setting, and theme and then, with these (and some actual examples from films) in mind, devise their own similar approaches, are likely to write “cinematographic” novels, which show more than tell. General audiences everywhere will thank them.

Note: Read “The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty,” my post about William Peter Blatty's use of in his novel The Exorcist for a sense of how a novelist (who was also a screenwriter) uses cinematographic techniques to write a compelling “cinematographic” novel. Novelists can also learn to write this hybrid type of story by reading novels by other screenwriters. Stephen J. Cannel's book, TheProstitutes' Ball, is not only a novel, but, in a sense, a how-to book about writing screenplays and novels!

William Peter Blatty: Opening and Closing Sentences

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The Exorcist is destined to become a classic of horror fiction. Its theme--the love of God surpasses both the problem of evil and human knowledge, depending upon trust in God, or faith--and the execution of this theme in and through William Peter Blatty’s narrative make the novel a book not for its day only but for all time. Like most other books whose importance transcends its own time, The Exorcist also happens to be adroitly written, as just the opening and closing lines of each of its major divisions indicate; Blatty knows how to create, maintain, and heighten suspense, both by the use of situations, foreshadowing, and cliffhangers.

The structure of Blatty’s novel also suggests how he saw the configuration or makeup of the corrodible event--itself comprised of other horrible incidents--of which his book is ostensibly a record or account. As such, it is instructive for those who want to ensure that the structures of their own novels enhance the effect of the horrors their books narrate.

Prologue: Northern Iraq

The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them.

He hastened toward Mosul and his train, his heart encased in the icy conviction that soon he would face an ancient enemy.

I: The Beginning

One

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men’s eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.

What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night.

Two

He stood at the edge of the lonely subway platform, listening for the rumble of a train that would still the ache that was always with him.

He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.

Three

Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.

There were no disturbances. That night.

Four

She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants.

The mattress of the bed was quivering violently back and forth.

II: The Edge

One

They brought her to an ending in a crowded cemetery where the gravestones cried for breath.

His orders were to “rest.”

Two

Regan lay on her back on Klein’s examination table, arms and legs bowed outwards.

No one noticed.

Three

The consulting neurologist pinned up the X-rays again and searched for indentations which would look as if the skull had been pounded like copper with a tiny hammer.

Wherever Sharon moved, Regan would follow.

Four

Friday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

Burke Denning’s head was turned completely around, facing backward.

Five

Cupped in the warm, green hollow of the campus, Damien Karras jogged alone around an oval, loamy track in khaki shorts and a cotton T-shirt drenched with the cling of healing sweat.

She screamed until she fainted.

III: The Abyss

One

She was standing on the Key Bridge walkway, arms on the parapet, fidgeting, waiting, while homeward traffic stuttered thickly behind her, while drivers with everyday cares honked horns and bumpers nudged bumpers with scraping indifference.

“Perhaps we could now have a talk. . . .”

Two

Karras threaded tape to an empty reel in the office of the rotund, silver-haired director of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics.

He continued his farewells.

IV. “And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee. . . ”

One

In the breathing dark of his quiet office, Kindemann brooded above his desk.

The river flowed quiet again, reaching for a gentler shore.

Epilogue

Late June sunlight streamed through the window of Chris’s bedroom.

In forgetting, they were trying to remember.

Beyond Blood, Guts, and Gore

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, we think of horror fiction as a visceral genre, focusing, as it frequently does, on blood and guts and gore. However, the best horror fiction transcends the merely physical and addresses, albeit usually symbolically, those dimensions of our existence that are peculiarly human: the theological, the philosophical, the social, the psychological, and the technological. We are more than bodies. We are ghosts. We are spirits. We are souls. We believe in God, we think about the implications of our perceptions and beliefs, we organize as societies and nations, we emote, and we use tools of spectacular complexity and variety. The best horror fiction addresses these aspects of our existence.

