Classics, Culture, Christianity

I’m going to be honest- I was never a fan of spooky season.  I didn’t even like to go out to eat around Halloween as a little kid because most of the decorations freaked me out.  And don’t even get me STARTED on the things I saw while costume shopping.  Why people willingly expose themselves to such ghoulishness I will never understand, but to each their own. 

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy a good scary story.  Edgar Allan Poe may give me the cold chills, but at least there are no pictures and I don’t have to see any blood.  But recently, I’ve been asking myself, what DOES make classic scary stories so scary?  What primal fears do authors who have terrified the generations tap into that keeps us on our toes to this day?  I will be seeking to answer this question through Poe’s stories, Lord of the Flies, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.  There WILL be some spoilers ahead, so be warned.

Edgar Allan Poe

Most of Poe’s narrators suffer from some kind of bizarre and/or morbid fixation.  The eye and the heartbeat in The Tell-Tale Heart, the teeth in Berenice, the raven in The Raven, the bells in the poem The Bells, the cat in The Black Cat, and so on and so forth.  It is often ambiguous whether or not the object of fixation is something real or imagined, or whether it is a real thing with imagined traits projected onto it by the narrator’s insanity.  The blurring of the line between reality and hallucination draws us inside the twisted minds of his narrators, furthering the ambiguous and terrifying atmosphere.  These narrators try over and over again to terminate, repress, or otherwise save themselves from whatever the physical manifestation of their madness is, but they fail, for the darkness that they seek to escape is truly within their own minds. 

It would take a whole post to analyze every story that Poe has written about trying to hide from something, but The Tell Tale-Heart is the most famous example.  It is implied that the old man that the narrator is terrified of is very good and kind, and that the narrator projects his own inner darkness onto his eye, of all things.  This could be an analogy for the fear of being seen, as most of us are afraid of getting caught in our sin.  What he believes to be a threat to him is really in his own head.  The beating of the heart is in the same vein (no pun intended).  The narrator is this time projecting his guilt into a physical manifestation.  By seeking to bury the old man, the narrator feels that he is escaping the darkness.  However, as evidenced when he hears the heartbeat again when the police are investigating, the darkness does not die with the old man- for it lives inside the mind of the narrator.  He lives in fear of external things when all along the real threat was inside of himself.

Lord of the Flies

This book relies on fear as a central theme. A group of schoolboys stranded on an island convince themselves that they are being hunted by a beast, and end up leaving a pig head on a stick as a sacrifice to said beast, driven by their fear to adopt a cult-like mentality that ultimately results in violence and bloodshed. Things really get creepy when the decaying pig head begins talking to one of the stranded boys. “I’m the Beast… I’m part of you.”   That’s right.  The beast that the boys have spent the entire novel in fear of is actually something inside of them. 

The most striking part of this story is the fact that the two boys, Ralph and Piggy, who seem the most rational and well-meaning, eventually succumb to mob mentality and are party to the killing of Simon.  It is also relevant that this story happens as an indirect result of World War Two, which was caused by evil and horrible actions committed by many people who considered themselves good, upstanding citizens.  Hitler was just one man, but he was propped up by so many ordinary people who were persuaded to join his wicked cause, even though it seems obvious, to an outsider, that his deeds were wrong.

Anyways, this story isn’t creepy because of the rotting pig head or the weird cult rituals.  It’s creepy because it demonstrates how all of us- even those of us who consider ourselves upstanding citizens and won’t even jaywalk- have the capacity for great evil because of our fallen nature.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

This story is, obviously, centered around a really creepy painting.  Well, it doesn’t start out creepy.  It starts out as a picture of a very pretty man named Dorian Gray.  However, as Dorian becomes more corrupt in his heart and commits more wicked deeds, the painting begins to become uglier and uglier, becoming a literal reflection of the evil inside of him. 

Dorian eventually stabs the painting, attempting to get rid of it, but he himself dies, showing that it was connected to him on a spiritual level.  His sin has become so great a part of his identity that to kill it kills him.  We also know that Dorian is the only person alive who knows about the painting, reflecting how hiding away and deceiving people only drives us further into this horrifying state.  Anyhow, the picture reflects back the ugliness of Dorian’s evil actions.  He sees this ugliness reflected back to him in the painting- and continues in his life of sin anyways.  Is this because he thinks he is too far gone?  Does he not care?  We don’t know, but it’s terrifying. 

Conclusion

If there’s one thing we can learn from Scooby-Doo, it’s that the real monsters are actually people!  But seriously, what we have to fear most isn’t butchers in ski masks with knives or aliens or rats or renegade llamas (yes, someone made a horror film about that, although I confess I have not had the pleasure of seeing it.)  The best authors know that to truly scare us, they have to tap into our biggest fear- the darkness inside of us.  We know inside that we are full of original sin, and that terrifies us.  We want to think that we are good people. We want to think that we can save ourselves.  But we cannot- only God can.  To swallow our pride and admit that is one of the scariest things of all, and that is why stories about the darkness inside all of us is one of the most timeless, poignant forms of horror.