If there is one thing that The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy has for readers, it’s a good sense of adventure and intrigue. The characters are constantly assaulted by both spies and threats from other characters, including lies and violence. Other authors tackled these ideas as well. For example, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. And, much like Orczy and The Scarlet Pimpernel, there were more than just one story involving these characters. As it turns out, mysterious plots and deceit extend beyond just one historical moment. In this post, I am reviewing The Three Musketeers, which is a book rife in swashbuckling adventure and daring.
Outline
The Three Musketeers | Maurice Leloir
The story is set during the reign of both king Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively. The story features four prominent characters (musketeers): D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. In the novel, D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers becomes fast friends after a fashion. They then battle against the evil cardinal Richelieu and Milady de Witner. The novel is renowned for its swashbuckling action, themes of friendship and loyalty, and the vivid portrayal of 17th-century France. Meanwhile, Dumas weaves a tale of honor, betrayal, and romance that is fitting for the genre. As such, this story has captivated readers for generations, making The Three Musketeers a timeless literary masterpiece.
Book Blurb:
“The novel recounts the adventures of an impecunious 18-year-old Gascon, d’Artagnan, who came to Paris to make a career in the Musketeers’ corps. He became friends with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, musketeers of King Louis XIII. These four men will oppose the Prime Minister, Cardinal Richelieu and his agents, including the Count of Rochefort and the beautiful and mysterious Milady de Winter, to save the honor of the Queen of France Anne of Austria. With its many battles and romantic twists, The Three Musketeers is the typical example of the swashbuckling novel and the success of the novel was such that Dumas adapted it himself for the stage, and took up the four heroes again in the rest of the trilogy.” — Translated
Critical Reception
On Goodreads, The Three Musketeers has 315,567 ratings and 9,075 reviews. Of the ratings, there were 122, 329 five-star ratings, and 3,224 ratings.
Five-star reviewers stated that the characters of the novel are captivating including “Milady de Winter” and the musketeers themselves. Additionally, reviewers stated that it was actually a good book. For example, one reader stated, “There’s even MORE pathos, chivalry, swordplay, hails of bullets, swooning maidens, and truly an evil Cardinal and a nasty Milady to butt heads against.”
Moreover, one-star reviews stated that the book was difficult to following, including both the “dialogue” and what action was transpiring in “the last third of the book.” Additionally, other one-star reviews stated that there really wasn’t much “swashbuckling adventure” as promised. And, reviewers touch on the their perception of the book as a bunch of “misadventures of a handful of low-lifes.”
Conclusion
I have seen many adaptations of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas in film. I am extremely familiar not with just the musketeers but also with the plot of this particular narrative. While it is a fantastic narrative, I do feel a drag sometimes when I read literature from the Romantic period. I think this is the case because there is often a lot of descriptions and not a lot happening. The subsequent Gothic period suffers from this as well. However, when used well, Gothic fiction slowly builds tension. Nevertheless, with most classic fiction, my motto is to just get in the spirit of the thing and read it with additional context and help from outside sources.
What was here yesterday would be here tomorrow, and if it wasn’t it was no great matter. What mattered was the earth and what it could provide. — Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
The horror that befalls us when we can’t make sense of the clues is always surprising and many times horrifying. Some books carry with it the weight of a season. Often times these books are the most popular when specific holidays are upon us: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, etc. Other books straddle the line between a season and a place. In this instance, Thomas Tryon‘s classic Harvest Home (1973) is an exemplary performance of autumn meets the folky, forgotten parts of America. In this post, we are going to examine this darkly-rich novel of uncovering a new town and new horrors.
Thomas Tryon Background
Tryon was an actor in American cinema (known as Tom Tryon). He appeared in films such as The Longest Day (1962), In Harm’s Way (1965), and Texas John Slaughter (1958-1961). Later, he ventured into writing, penning horror novels such as The Other (1971), The Night of the Moonbow, and In the Fire of Spring.
Summary of Harvest Home
Harvest home is about a husband, wife, and daughter–Ned and Beth, and Kate Constantine–who move from New York City to a small town in Connecticut. The town, Cornwall Coombe, is a strange place. It is reminiscent of all those horror-movie towns that have appeared in subsequent years (The Wicker Man, Midsommar, The Children of the Corn). The town believes in old traditions. They also stay as far from the modern amenities of civilization as they can to enjoy a sovereign and isolated life.
The family discovers a great deal about the town, such as their appreciation for ancient festivals and corn. One of which, Harvest Home, occurs only every seven years. These practice are eventually revealed to be Pagan in nature. A series of mystifying and horrifying events assail the new family. Likewise, a series of revelations shows just how dedicated the town of Cornwall Coombe is to their traditions.
Book Blurb
From the book: “It was almost as if time had not touched the village of Cornwall Coombe. The quiet, peaceful place was straight out of a bygone era, with well-cared-for Colonial houses, a white-steepled church fronting a broad Common. Ned and Beth Constantine chanced upon the hamlet and immediately fell in love with it. This was exactly the haven they dream of. Or so they thought.“
An Examination of the Folk Horror Elements
Folk Horror Defined
Thematically, because it’s folklore, Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon is a type of story that has always been with society. Perhaps more so in modern media, because it harkens back to a deep fear of the unknown. Paganism is evil according to our psyche because it is a misunderstood, maligned, and demonized product of propagandistic efforts to paint the other as a bad influence. That is to say, if it doesn’t look like what we know–if it is different–therefore it is evil. Harvest Home is a testament to our fears of this very idea and Thomas Tryon seems to execute the story with varying critical reception.