One reason that William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971) is a great novel (and a movie, released in 1973) is that it explores the problem of evil and the meaning of true faith, showing that, more than being mere belief, such faith involves trust in God; love for God, for oneself, and for others; and the needs to forgive and to be forgiven. The novel also suggests that evil is not only real but that it is also of a spiritual, rather than of a psychological or a social, nature (although evil may be expressed psychologically or socially--or in other ways).

Part of the reason that The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) is a good, if not great, film, is that it is both theological, questioning whether God and the devil actually exist or are merely metaphors for experience that is not fully understood, and philosophical, asking whether human beings should consider themselves to be nothing more than one of the many products of evolution. There are consequences for both world views, the movie suggests, and it is the filmmaker's intent to force a decision for or against one worldview and its consequences or the other Weltanschauung and its consequences. According to the film's director, Scott Derrickson:

What I wanted to do was write something that wasn’t propaganda, wasn’t about trying to persuade people to think the way that I do, but recognize the fundamental importance of that question, the central question — does the spiritual realm exist? Is there a devil, and more importantly, is there a God? And if so, what are the implications of that? I don’t care what you believe — those are questions to be reckoned with… Everyone has to answer that question. And in some ways everyone lives their life based on what they believe about that question.

Many of Stephen King’s novels examine the effects of community life upon the residents of small towns, focusing upon the pressures upon, and the consequences to, individuality and personality that social mores, traditions, and expectations tend to exert and have; among the best of these novels, perhaps (but by no means the best of King‘s work to date), are Carrie (1974), Needful Things (1991), and Under the Dome (2009).

Perhaps the best-know and certainly one of the artistically finest horror films that delves into the mysteries of the human personality is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), which is based upon Robert Bloch’s novel of the same title (1959). How much of our behavior as adults is shaped by our childhood experiences, and, in particular, by the hand that rocks the cradle? If the challenges of childhood and adolescence take different avenues than is typical or normal, might a boy grow up to be a monster rather than a man? “A boy’s best friend is his mother,” Norman Bates declares, but, clearly, in his case, this was not true. Why? The film perhaps leaves more questions unanswered than answered, despite the psychiatrist’s explanation of the protagonist’s behavior at the end of the film, but it brings to the attention of its millions of viewers the importance of seeking answers to questions of nature and nurture, of learning and genetics. In the process, the film makes it quite clear that people are more than merely food for worms, for machines, whether of flesh or of steel, operate according to their design, without being affected by the attitudinal, emotional, or other cognitive functions that are peculiar to creatures that have been created in the image and likeness of God.

Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed (1977), in which a computer impregnates a woman who gives birth to a cyborg infant, explores the implications of the human-technology dynamic, admittedly taken to rather absurd extremes. It’s a reworking, of sorts, of the Frankenstein motif, wherein the monster is, quite literally, a ghost in a machine, but one of technological, rather than of divine, conception and origin. A 1977 movie, of the same title, directed by Donald Cammell, is based upon Koontz’s book.

It is interesting (and, one might add, significant) that several of these novels and movies are based, allegedly, at least, upon actual events. The Exorcist is based upon a titanic spiritual battle that Blatty heard about during his college days. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based upon the horrific experiences of  Anneliese Michel. Although Carrie is an entirely fictional work, the protagonist, Carietta (Carrie) White, is “based on a combination of two girls in King's past; one of them went to school with him, the other was a student of his,” Timeline’s Internet article “Carrie becomes King‘s debut novel,” points out:

The young girl King went to school with lived down the street from him when he lived in Durham, Maine. King recalls, in an interview with Charles L. Grant for Twilight Zone Magazine (Apr 1981), “She was a very peculiar girl who came from a very peculiar family. Her mother wasn’t a religious nut like the mother in Carrie; she was a game nut, a sweepstakes nut who subscribed to magazines for people who entered contests . . . The girl had one change of clothes for the entire school year, and all the other kids made fun of her. I have a very clear memory of the day she came to school with a new outfit she'd bought herself. She was a plain-looking country girl, but she'd changed the black skirt and white blouse--which was all anybody had every seen her in--for a bright-colored checkered blouse with puffed sleeves and a skirt that was fashionable at the time. And everybody made worse fun of her because nobody wanted to see her change the mold.”

