Paul Santilli’s “Culture, Evil, and Horror” gives us several ideas of what horror means. Horror is a type of cultural breakdown. There is also a type of horror called Ontological Horror: “It is characterized as a disturbance before an indefinite and unnamed presence” (180). In the story “The Spider”, the men all suffered an ineluctable death. This story demonstrates an unnamed presence causing the loss of control. Santilli explains horror as something beyond death: a loss of freedom and control. As he continues to say, “What remains after death is the corpse itself, an ineluctable remainder of the act, representing the triumph of being over the subject’s free negation” (183). The act of the killing will always be present even after a while, Richard knows how the other men ended up, hanging dead yet he takes on the mystery. …show more content…
He is already under her control. Paul Santilli provides us a view towards the world when it is filled with fear; as he states, “That experience is like fear, but it is not the kind of fear one feels before a specific danger. Rather, it is an anxiety about the instability and contingency of the world itself”, the world is unpredictable and this causes anxiety which is “fear” according to Heidgger. Knowing how unpredictable the world is makes you feel like you lose a sense of control over your life and more importantly over yourself. Ewer himself writes “Of course I could rush up to the window and do exactly what she wants me to do. But I am waiting, struggling, and defending myself. I feel this uncanny thing getting stronger every minute…” (88). Richard lost total control over himself, to this women he fell in love with. He didn’t consider her being a sign of danger, the difficulty of understanding that she is the killer is complicated for him. He tries to fight it and take back his control, but he is unable
This fear of the unknown is similar to the one shown in Gordon Grice’s essay, “The Black Widow.” In his essay, Grice explains how his fear of black widow made him curious about them. He once feared black widows because most people associated black widows as deadly animals that kill people. However, once Grice said, “I fell, hands first, into a mass of young widows … In about ten minutes my arms carried nothing but old web and the husks of spiderlings eaten by their sibs. I have never been bitten” (47). This revelation for Grice shows that black widows aren’t what he had thought them to be, but in fact mostly harmless to humans. “We want the world to be an ordered room, but in a corner of that room there hangs an untidy web. Here the analytical
The beginning of the story mentions an “...odor of death...” (Allende 232). This smell, along with “...the stench of corpses.” (Allende 234), is something that the reader can bring into the story and imagine theirself. For most readers, this smell is unimaginable and brings the
“Then came the march past the victims. The two men are no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing. And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
Have you ever experienced that feeling when your heart beat goes into hyper drive, your palms start to perspire, and your muscles tense up? Fear is an emotion that everyone has succumbed to at least once in their lifetime. Our fears are like our shadows, for they follow us around to wherever we may go. They are lingering in the back of our minds from the moment we wake up in the morning until our heads hit the pillow at night. Fears are so powerful, however, that they can even crawl into our dreams and manifest into other beings. We, as humans, like to put names or concepts to either faces or objects; we like to possess the ability to visualize what something or someone looks like. As a result, our fears are personified into monsters. Prolific essayist, Chuck Klosterman, points out how “Frankenstein’s monster illustrated our trepidation about untethered science” and “Godzilla was spawned from the fear of the atomic age.” In Klosterman’s article, “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” he tackles the
Asma, Stephen. On Monsters :An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Morgan, J. The biology of horror: gothic literature and film. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
This may include nightmares, vulnerability, alienation, revulsions, and terror of the unknown, fear of the death and dismemberment, loss of identity and fear of sexuality. Horrors can play on our physical fears, such as grotesque scenes and frightening characters, or our psychological fears, tapping into our dreams states and the horror of irrational and unknown, and the horror within man himself. There are many examples of gothic fiction, here are a few: The Red Room, The Monkey’s Paw, The Signalman, Desiree’s Baby, Clubfooted Grocer, these are the stories that I will be analysing. More horror stories include Frankenstein, Dracula and The Golem.
Envision yourself as encircled by strange, yet terrifying and evil spirits that trouble you in your worst nightmares. The spirits could desire something from you. In fact, they could aid you in locale of frightening you. Should you attend to them? What do you contemplate they are trying to notify you? In one of the inquiries above, notice the ironical use of the word “fact” that endeavors to obscure the fictitious nature of ghosts. It displays that the meaning of the word “ghost” is equivocal. In supplementary words, the word “ghost” is multivalued, that way that ghosts can purpose in extra than one way.
This is where horror comes into place as well as film and television captured within the ‘terror frame’ where the idea of ghosts has become well-known in western countries (for entertainment) whereas, in most other non-western countries ghosts and spirituality and the supernatural have been there forever in cultures and folklore and myth’s told over a certain period and time. Therefore there seems to more change rather than continuity as beforehand the spiritual and supernatural elements have not been so dominate in pre-modernist novels compared to postmodernist novels which have a rich sensation of the supernatural being the epitome of all evil unlike monsters.
Webster’s dictionary defines horror as something that causes feelings of dread, fear, and shock. It defines terror as something that is terrifying and causes very strong feelings of fear. Terror and horror have been used interchangeably throughout our society to describe anything to do with scary and fearful circumstances. Gothic literature began in the Eighteenth century and began to feed off of the reader’s imagination through horror and terror. Through gothic literature one can see the terror and horror through works such as; “The Raven”, “AnnaBell Lee”, “Lenore”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Settings are the fundamental element that create the allure of fear; without the presence of a setting, a reader's’ curiosity will begin to fade away. In the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” the author, Edgar Allan Poe, demonstrates how our settings can become a part of us and show our subconscious emotions. This is also a critical element in the short story, “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortázar. This short story demonstrates that our homes can sometimes overtake us if we are left vulnerable. Both authors create a disturbing atmosphere in order to construct a sense of fear for readers; however, their writing contain elements that differ.
He almost feels at peace when he dismembers, hides the body and even when the policemen came to his house: “what I had to fear?” (71). All of a sudden, the narrator’s feelings transform one last time again as he imagines the old man's heart beat starting again. He “foamed” and “raved” (72). The reader perceives how his uncontrollable madness takes progressively over his mind sealing his
Horror films are designed to frighten the audience and engage them in their worst fears, while captivating and entertaining at the same time. Horror films often center on the darker side of life, on what is forbidden and strange. These films play with society’s fears, its nightmare’s and vulnerability, the terror of the unknown, the fear of death, the loss of identity, and the fear of sexuality. Horror films are generally set in spooky old mansions, fog-ridden areas, or dark locales with unknown human, supernatural or grotesque creatures lurking about. These creatures can range from vampires, madmen, devils, unfriendly ghosts, monsters, mad scientists, demons, zombies, evil spirits, satanic villains, the possessed, werewolves and freaks to the unseen and even the mere presence of evil.
Monsters have been depicted in different ways throughout history, but scholars like Jeffrey Jerome Cohen have been able to dissect how monsters are viewed by culture along with examining the various functions that monsters serve in horror fiction and films. His theses cover a broad expanse of interpretations, ranging from topics as different as how monsters represent cultural and societal conflicts to how they fascinate us. Stories like Peter Crowther’s “Ghosts with Teeth” make the reader reflect on a different type of monster, one that constantly undermines our societal and cultural expectations through taking the form of a human. Crowther’s story is profitably interpreted through Jerome Cohen’s “Seven Theses” about monsters, suggesting that “Ghosts with Teeth” is more than the horror story seen at face value.
Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002) null03, Questia, Web, 29 May 2010.