Folk horror lives within this realm because it captures the stories in our lives and spins them into their worst possible version. A haunted house story is one that involves death and murder. A story of small-town America is actually a story of tradition and sacrifice. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” spells this doom in letters formed by stones, while her novel The Haunting of Hill House plays into the psychology of ghost stories. Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw mirrors this conception of ghosts as well.
Critical Reception
Kirkus Reviews stated that Harvest Home is rooted in the dark past of American history. It states: “Mr. Tryon’s story seems not only tethered to considerable earlier Americana but sometimes garroted by it–there’s too much corn to husk before the last loaded third of the book. But they say it’s been born with a caul–not only the success of the first but publisher enthusiasm now as well as selection by the Literary Guild” (Kirkus).
On Goodreads, Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home has an overall rating of 3.83 with 9,442 ratings and 1,021 reviews. Currently, the book has 2,835 five-star reviews and 251 one-star reviews.
Five-star reviews state that Harvest Home is “an immersive experience above all things.” Additionally, reviewers stated that they “had so much fun reading it,” and that it is “an excellent, intricately woven tale.” Moreover, five-star reviewers stated that they will never “look at the corn the same way.”
Meanwhile, one-star reviews state that it has “page upon page of useless detail chronicling the passage of time.” Similarly, some reviewers “could not finish the book” due to its pacing. Similarly, one-star reviewers stated that all of the evidence of horror was right in front of the protagonist the whole time. Yet he couldn’t figure it out even though the facts are right in front of the reader.
Conclusion
Tryon’s book is a story I read when I was very young. I read it around the same time I read Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat and Stephen King’s Suffer the Little Children. I was for sure unprepared for what was between the covers. Strangely enough, I also read some similar reviews in which a parent recommended this book to their kids. My experience was exactly the same, because my mother recommended it to me.
Like many one-star reviews, I did find the first part of the book a bit of a slog. However, it would be a while before I grew an appreciation for Gothic horror. When I did, I realized that Harvest Home, while a folkloric story of darkness, was more in line with Gothic tone and ambition (perhaps even Southern Gothic ambition). Sometimes, when a story creeps along, it can be that much better to savor.
As stated, there have been many incarnations of this story, perhaps inspired by parallel thinking. These include the feature film of the same year The Wicker Man (1973), and Midsommar (2019). They also include the short stories “The Children of the Corn” (1977) by Stephen King, and “The Lottery” (1948) by Shirley Jackson.
Every Halloween, the streets come alive with dragons, faeries, monsters, and princesses, each adorned in fantastical costumes. But have you ever wondered why we embrace the tradition of dressing up in Halloween costumes and parading through town in search of candy? In this post, we embark on a journey through time to explore the ancient roots and the captivating history of costume-wearing, tracing it back to animal costumes and festivals in the hills and analyzing it for what it is today.
Ancient costumes
First, it is important to remember that many of our Halloween traditions come from “Samhain,” or the old Celtic tradition of ringing in the New Year (or Summer’s end) with a large bonfire and costumes to either ward off ghosts or ingratiate themselves with their company.
Moreover, as stated by CNN, the world of the Celts involved a thinning between the land of the living, and the land of the dead. As such, “Some people offered treats and food to the gods, while others wore disguises—such as animal skins and heads—so that wandering spirits might mistake them for one of their own” (Cerini).
Notably, these costumes were animalistic in nature–or meant to be bestial. They were intended to protect the wearers from both spirits and the homes they visited during the festival. Furthermore, if the ancient Celts weren’t dressed as animals then they were dressed with “blackened faces” representing “spooks” and “demons.”
Neopagans Celebrating Samhain | By Unknown Author
Additionally, National Geographic states that even the line between genders was blurred on Samhain. The text states that, “Male youths would dress up as girls and vice versa …” while men in Wales were known as “hags” because they dressed in drag. Additionally, in areas of Ireland, the one who dressed as Lair Bhan was in a white-horse costume (made of a white sheet and wooden head) to represent fertility.
The Costume Trend Spread
Equally important, the genesis of this holiday would eventually become All Hallow’s Eve, a Christian-observed holiday. The observation of this holiday led to Biblical pageants.
In connection with this, some researchers stated: “These were common during the Middle Ages all across Europe. The featured players dressed as saints and angels, but there were also plenty of roles for demons who had more fun, capering, acting devilish, and playing to the crowd” (Morrow).
Another key point to remember is that during the Potato Famine in Ireland, the Irish immigrated to the United States and brought these traditions with them, which turned into fall festivals as early as the 1800s.
Building on this concept, Encyclopedia Britannica states: “The custom of trick-or-treating, in which children dress up in costume and solicit treats from neighbors … as Irish and Scottish communities revived the Old World custom of ‘guising,'” and this involved kids in character telling jokes, reciting poetry, or performing a trick for a treat (Don Vaughan).