Needful Things, King says, was inspired by the excesses of televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker, and Under the Dome’s villain is based upon Vice-President Dick Cheney--as King sees him, of course. Psycho is based upon the murderous Ed Gein.

(It is also interesting and probably significant that several of these writers and filmmakers are Christian: Blatty is a Catholic, Derrickson is a Protestant, King is a believer but differs in his belief from traditional Protestants, and Koontz is a Catholic.)

Basing one’s fiction, entirely or in part, upon real-world people, situations, or events is one way to ensure that one has realistic, believable fodder upon which to base one’s theological, philosophical, social, psychological, and technological explorations, examinations, insights, and criticisms. That it is possible to do so underscores one of the points of horror fiction in general--and perhaps the biggest point of them all--which is that human beings, both actual and fictional, are more than blood, guts, and gore. There is a spiritual as well as a physical dimension to human existence; if there were not, horror itself would be impossible and there would be neither novels nor movies based upon this emotional reaction to external and internal evil that, like goodness, is both transcendent and immanent to human beings themselves.

Horror Settings

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror story settings often play upon the limits of human perception and the effects of such limitations upon human self-esteem, safety, and security.

Fog blinds, and blindness makes one helpless. A forest’s density of trees makes one feel trapped. An island or a space station is isolated, which cuts one off from others and the aid that they could provide. A cavern is dark; darkness blinds; blindness makes one helpless. A cavern’s passages are tight, which could make one feel trapped, and the passages are labyrinthine, suggesting that one may become lost and, therefore, cut off from others and the aid that they could provide. An unfamiliar place is unknown, and the unknown blinds one mentally, or cognitively, thereby making him or her vulnerable to potential injury or harm.

The antidotes, as it were, to the effects of such settings are, respectively, self-reliance; escape or rescue; being located; and knowledge (especially practical knowledge).

Therefore, some horror stories start at one of these extremes and end with the other extreme. For example, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” starts with the sentencing to death of the protagonist and his imprisonment in his intended death chamber, the “pit” of the story’s title, and ends with the main character’s rescue by his enemy’s foes.

However, a horror story (or a thriller) might also start with the positive character trait--self-reliance, for example--and end with its destruction, as James Dickey’s novel Deliverance does. In this narrative, macho, self-reliant outdoorsmen are sodomized by a group of sadistic mountain men whom they encounter during a canoeing trip. Likewise, the adversary of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist seeks to destroy Father Damien Karras’ faith when he attempts to exorcize an alleged demoniac. Another of my posts, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,” discusses at length the importance of the cavern setting of the movie The Descent on both the film’s plot and characters.

Few contemporary horror stories succeed in exploiting a forest setting’s dark and foreboding character as well as The Blair Witch Project. As anyone who has ever gone camping overnight in a forest knows, campers are almost certain to hear furtive sounds, breaking twigs, and perhaps even snarls or growls. Unable to see what one hears, one can quite easily let his or her imagination run wild, and his or her imagination is able to picture horrors and terrors beyond anything reality is likely to offer. The forest, in this film, is a symbol of man’s helplessness before nature--especially a forest that, cutting the band of students off from the rest of humanity, leaves them not only to their own devices but also to their own wild imaginings. 

Regardless of the setting an author may select, he or she should examine it carefully for its symbolic, metaphorical, or other rhetorical significance, for by playing upon these implications, the writer can enhance the depth and richness of his or her story. In analyzing the proposed setting, the author may, in fact, find that another setting than that which he or she originally envisioned works better for his or her story in part, perhaps, because the alternative setting is more symbolically, metaphorically, or otherwise rhetorically profound than the first location that he or she considered for the narrative’s milieu. (The same is true for the story’s props: Poe, for example, originally envisioned a parrot as the foil to The Raven’s narrator, rather than the raven he subsequently selected as the poem’s avian adversary.)

