I’m not a horror writer, and while I
am developing a growing appetite for the genre, I can’t say I’m much of a
horror reader, either. I took this
course because I determined that the effective presentation of external
conflict in any genre requires techniques
at the foundation of a good horror story--namely, scare tactics. A villain doesn’t carry much weight if they
don’t instill fear in the reader, and the threats of death, pain, and sadness
that we level at our protagonists have only as much impact as their execution
enables. Hell House vindicated my method of study, not so much by being scary
(it had me going at a few points, I’ll admit) as through the feeling of triumph
I was left with at the end. Fear-based
conflict has all kinds of capacity to amplify the heroic qualities of a story’s
characters, and on that level, Hell House
totally delivered.
One-sided
fights go hand in hand with horror. As
soon as we get the sense that the victims of a monstrous force stand a decent
chance of victory, the force ceases to be monstrous and the story ceases to be
scary. Right from the get-go, then, the implicit
context of simply being a horror story primes us to anticipate the protagonists
of Hell House being overmatched. We already know that Barrett’s Reversor isn’t
going to work; we already know that Florence’s compassion won’t save any
souls. We go into the story expecting to
watch snakes eat mice, wondering whether any will be smart enough to escape,
and that’s what makes it so much cooler when the mice pull off the win. These characters are fighting tooth and
nail--Florence bites through her hand to retain sanity; Barrett persists in assembling
his machine amidst a constant stream of injury; Fischer overcomes an excessive addiction
to moping--and the overwhelming sense of futility in it all elevates their struggles
to impressive feats of heroism when the unification of their efforts winds up
being enough to take the house down.
I
might not have responded so well with this aspect of the story if Matheson had
opted to trivialize his characters by burdening them with cartoonish
weaknesses. While the house ultimately
preys on the vulnerabilities alluded to at the beginning--Barrett’s pompous
overconfidence is his downfall;
Florence is too caring for her own
good--it’s only after the author has explored the strengths of each character with
what read to me as sincerity. Florence
isn’t an airheaded fool, but a compassionate, intelligent medium whose strength
of will is crucial to Fischer’s ability to reason through the house’s
phenomena. Barrett isn’t a willfully
ignorant windbag, but a capable physicist who was pretty damn close to
extinguishing the house’s powers. The
characters are flawed, definitely, but only enough to give value to their more
impressive qualities.
I
know a lot of my classmates didn’t think Hell
House was scary, and I agree that, yeah, a lot of the time it isn’t. I’d argue, however, that through much of the
novel it maintained a crucial element of any horror story--the overt sense of a
dangerous, unbeatable threat--and that it used that element to pull off a more
than satisfying finish.
This was a lovely exploration of Matheson’s Hell House. I loved how you worked your vision of the story into smaller, concentric circles that ultimately spoke of the larger whole. Well done. However, I did bump into the idea the Florence used pain to thwart the ghost. Please understand, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m only mentioning the lovely occurrence of two people reading the same passages and coming away with a different understanding.
ReplyDeleteThis is how I read it: “She looked around uncertainly. It seemed as though the flare of pain had driven Daniel from her mind,”(p. 243). I noted the word ‘seemed,’ and hesitated over what would be the following narration because a) Florence was already possessed, b) The Ghost was already playing with their minds and was expected to continue, and Matheson wrote ‘seemed’ instead of something more concrete. Thus, as I continued forward in the scene and with each manifestation, I did so believing that The Roaring Giant was mucking around with her head. But why?
Surely, it couldn’t be for something silly as personal power. He’d gotten that with the intrusive rape/possession of her body. Victory? If so, then why did Matheson include Florence so deeply into the story? I read it that the author designed his story with the ghost’s awareness of her capability to unveil his ultimate truth—which she did. However, the best way to do so was to set down a false trail of her madness. Once she was on the trail of the hidden room, the best he could do was obfuscate. It my view, The Stubby Specter was caught off guard the first time she was able to kick off his glamour. However, he wasn’t stumped. (pun intentional.) He used this unexpected situation, ruthlessly and deliberately tossing specter after specter into Florence’s path. The result of which was her chewing through her hand while she approached the chapel and its dark secret, and her death beneath the crucifix.
What better way to continue to conceal a truth than to make the one visionary in their group unreliable? An excellent ploy by The Ghost. A stunning and successful gambit used to conceal and denigrate his opponent. It was simply his bad luck that Fischer was able, with Florence’s help from beyond the grave, to see through the diversion.
I will say you are right about elements of storytelling that are the basis of horror are needed in any genre. But I would not call them scare tactics. I think this is a misconception of the genre as a whole. It would better to say fear tactics if anything, though I prefer terror tactics. If you simple try to get a scare out of a reader, it is will affect them for only a short time. Once they reconcile the event in their minds, they will never be as scared--if at all--as they were the first time. Unfortunately, this thought is lacking in many contemporary horror stories, and I would even say Hell house fails in that respect too. A good horror story should instill a fear or terror that lasts with a reader, create an inner conflict that keeps the reader unsettled long after the story is finished. Horror plunges readers into the darkness so when they reach the light again, they see it with open eyes and not for granted.
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