In Modern Times
As mentioned in a previous post about the tradition of carving pumpkins, the tradition of dressing as a ghost or a goblin came from these pagan traditions, and eventually the Irish and Scottish immigrants who came to American in the 1840s not only brought the idea of carving vegetables, but also wearing disguises for Halloween.
In recent time, Halloween is a hugely commercial holiday, raking in $12.2 billion for 2023 in the United States. “This year’s Halloween spending is expected to surpass pre-pandemic levels,” states USA Today. “The highest Halloween spending clocked in at $9.1 billion in 2017…Consumers are expecting to spend $108.24 per person this year…” With that said, one can imagine that intellectual property costumes are legion. As such, there is never any shortage of costumes from any television show, video game, YouTube celebrity, and so on.
Conclusion
The transformation from Halloween costumes has changed from what it started as in ancient times during Pagan tradition to how it ended up as a commercialized celebration in modern times. Yet, traces of the ancient practice are still in existence as kids and adults dress in a costumes and celebrate Halloween on the last day of October each year. While they may not be wearing costumes to ward off the dead, costumes still invite treats for the wearers.
Works Cited
Cerini, Marianna. “From pagan spirits to Wonder Woman: A brief history of the Halloween costume.”
When you read a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book, you no doubt expect grim depictions of horror and eerie drawings that could only come from beyond. Yet, you should expect the images to perfectly visualize the stories between the covers. Just like the three-book collection of Scary Stories. In this post, we delve into the abyss of terror once more. After previously dissecting Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, we now turn our gaze to the sinister Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Join us as we analyze and summarize this literary descent into darkness.
Writing Style
Alvin Schwartz has the quintessential folkloric style: conversational. Folklore is an oral tradition, and one that benefits people who can tell a story in conversation. There are so many moments in books and television, where one of the characters begins to rattle off a monologue that is in fact a story of events in the past. Typically these moments are done well by those who have a conversational tone.
Meanwhile, in the story “Faster and Faster,” Schwartz starts off with a fairy tale-like tone and mood: “Sam and his cousin Bob went walking in the woods. The only sounds were leaves rustling and, now and again, a bird chirping. ‘It’s so quiet here,’ Bob whispered.” In this way, Schwartz pulls us into the story with a pretty conventional beginning but one that sounds as if he could be plopped down next us by a fire.
Eventually, the boys find a drum, and Schwartz writes: “But Bob could not resist trying the drum. Instead, he sat on the ground and held it between his legs. He beat on it with one hand, then the other, slowly at first, then faster and faster, almost as if he could not stop.”
Overall, there is nothing confusing in this language. It is straightforward and to the point. It tells us everything we need to know and it uses very deliberate description to help us understand what is happening. The entire book is filled with this type of writing and it is really beneficial to the reader.
Art Style
The visual imagery of horror is often the one that stays with us long after the story has faded. I think of all the paperback and hardcover copies I’ve seen that perfectly encapsulate a book’s contents. Many of them fail to convey the book’s contents, but some of them go above and beyond.
For instance, the 1983 edition of Pet Sematary from Doubleday has it all on the surface—a yowling cat, a silhouetted figure to symbolize sin and the grim choices we make, and the red sky for blood and murder. Equally, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend‘s cover is perfection, as it has a man performing some action (presumably throwing a light) to ignite a burn-pit filled with plague vampires. The colors of green and black perfectly balance the emerald-sky fever alive in the illustrator’s head.
As mentioned before, Gammell’s illustrations are horrific. The cover itself has three mutated faces like something from The Labyrinth (1986) after a dose of radiation. An updated cover has what appears to be a witch on the cover who is holding a staff and a cane…and she looks distressed. Similarly, in “Sam’s New Pet,” we have more of that mutated, monster imagery that Gammell is so fond of drawing. A truly wretched rat-like creature appears to be taking baby steps forward. Neverthless, one of my favorites, “Harold,” depicts a tubby scarecrow with a forsaken face hanging from a wooden spike. His black eyes stare dead ahead in a field of Gothic horror. Two silhouette’s stand on the horizon looking on with trepidation from behind a rotted fence.
There is levity in the stories, but It does not appear that Gammell has time for that. There is no levity in his artwork. It is all horrifying, from spiders crawling out of a woman’s face, to a mangled plant creature with sparse human teeth approaching the frame. It’s all scary, and it’s all wonderful.
What’s inside
There are a variety of stories inside Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones, and each set of stories is divided into parts to create a comprehensive organization.
Stories and sections include:
When Death Arrives
On the Edge
Running Wild
The Appointment The Bus Stop Faster and Faster Just Delicious Hello, Kate! The Black Dog Footsteps Like Cats’ Eyes
Bess Harold The Dead Hand Such Things Happen
The Wolf Girl
Five Nightmares
What is going on here?
Whoooooooo?