William Peter Blatty’s "Dimiter": The Creator and His Creation, or the Mind Beyond Nature

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The flyleaf to William Peter Blatty’s novel Dimiter (2010) gives a succinct and intriguing synopsis of the narrative’s basic plot:

Dimiter opens in the world’s most oppressive and isolated totalitarian state: Albania in the 1970s. A prisoner suspected of being an enemy agent is held by state security. An unsettling presence, he maintains an eerie silence though subjected to almost unimaginable torture. He escapes--and on the way to freedom, completes a mysterious mission. The prisoner is [Paul] Dimiter, the American “agent from Hell.”

The scene shifts to Jerusalem, focusing on Hadassah Hospital and a cast of engaging, colorful characters: the brooding Christian Arab police detective, Peter Meral; Dr. Moses Mayo, a troubled but humorous neurologist; Samia, an attractive, sharp-tongued nurse; and assorted American and Israeli functionaries and hospital staff. All become enmeshed in a series of baffling, inexplicable deaths, until events explode in a surprising climax.

The flyleaf also suggests Blatty’s purpose, the novel’s theme being associated with “the sacred search for faith and the truth of the human condition.” Published by Tom Doherty Associates, a Christian house, the book is unlike others of its genre (Christian suspense thrillers) in that it not only contains some profanities, but it also examines faith itself in both a reverential and a skeptical, sometimes ironic, manner.

Blatty, of course, is also the author of The Exorcist, a novel that still excites interest among members of the clergy, philosophers, and theologians and lay readers alike, the latter of whom are perhaps more intrigued by a good, suspenseful, even horrific, story than they are by the finer points of faith and thought.

The author’s theme is reinforced by what, at first, seems but a curious habit: his inclusion of phrases that describe spiritual or psychological qualities within passages which, otherwise objective, are devoted to depicting terrain, flora, and other details of a material environment. Indeed, these subjective notations, so to speak, draw attention to themselves because of their very incongruity as subjective phrases amid objective descriptions.

One such description appears early in the novel, when Blatty is depicting a character’s hunt for a fugitive; I indicate the subjective phrases in bold font, which is not used in Blatty’s novel:

One of the dogs, a ferocious mastiff of enormous muscle and bulk, had been loosed toward a crackling sound in a wood and was later discovered lying still among gold and orange leaves on the forest floor in autumnal light as if fallen asleep and turned away from all yearning. Its neck had been broken. The leader of the force, a young smith named Rako Bey, felt a shadow pass over him at the sight, for he could not grasp the power of a human capable of killing the dog in this way. His breath a white fire on the darkening air, he scanned the wood with narrowed eyes, sifting hawthorn and hazel in search of his fate and seeing nothing but the cloud that is before men’s eyes. The sun was descending. The forest was haunted. Bare branches were icy threats, evil thoughts (14).

Many other passages of the novel also mix subjective descriptions of characters’ psychological or spiritual nature with objective depictions of material existence; the effect, which is surely intentional, is to suggest that, unseen within the materialistic world of nature, the spirit of God, as Creator, is discernable as the vital essence that infuses the world and gives it no only its material existence but also its sacred purpose and its spiritual and supernatural significance. Again, I indicate the subjective phrases in bold font, which is not used in Blatty’s novel:

Vlora’s eyes flicked up. An eerie whipping wind had arisen behind him, softly moaning and thumping at the windowpanes. Uneasy, feeling watched, the Interrogator swiveled his chair around and looked through the windows to the flickering north where thick black clouds were scudding toward the city from the mountains like the angry belief of fanatical hordes, and in a moment they would darken the Square below and its anonymous granite government buildings, the broad streets drearily leading nowhere, and the rain-slick statue of Lenin commanding the empty storefront windows crammed with the ghosts of a million longings, dust, and the dim recollection of hope (46).

The corporal. . . . looked through a window at the rough stone cobbles outside the post where a gust-driven rain spattered back and forth in hesitant, indecisive sweeps like a wispy gray soul just arrived on the empty streets of some afterworld, lost and forlorn (118).

