The idea of antagonistic species who hate on humanity for
being inferior has always struck me as kind of funny. It seems akin to a bunch of humans saying, “I
hate dogs! They’re so stupid and predictable they don’t even deserve to live!”
before going on to torture and kill anything with the audacity to wag its
tail. Just seems kinda arbitrary. That being said, the ‘things’ in Peter Straub’s
Ghost Story really were mysterious
and intriguing as all get out through a solid majority of the novel, which is
no small feat in story just shy of 500 pages.
While there’s definitely some depth to the journey experienced by the
many protagonists as they overcome their internal struggles to take down the
external ones, that topic hews a little close to my last essay’s, so my
analysis of Ghost Story is going to
be reined in to scrutinizing the presentation of its creatures. More specifically, I’m arguing that the story
is at its most frightening (though not necessarily its most entertaining)
before we know the motive of the entities haunting the town of Milburn.
Reflections on the unknown being scarier than anything we
can perceive are overdone in this brand of discussion, but that’s probably
because the truth in them is a basic principle of so many elements of horror. I’m not exactly breaking new ground when I
claim that an increase in information lessens the fright factor, so it’s important
to clarify exactly what kind of information becomes ‘too much’. For me, the turning point was the scene in
which Gregory kills Mrs. Barnes, gloating to Peter of his origins and nature. The scene doesn’t lay out a motive for the
Bates brothers, nor does it give away information amounting to more obvious
fear killers (like the fact that you can kill them the same way you can kill
everything else). What it does do is
display a sense of awareness in the antagonists, signaling that we aren’t
dealing with the purposeless hate machines the text insisted we were, but
entities with feelings and ideas--ideas which can be broken down, examined, and
criticized.
This is crucial, I think, because evil ideas walk a tricky
line between being stupid and being wrong, neither one of which is particularly
frightening. The times at which I was
the most frightened by and interested in Anna and Co. were those in which their
actions couldn’t be tethered to any particular motive. Why did Anna spend so much time with Don only
to disappear and kill his brother? Why
would these powerful beings be interested in killing a group of old men? Why was Gregory so damn mean? These questions are at their scariest when
they’re unanswered, even if the story clarifies ahead of time that the questions
cannot be answered (how many horror stories define their spirits as the
physical manifestion of an emotion?).
The introduction of these characters in all their initial mystery--Gregory
as a hateful force of nature, Anna as a whimsical harbinger of death--represents,
to me, the peak of their intrigue and menace.
Their actions cannot given a “why” without giving up the vulnerable,
vulnerable ideas, meaning that frightening characters can never really be ‘characters’.
There’s a point in Stephen King’s The Stand where Satan (or a Satan stand-in, I forget) tells one of
the main characters that he’ll spare his life so long as he kneels down and worships
him, at which point the character bursts out laughing. I assume he would have laughed at the
antagonists of this novel, also, as the concept of beings with such immense
power and knowledge being coupled with the pettiness of a twelve-year-old girl is
downright absurd. This corner of the
horror genre--big evil baddies with genuine motives--might be something that
just can’t work. Evil ideas just aren’t that scary. They’re generally just stupid, and it’s only
the possibility that anyone could act on them that’s worth fearing.
I've been wondering about motivation as well for the manitou. Even if they're shapeshifters now, they started off human, and as such they're going to have some remaining motivation hardwired into their mindsets. I couldn't figure out what de Peyser, Fenny and What's-his-face were getting out of scaring decrepit old men. But maybe I missed this in the fog of irrelevant details hurled at me.
ReplyDeleteBecause otherwise you're right. It's one thing to play with your food, but to wait so long, only to come back and torment elderly men for some accident that happened when they were teens? That's awfully dedicated, right there. So what did they all get out of it? Fenny and his brother never even met the old people. And de Peyser only did once they had started seeking their revenge.
Some of it didn't add up.
That's interesting that you say the fear of the unknown is overdone in this book. I many ways I think that is true, but not only for this book. It can still be an effective device, but not when it is pulled too long through the book before you really reveal anything. The striptease comments from Arzen's article comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteWhy would these powerful beings be interested in killing a group of old men?
ReplyDeleteThis question intrigued me, since I never one got the idea that there wasn’t anything more than the proverbial “urination contest” at work. However, as has been shown in our people’s histories more than once, these contests can turn deadly series in a heartbeat. Political examples currently in the news are Japan’s right to harvest whales in the south seas for “scientific purposes” and Iran’s right to nuclear power for the “the good of their people.” Whew, serious fur flies when they are thwarted. “Who do those [insert name] think they are???!!!”
This is the dynamic I read in Straub’s Ghost Story. The preternatural being(s) within the story alleviate the boredom of their long existence by playing with the seedy, stupid humans…and not in a good way. (Like the pulling the wings off of flies, if you ask me.) Unfortunately, in this case the bugs thwarted the end result. (Hey! It stung me, blasted thing. I’ll show it…) Going forward, the creature had a grudge. (It would show these puny, insect humans a thing or two.) Unfortunately, as presented by the fictional Man-Kzin Wars series, if there was one thing that the evolved monkeys of Earth knew it was how to win a battle.
Ego got involved. (Why I outta…)
Still, these particular humans kept winning to the shock, rage, and frustration of the story’s baddie. In fact, “No! You cannot do this!” are the final words from the Manitou. It reminds me a little of the movie Predator, with its final line from the defeated alien: “What the hell are you?” So, I supposed that the assumption that we are the higher being in the “I hate dogs!” scenario is probably not the mythology Straub utilized in his story. And since the fundamental structure of a ghost story has been argued to be one of morality, perhaps it can be argued that Humanity is the Ultimate may not be the mythology of the genre. Hum…
As they say "less is more". When stories dealing with supernatural horror and fantasy contains a lot of information about the supernatural elements, a lot of the mood and mystery goes away. This novel proved it more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteThis ancient race hated humans because they were so boring, and could easily have killed us all. But they liked our dreams and imaginations, so they let us live, and they themselves existed in the human periphery, having fun by tormenting us.
She was even so full of revenge that she caused the death of a farmer and his whole family because his father had borrowed the then teenaged Chowder Society the car used to dump her in the water.
What exactly were the ghosts that just turned into pixie dust when you touched them? If it was not really the people they pretended to be, why only stick to dead people?
What I didn't like that much:
The whole Dr. Rabbitfoot thing and why Donald's writing of the novel and the stories the Chowder Society told each other somehow made everything worse.
The attempt to include the werewolf and vampire myth to the story, as well as indian mythology and the cattle mutilations phenomenon, and the claim that every ghost story and tale of the supernatural in human history can be traced back to these beings.
The description of the creatures as pure evil and full of hate with nothing good inside them. Were they really that evil and hateful even before they met the first humans?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The haunted and the haunters (1859) suffers from the same. The explanation for the ghost we meet in the story turns out to be a supernatural explanation (unlike so much of the old gothic tales), but it is still a rationalized explanation, which takes away most of the previous awe the readers felt.
A similar novel that in my opinion works better is Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. He doesn't try to explain that vampire myth, he is writing about it. Except from the part where the villain have some kind of unseen satanic ritual, which I found to be a little too cliché ("Oh my father, favor me now. Lord of the Flies favor me now. Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh. I have made sacrifice for your favor"), the monsters in this book feels a lot more like the alien beings one expect them to be.