The Dream Sam’s New Pet Maybe You Will Remember The Red Spot No, Thanks
The Trouble
Strangers The hog Is Something Wrong? It’s Him! T-H-U-P-P-P-P-P-P-P! You May Be The Next…
Notable Stories
I remember this book for one very specific reason: “Harold.” This story terrified me as a kid and even rereading it makes me wonder how it made it past a censor (but I guess that was probably the least of Alvin Schwartz’s concerns). As if right now, I have a small Harold doll that sits on my bookshelf because one simply can’t erase that kind of trauma, so I might as well embrace it forever.
Back to the book, it features a ton of great stories that will nestle deep in your psyche. “The Appointment” has all the trappings of folklore and the picture with it is exceptionally interesting (a truck flying through the sky as the Grim Reaper points up toward it with one bony finger). Likewise, “The Black Dog” is a chilling ghost story about the specter of an animal that haunts an old house. Finally, “Sam’s New Pet” tells the tale of a couple of kindly parents that bring their child back a pet…but it’s not exactly what it seems.
Conclusion
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones has an excellent cross section of stories from your run-of-the-mill folklore to one of the most heinous and explosively horrifying stories I’ve ever read. It is a fantastic collection of stories that stands up against the rest of the stories in the series. It is a masterpiece of sinister delights!
If you are interested in purchasing this book, I would certainly invest in the anthology collection that has all three books wrapped in a thick binding. All three books are a must-have for any book lover.
Works Cited
Schwartz, Alvin. Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Harper Collins. 1991.
Poems are all about beauty and presentation. What do they look like? What do they say? Poetry about a blooming flower joining the world with a figurative smile on its face is common. Yet, another commonality is the theme of death in poetry and what it means to humanity. In this post, we will analyze the metaphorical and personified versions of death and how it is conveyed through verse.
Poems that Feature Death
Life and Death
In Carrie Williams Cliffords’ poem “Life and Death,” the author contrasts the two ends of the spectrum of human experience. Life, she presents, is the difference between liveliness and the shadows that hang in the corner. In life, she states, “I saw a candle brightly burning in the room!” Later in the poem: “Upon the generous hearth / Quick Wit and bubbling Laughter / Flashed and danced / Sparkled and pranced” (Clifford). In other words, life is relative to life-like verbiage.
Furthermore, she states that death is “a cloud of gloom / … Then from the shadows came the Dreaded Shape,– / The candle flickered out!” Both life and death are representations of the spirited nature of the individual. Life is full of brightness and things are “crystal clear,” while death is contrasted with “gloom,” “blue-gray mist,” and silence (Clifford).
Death is a One Night Stand
Meanwhile, in “Death is a One Night Stand,” poet Sjohnna McCray uses the duality of a date and a murder to show death’s strange and violent embrace in life. In this way, death in poetry comes to life.
“A poor boy promised me a textbook view / of the stars,” he states. “… Medusa-like in their paralyzing beauty. / He drives the dark highway …”
The speaker is telling us that they are going on a date with a “poor boy” of uncertain character. The words McCray uses relates to death on different levels. He uses words like “snaking,” “Medusa-like,” “dark highway,” and “Stiff black trunks and treetops wave / goodbye from the roadside…” All of these words have a negative, foreboding connotations. Snakes are deceptive, while Medusa is a killer by trade, and “black trunks” of trees that “wave goodbye” is never a good sign.
McCray writes in the last stanza: “He places a hand on the dip of my back / to guide me, like Hades, in his world.” Invoking the god of the underworld is one way to convince us that the intentions of the “poor boy” are not chivalrous in nature. Death, in this way, is a malevolent force that can cut down even the most chaste character. With it comes language akin to Carrie Williams Cliffords’ poem. To evoke the dark side of death, we must use words to evoke that evilness.
Death
Additionally, when getting toward a more direct interpretation of death in the abstract—death as a verb—we can find contemplative meaning from poems. Loureine Aber writes in “Death” that shuffling off one’s mortal coil is a “magnificent time” in her life. The death in poetry here symbolizes a sort of reawakening into an unknown world.
She states: “Me, now scattered to the winds of living, / Now drifting like a broken reed seaward: / Death is coming to me.” What I think she means is that her life, though fulfilled, has left her abandoned at sea in her time of death, because at the end of one’s life, it does not matter how many friends you made or what your loved ones feel as you are traveling forth into the void alone. “New valleys,” she writes. “New great moons to haunt my tired lips.”
Death Be Not Proud
Finally, in looking at the English poet John Donne, we have his poem “Death Be Not Proud,” in which the speaker of the poem confronts Death indignantly and with defiance. Something I think many of us believe we would do when confronted by the Grim Reaper.
“Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; / For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow / Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst though kill me,” Donne writes. Death, in his eyes, whether the proper noun or the abstract, causes the speaker of the poem no great concern, because without a doubt—it is not his time to go into the land of the dead.
In the final part of the poem, Donne laments that death does not scare him because there are ways to overcome it and embrace it, from the “rest of their bones,” or “sleep” to engaging with eternal life through memory. “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die” (Donne). In this bit of poetry, death comes for the living but is vanquished by the expiration of the soul.
