The Humanities Review

Issue date: 6/1/08 Section: Spring 2008

Long before the monsters come knocking, characters in horror start out pretty messed up. Who can forget Margaret White's dirty pillow speech? She's a lot less interested in protecting her daughter Carrie's chastity than in subverting her own copious sexual desires. Is it Carrie who implodes that house, or Margaret guiltily devouring her own need to get laid, and retroactively, the proof of it? And then there is Oates' creation, Enid Stevick. After losing her virginity to her pugilist uncle, she never stops bleeding, as if exhibiting pain by blood is the same as crying tears. My favorite is the self-destructive rage of The Shining's Jack Torrence. In the first three words of the novel he describes his prospective employer as an "officious little prick," and so begins his disastrous descent into madness. These characters don't hide their wounds or dashed expectations. They can't even shut their mouths long enough to silence their own screams. They wear their childishness like a badge of courage for all to see, as if they do not know they've made themselves into objects of derision. It is we as readers who squirm in humiliation on their behalf. We can't help it; we like them. More to the point, we see ourselves in them. They're the flawed adolescents we left behind at the bus circle years ago. But how can we let go of our own consciences?

When it works, horror gets as close to the veins of our emotions as any piece of literature is able. The monsters do not exist to frighten us, but to soothe us. Their existence reassures us that we are reading fiction. We've got a lifeline, in case the characters with which we are identifying drag us too far into uncomfortable emotional terrain. Our characters' screams are our own screams, but when we are done, we can relax, because none of it was real, right? Except, we can't stop thinking about the friends we met in those books. We hope that long after the stories ended, they lived happy lives. We hope they are okay. We hope we're okay, too.

Continued...

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