The presence of such subjective phrases among objective descriptions suggests the presence, in nature, of spirit, a theme that the novel expresses subtly, by both this technique of including the subjective, or spiritual, with the objective and material and Blatty’s allusions, through the testimony of peasants to authorities concerning various crimes or other events and the meditations, sermons, and thoughts of religious clerics (some genuine, others counterfeit). For example, in an interview with “Rako Bey, leader of the volunteer force to Quelleza, taken 10 October,” the atheistic inquisitor is offended by his respondent’s reference to “fate” and commands Bey to maintain “propriety”:

Q. And what led you to the house in the first place?
A. Nothing, sir. Grodd was related to the blind man who lived there, but then he is related to most of the village. Nothing led us there, Colonel. It was fate.
Q. Maintain propriety.
A. Sorry sir.
Q. Our fate is in our hands (18).

Later, the interrogator is equally offended by Ligeni Shirqi, during a deposition that is taken “at Quelleza” on “12 October” and, again, orders the respondent to “maintain the proprieties”:

Q. Your door was unlocked?
A. Yes, it was. I heard the knocking and I called out, “Come in, you are welcome.”
Q. You didn’t think it dangerous?
A. Danger is irrelevant. Things are different here. It’s not like below. Had he killed my own children, I had to make him welcome. “I live in the house,” goes the saying, “but the house belongs to the guest and to God.”
Q. There is no God.
A. No, not in the city, perhaps, Colonel Vlora, but right now we are in the mountains and our general impression here is that he exists.
Q. Do maintain the proprieties, Uncle.
A. Does that help?
Q. Only facing reality helps (24).

One might argue, without too much of a stretch, perhaps, that the mountains represent heaven, or faith in God, and that the city “below” represents hell, or unbelief. However, if Shirqi’s references to God are expressions of faith, they would seem to indicate that his faith is empty and mechanical, rather than authentic and zealous, for her tells his interrogator that such references are but “formulas of grace that we observe” (25).

Throughout the novel, Blatty juxtaposes evidence for faith with listeners’ (and speakers’) reactions to such evidence; usually, the reactions are skeptical or hostile, and behavior that seems truly to be inspired by genuine faith, such as Dimiter’s stoic resistance to his torture and the miracles that take place in Jerusalem and elsewhere, terrify, rather than edify, their witnesses. If God does exist, the characters of Dimiter seem to believe, he must be a Judge to be feared, rather than a loving Father to be adored.

However, officially, it is the contention of Colonel Vlora and his fellow atheistic authorities that “there is no God” and that human conduct is autonomous. It is perhaps because of their atheistic humanism that genuine religious faith, as seen in the stoic acceptance of his suffering on Dimiter’s part, terrify Vlora, causing him to insist that others “maintain the proprieties” of unbelief.

The miracles that occur in the instantaneous healings of several of the patients at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital also mystify and unsettle the skeptical Jew, Dr. Moses Mayo. The neurologist questions Samia, a nurse, concerning her claim to have witnessed a patient, Mrs. Lakhme, “recently crippled by a fractured hip,” walking--and looking far younger than her advanced age--but he is unable, even in the face of such testimony, to believe that such a miracle implies the existence of God:

Mayo’s gaze fixed dubiously on the crimson Star of David stitched onto her oversized starched white cap. His quest for unwavering faith in her accounts had been less than heroically advanced by the fact that he knew her to be a neurotic as well as a courageously innovative tester of the outermost limits of paranoia (83).

Ironically, the novel’s theme (the presence of God, the Creator, is implied by his creation) is perhaps best expressed by a Muslim cleric who, hoping to secure intelligence from Dimiter, poses as a Christian priest who, himself a prisoner, shares Dimiter’s cell and, ostensibly, his own alleged faith in God, preaching a sermon of sorts based upon the teleological argument:

“Before the Big Bang,” he started preaching to the cell, “the entire universe was a point of zero size and infinite weight. Then the point exploded, creating space and, with it, time and its twin, disorder. And yet for our cosmos to come into existence the force of that primordial outward explosion needed to match the force of gravity with the accuracy you would need for a bullet to hit a one-inch target on the opposite side of the observable universe thirteen billion light-years away” (49).