Conclusion
Death comes in many forms, from the contrast of brightness to gloominess. It also comes in the form of innocence murdered by the hands of common ghouls. Yet, regardless of how one dies or whether they are afraid of perishing, one can overcome death. According to poetry, one can overcome death by seeing it not as a horrendous affliction. Rather, one can realize it is nothing more than sleep, or a new adventure. Death does not stop memories, either, so even though one must face it alone, their character and confidence will be carried into the future by their loved ones.
To write prose like Ray Bradbury, one must focus on the subject in intense detail. By doing so, they can describe it using imagery and senses to generate a clear image. Bradbury, a science-fiction author and prolific short-story writer, wrote many classics in multiple genres. These include stories from the science-fiction classic Fahrenheit 451 to the horror-driven bildungsroman in Something Wicked this Way Comes.
He has been described as terse and flowery (purple prose). And, he has always been engaging, regardless of his stylistic limitations. In calling him both terse and flowery, we see a critical contrast in his writing. He is both and he is neither. I think it comes down to which book you are reading. It also comes down to which Bradbury-era you are reading (more flowery early on and terser later).
In order to write like Bradbury, we are going to analyze Bradbury’s style. Then, we will decide what parts we can emulate or experiment with in our own writing!
Bradbury’s style
“And Ghost and Mummy and Skeleton and Witch and all the rest were back at their own homes, on their own porches, and each turned to look at the town and remember this special night they would never in all their lives ever forget ….” – Ray Bradbury | The Halloween Tree
Over-description
The most apparent stylistic choice that Bradbury makes is often over-description to draw a clear image in the reader’s head. If you want to write like Ray Bradbury, you have to use extreme detail in description. For example, in The Halloween Tree, Bradbury describes a row of the dead who were left in a catacomb because they “couldn’t pay the rent on their graves…” with acuteness.
Bradbury describes: “The boys looked and saw that some of the ancient people were dressed like farmers and some like peasant maids and some like businessmen in old dark suits, and one even like a bullfighter in his dusty suit of lights. But inside their suits they were all thin bones and skin and spiderweb and dust that shook down through their ribs if you sneezed and trembled them” (Bradbury).
In this example we have the execution of polysyndeton. This is a stylistic choice in which multiple conjunctions are placed in order to change the rhythm and flow of the sentence. Heminway and Vonnegut employ this practice often. Often, it makes the writing sound rushed or speedy description. This fits well into the idea of Bradbury’s over-description. He is packing in so much information that he wants to see it clearly—no questions asked.
Ray Bradbury and his wife Maggie | By Los Angeles Times
A poetic style
Moreover, Bradbury has often considered himself a poet first and foremost, and in a variety of interviews talking about his start as an author, often described his writings in poetic terms. At least, that is how he describes the language he uses to describe the worlds he presents to readers. As such, he frequently likes to use copious amounts of similes and metaphors (and all other manner of figurative language) to describe his characters and settings.
Using Similes and Metaphors
In order to write prose like Ray Bradbury, you have to remember that a simile is a comparison that uses “like” or “as,” to compare two or more things, while metaphors make comparisons between two or more things to create a clearer picture for the reader.
Similes
In The Veldt, Bradbury tells the tale of family, technology, and the cost of being a rotten parent. To tell this story, Bradbury uses a variety of similes and metaphors to execute his description. For instance, in using similes, Bradbury compares the smell of the Veldt to a variety of different elements: “The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air” (Bradbury).
The smell of dust like red paprika immediately makes me sniff and feel the burn in my nose. It’s effective. Moreover, Bradbury’s use of simile is further demonstrated in his short story The Pedestrian, where he describes a late night walk by one of the last pedestrians in society. He writes, “… and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar” (Bradbury).
The image of a man in a coat with plumes of smoke puffing out before him is a stark one, as we’ve all been there—strolling on a cold evening with your breath out ahead. But the image is clear and we know it when we read it on the page.
Metaphors
Moreover, in The Crowd, a story about a crowd’s fascination with the accidents of others, Bradbury writes that the main character, Spallner, looks up at the crowd after an auto-accident and has difficulty comprehending why they are gathered round.
He states that, “he was curious as a man under deep water looking up at people on a bridge,” which compares his current state (auto-accident) to a more alien world, in two unlike things further compare their worlds (Bradbury).
Likewise, during the accident, Bradbury writes that Spallner was battered inside the car when he writes that he was “forced back and forth in several lightning jerks,” which compares Spallner’s movements to that of the ferociousness of lightening.
World Fantasy Con III 1977 | Ray Bradbury Signing Next to Robert Bloch
Furthermore, he states of the lush surroundings in the jungle of yesteryear: “The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world forever and forever” (Bradbury). Of course, the jungle could not be the entire world forever and ever literally; but, the contrast between the infinite of time and the size of the jungle is noted.
Conclusion
Bradbury is a master craftsman and spent much of his career perfecting his style; however, many of his writerly moves stay the same. In order to write prose like Ray Bradbury, you have to mindful of his moves as a writer. He loves to describe in great swaths of quickly-moving action. He loves to use similes and metaphors to draw comparisons between unknown worlds to the world we know all too well.
One exercise to try in order to craft prose like Ray Bradbury, is to employ his stylistic choices in one of your own stories. See if you can describe your world similar to his world. Ask yourself: What works? What doesn’t? And then spend your time revising by including over-description, metaphors, and similes.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. The Halloween Tree. Knopf, 1972.