Although it would seem that the counterfeit priest’s argument from design should be convincing enough to unbiased minds, it is, ironically enough, received with the same lack of enthusiasm as is evidenced by Colonel Vlora or, for that matter, Dr. Mayo: “A fist lashed out from the darkness, striking the priest on his cheekbone with the crunching sound of gristle and flesh. ‘I told you I wanted to sleep!’ snarled an angry, deep male voice” (49).

It is not Blatty’s mere use of personifications to indicate the presence of a Mind beyond nature and of a Creator transcendent to his creation that startles the reader, but the way that the author’s subjective descriptions appear in these passages of his novel, as if they are natural, normal, and expected parts of an otherwise objective depiction of a materialistic universe. One might expect such descriptions in the pantheistic or polytheistic writings of ancient storytellers, but they are more than surprising in the pages of a modern novelist’s novel; they are startling and astonishing, testifying of the omniscient narrator’s own apparent faith. For him, as, perhaps, for Blatty himself, there seems to be little doubt, despite all his characters’ doubts, that “the search for faith and the truths of the human condition” with which the novel is concerned will end triumphantly.

Setting and Plot

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror story settings often play upon the limits of human perception and the effects of such limitations upon human self-esteem, safety, and security.

Fog blinds, and blindness makes one helpless. A forest’s density of trees makes one feel trapped. An island or a space station is isolated, which cuts one off from others and the aid that they could provide. A cavern is dark; darkness blinds; blindness makes one helpless. A cavern’s passages are tight, which could make one feel trapped, and the passages are labyrinthine, suggesting that one may become lost and, therefore, cut off from others and the aid that they could provide. An unfamiliar place is unknown, and the unknown blinds one mentally, or cognitively, thereby making him or her vulnerable to potential injury or harm.

The antidotes, as it were, to the effects of such settings are, respectively, self-reliance; escape or rescue; being located; and knowledge (especially practical knowledge).

Therefore, some horror stories start at one of these extremes and end with the other extreme. For example, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” starts with the sentencing to death of the protagonist and his imprisonment in his intended death chamber, the “pit” of the story’s title, and ends with the main character’s rescue by his enemy’s foes.

However, a horror story (or a thriller) might also start with the positive character trait--self-reliance, for example--and end with its destruction, as James Dickey’s novel Deliverance does. In this narrative, macho, self-reliant outdoorsmen are sodomized by a group of sadistic mountain men whom they encounter during a canoeing trip. Likewise, the adversary of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist seeks to destroy Father Damien Karras’ faith when he attempts to exorcize an alleged demoniac. Another of my posts, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,” discusses at length the importance of the cavern setting of the movie Descent on both the film’s plot and characters.

Few contemporary horror stories succeed in exploiting a forest setting’s dark and foreboding character as well as The Blair Witch Project. As anyone who has ever gone camping overnight in a forest knows, campers are almost certain to hear furtive sounds, breaking twigs, and perhaps even snarls or growls. Unable to see what one hears, one can quite easily let his or her imagination run wild, and his or her imagination is able to picture horrors and terrors beyond anything reality is likely to offer. The forest, in this film, is a symbol of man’s helplessness before nature--especially a forest that, cutting the band of students off from the rest of humanity, leaves them not only to their own devices but also to their own wild imaginings.

Regardless of the setting an author may select, he or she should examine it carefully for its symbolic, metaphorical, or other rhetorical significance, for by playing upon these implications, the writer can enhance the depth and richness of his or her story. In analyzing the proposed setting, the author may, in fact, find that another setting than that which he or she originally envisioned works better for his or her story in part, perhaps, because the alternative setting is more symbolically, metaphorically, or otherwise rhetorically profound than the first location that he or she considered for the narrative’s milieu. (The same is true for the story’s props: Poe, for example, originally envisioned a parrot as the foil to The Raven’s narrator, rather than the raven he subsequently selected as the poem’s avian adversary.)