Bradbury, Ray. “A Sound of Thunder.” The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday, 1953, pp. 83-93.
Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt.” The Illustrated Man, Bantam Books, 1951, pp. 18-30.
Bradbury, Ray. “The Pedestrian.” The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Alfred A. Knopf, 1980, pp. 283-288.
Bradbury, Ray. “The Crowd.” The October Country, Ballantine Books, 1955, pp. 161-172.
Over a decade ago, I thought art was beyond critical reproach. A creation is just whatever an artist can dream up, so naysayers should stop being so critical, right? But these days I have been thinking: how can a critic analyze a work of art if it is neither subjective nor objective? After all, somebody will always come around and say, “Well, man, all art is subjective, so there’s that…” And, there’s actually a fair amount of discourse on the subject.
Nevertheless, I believe the answer is that criticism needs a lens. I believe this because in order to derive meaning, we have to study art subjectively through an objective lens. In this post, we are going to explore art as being “objective” and simultaneously “subjective.” In this way, we will explore how that approach can create a greater appreciation for art itself.
How We Guide Our View of Art
To begin, we have to ask ourselves if there is true freedom in artistic expression. As pointed out by multiple studies, humans don’t seem to have free will in basic decision-making processes. Consequently, artistic expression should be no different.
For example, as stated by Seth Schwartz in the article “Do We Have Free Will?” that appeared in Psychology Today, “There is no consensus within psychology as to whether we really do have free will—although much of our field seems to assume that we don’t. Freud and Skinner didn’t agree on very much. Yet, one thing they did agree on was that human behavior was determined by influences within or outside the person” (Schwartz).
In other words, we can not control our own actions or the world around us, thus it stands to reason that external forces guide our decisions. That doesn’t leave much room for honest creative expression, especially if it is the external forces guiding our own work and not some divine creative spark.
Moreover: “Many neuroscientists, armed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other brain scanning tools, argue that, now that we can peer into the brain, we can see that there is no ‘agent’ there making choices” (Schwartz). What this means is that internal and external factors influence humans, from propaganda to the reptilian part of our brain. The advertisements we see daily and the little biological impulses are what drive our fate, rather than our own creative decision-making. Companies persuade consumers to purchase the new cellphone, and consumers respond to this directive positively or negatively. Unfortunately, consumers aren’t making those decisions on their own.
But, what does this all mean?
We are Bound by Form, Structure, and Prior Knowledge
The Creator and the Art Itself
To begin, in the context of art, the creator is not making deliberate choices for their artistic endeavors. Rather, they are taking the external factors of things they’ve seen or heard and using that as a guide. Think about a painter who is using a reference to complete their masterpiece, or a writer who is using an established genre to create their story.
These previously mentioned “external factors” can be defined as the artistic forms and structures the artist has already learned. It may look new and interesting, but unfortunately the conventions of an artistic genre and medium are preestablished, even if your friend is telling you a new musician has combined two genres to come up with something wildly different. Unfortunately, it’s probably already out there in the world someplace.
A Television Example
In season 4, episode 4 of the television series Frasier, both Frasier and Niles realize that they are in the presence of T. H. Houghton, a fictious, albeit reclusive author, who wrote a single masterpiece and never published again. When he leaves his newest manuscript behind, the brothers decide to read it out of curiosity. They realize it is another masterpiece and tell the author how they feel about it when he returns to get his bag.
After Frasier and Niles ask him whether he intended the structure to be lifted from Dante, Houghton responds: “Of course not. This confirms my worst fear. I have nothing original left to say. I’m an empty shell. I was a fool to think I had a second book in me. [reading from his manuscript] ‘The winters were harsh on the farm.’ Well, here’s something to warm them up [starts throwing the pages into the fire].”
Identification and Reaffirmation
The world grounds our prior knowledge (the forms and structures we learn) into reaffirmation, which includes the things school taught us.
“… viewing and understanding art does have roots in objectivity; that is in the mathematical reality of physics,” writes author Chun Park in a piece for Medium. “While art may be viewed subjectively as a complex system of colors, form and perception, the underlying basis of that subjectivity is formed by an objective and mathematical reality of color theory, ratio, proportion, and to a lesser extent, composition and other elements that make up art.”
Essentially, we have an existing rubric that we use to understand the tools for the creation of art, such as colors, dimensions, length, etc. As soon as that art leaves the artist and is ready for public consumption, interpretation goes from objective to subjective. In this way, the audience is switching their brain from a mechanical point of analysis to a figurative and metaphorical one simply as a trained mode of interpretation. In this way, art isn’t subjective. Humans are.
Art Needs a Creator, a Creation, and an Audience
One hypothetical : an artist creates something new merely by accident. What if they weren’t constrained by form and structure and committed to something truly original? It is fair to say that by creating a work of art in a random fashion, one could essentially create something new. This could include a new painting, album, or what have you. But what are the chances it is actually good by conventional standards? Art is deemed good by one of the values ascribed to its very being: audience.
The other two, the creator and the creation, can certainly still exist. But if that third component does not, then the art may find no psychological or emotional purchase. Likewise, we can’t have an audience and an artistic work without artists. Just like we can’t have an audience and an artist without a work. The symbiotic three-way dance of that conversion from nothing to something is certainly enchanting.
So, a creator may have themselves a creation, but they may have no audience. That is, while the art is “new,” and unbound by prior genre constraints, it’s still not that good by conventional standards. Yet, even meritless schlock provides merit to some. For instance, there is a market for B-Movies because they provide enjoyment for a specific audience (myself included) and there’s always Free Jazz listeners to consider. These constraints, or lack thereof cause a sort of cognitive dissonance. Often times, it might even be fighting back against the very nature of subjectivity.
“I think Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica has a great deal of musical merit.” But, do you really?
Criticism Needs a Lens
Criticism needs to help the audience understand a piece of artwork from a framework in order to provide new understanding. You may be reading this and thinking, “yea, I know,” but if you go search for a critique in your local paper, or on the web, you may find the complete lack of understanding of critical lenses apparent and, like me, irresponsible. With such considerations, what I am asking is that artists should embrace both encouraging criticism and constructive criticism with some amount of equity. Or, in other words, we should be embracing both subjectivity and objectivity in art itself.
For instance, using formalism in examining the lines, colors, textures in artwork helps us understand the conventions of the art itself. As such, one objectively analyzes how the art operates on a structural level. Likewise, one can can analyze paintings by how they reflects society. This can be done by implementing critical theory. Critics could even analyze the music industry through a Marxist lens to see how pop music hinders community and cultural evolution by coopting our values for commodification. By following through with these types of lenses, critics are giving credence to their subjective opinions and interpretations.
Conclusion
You can say art is subjective, but you should also criticize it for its flaws objectively. Likewise, some art is new and original, but it can lack conventional appeasement. You can say art has value, but you should also look at what it steals and who it harms.
Truly, art is “subjective,” and so that gives it some freedom from scrutiny. Nevertheless, the merit of different critical approaches is forever appealing, as it sheds light on literary meaning. Whether that be New Criticism, New Historicism, or Gender Studies, a work of art can be interpreted in many ways. These approaches inform society of art’s value and doesn’t devalue it necessarily, neither does it validate inappropriate and irresponsible beliefs. Such beliefs about art that in our current system values money and shareholder profits over social history and experience.
Works Cited
Schwartz, Seth Ph.D. “Do We Have Free Will? Is free choice real, or is it just an allusion?” Psychology Today. Nov. 19, 2013. Web.
Park, Chun. “To Be Truthful, Art Is Not Subjective.” Medium.com. July 4, 2017. Web.
Fall is certainly one of the best times of the year. Yet, it is strange how it differs from city to country, from sidewalk to path. The colors pop a little harder in some places, and a little less in others. With it, however, is that feeling that the winter is on its way, and that the season is forever shifting onward without you. Poets really have a way with saying one thing and meaning another. In this post, we are going to analyze “Fall, Leaves, Fall” by Emily Bronte.
Analysis
Memories
I could speak a while about watching Charlie Brown and friends sail the ocean blue with Christopher Columbus one dreary Sunday in November and finding myself looking away from the television at the leafless, lifeless trees outside and searching somewhere deep inside myself for happiness.
In “Fall, Leaves, Fall” by Emily Bronte, the poet reminds us of such memories for a specific reason. That is, while we are thankful for the rain hitting the window on gloomy, fall afternoons, we are still reminded of the growing darkness headed around the corner.
The Poem
In the first quatrain of “Fall, Leaves, Fall,” the author espouses a love for the autumn season as it happens. “Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;” she states. “Lengthen night and shorten day; / Every leaf speaks bliss to me, / Fluttering from the autumn tree” (Bronte).
Furthermore, in the second quatrain of the poem, Bronte welcomes winter. Bronte states “I shall smile when wreaths of snow / Blossom where the rose should grow;” which shows us Bronte’s acceptance of the changing seasons. “I shall sing when night’s decay / Ushers in a drearier day,” Bronte finishes. “Decay” is an odd word choice because what else decays but nature and humanity?
Explanation
Time and life dwindling away are always tried and true themes in stories of change and renewal. I mean, what greater imagery is there than the leaves falling from a colorful tree to remind us that life moves in cycles? The only sadness is the shortened days and longer nights. But, without the abbreviated days, it really wouldn’t feel so fall out, would it? So we come to appreciate this cycle.
Yet, poems are rife with metaphor, so one has to look a little deeper at the language used in the poem. In the poem, leaves “fall.” Of course, the poem is set in the season of fall. There is a link between these two ideas. In the same way, one could argue that leaves falling symbolize the descent of life into death. That is, a living thing falling and landing on its own grave—the Earth itself. To “Lengthen night and shorten day” is to see the darkness growing in our own lives while the light is extinguished. Our lives literally grow shorter and the light leaves us for darkness. Sure, cold overtakes the rose (love and warmth), but what else is there to do but embrace the coming darkness?
Meanwhile, “Every leaf speaks bliss to me” shows the author’s feelings toward this growing inevitability. Every leaf that has fallen, every day that has gone by, has been bliss. Even as the end looms, there is much to be thankful for those days are counted. Bronte relishes this realization and looks toward the future.
The link between the two is clear to me.
Conclusion
Everybody understand the frailty that exists between autumn and winter. When you have the first, the second is very, very close behind. Though, is that not symbolic of life? As we know the good days are always haunted by the bad ones, and one’s life can have love and warmth, but we all face the coming cold and darkness regardless of our station or our purpose.
Bronte, much like many poets, tells us that our hearts are in the drearier days, but if we cherish the days we’ve had and relish the days ahead, then any amount of dreariness should be the driving fire that pushes us forever onwards.
I was Up North with my family last week and we spent time down by the water (Burt Lake and Lake Michigan). Sitting in the sand one night, I watched my wife walk along the shore looking for Petoskey stones. She didn’t find any, but she did remind me of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Lake” from his collection The October Country, which has so much to do with the water and the memories we make in life–traumatic or not. In this post, I would like to talk about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Lake” and how it can help us with processing trauma through writing.
Summary
A Boy On the Beach
To begin, the story is about a boy named Harold. One day, Harold is playing on the beach in September, getting the last few swims in before the summer is finally over.
As Harold states of the season:
“One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Arnold’s feet, down by the water curve” (Bradbury).
Harold’s friend Tally, with whom he builds sand castles on the beach, goes swimming but does not return from the lake itself. Harold panics and calls her name. However, she is gone. The lake is unchanged.
Understanding Loss
“Water is like a magician,” Harold tells us. “Sawing you in half. It feels as if you were cut in two, part of you, the lower part, sugar, melting, dissolving away. Cool water, and once in a while a very elegantly stumbling wave that fell with a flourish of lace” (Bradbury).
Harold, internally, admits his love for Tally–in only the way a child could: “It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that is no more bad than wind and sea and sand lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days together at the beach, and the humming quiet days of droning education at the school” (Bradbury).
Tally has drowned, and Harold’s regret, wonder, and sadness plague him into adulthood. As an adult, Harold and his wife Margaret travel to his hometown, as he had moved away as a child, and they walk by the lake. It is there that a lifeguard finds the body of a ten-year-old girl. Harold asks the man to see the body to confirm his suspicions, and with some sorrow the lifeguard obliges.
“The beach was deserted. There was only the sky and the wind and the water and the autumn coming on lonely. I looked down at her there” (Bradbury).
It was Tally. Dead. Ten years on in some mysterious way. Harold takes this closure and is able to move on from his trauma as a different person.
Analysis
Death and Memories
“The Lake” is a story about death and memories. More so, it is a story about childhood trauma and how that can plague us as adults. In processing trauma through writing, Bradbury creates a robust world. Memory removes Harold from his own past. Later, it confronts him again.
But, what is more, Trauma is communal. Yet we do not know this fact. Especially here in America, trauma is a rustic individualist experience. We bare our own hurt and losses, whether that be the loss of someone we love or the loss of innocence.
“And now in the lonely autumn when the sky was huge and the water was huge and the beach was so very long, I had come down for the last time, alone” (Bradbury).
In other words, Harold is alone in his experience. How does he explain loss (irrevocable loss) to those around him? It seems as though summertime pals are here and gone. His love existed for only as long as he was by the water. Then she disappeared.
Harold embodies all of us and those far-reaching memories of trauma that are far more than skin deep. How do you address death as a child? And isn’t it easier to just walk away? But, of course, it’s not. It’s too dangerous to let pain wade in your subconscious.
Leaving Trauma Behind
As Harold tells us: “I lengthened my bones, put flesh on them, changed my mind for an older one, threw away clothes as they no longer fitted, shifted from grammar to high-school, to college. And there was a young woman in Sacramento. I knew her for a time, and we were married. By the time I was twenty-two, I had almost forgotten what the East was like.”
Harold sheds his skin in the end. Yet, at the end of the story, he reminds us that our subconscious doesn’t simply vanish. In fact, our experiences don’t simply abandon us like shallow memories.
Harold and his wife walk through his boyhood town and see “echoes” of faces.
“When we walked through the town together I saw no one I recognized. There were faces with echoes in them. Echoes of hikes on ravine trails. Faces with small laughter in them from closed grammar schools and swinging on metal-linked swings and going up and down on teeter-totters. But I didn’t speak. I walked and looked and filled up inside with all those memories, like leaves stacked for autumn burning” (Bradbury).
After seeing Tally’s body, Harold becomes whole, different, but still whole. He has accepted what happened to him and is better for it.
Conclusion
We as writers can glean quite a bit from this short story. Trauma can be hard to face or even understandable as it relates to our own person sometimes. Facing these psychological cuts can help us overcome our own shortcomings and the horrible memories that plague us in the dead of night.
Processing trauma through writing frees us from the toxins of personal experience and allows us to cherish the better memories we have created. In this way, writing about pain and hurt is reflective and helps us see our memories from a different perspective–who we were versus who we are now.
“The Lake” is an exceptional short story, and it is written by a master of the craft. But, a master plagued by his own pain as well, regardless of how autobiographical the piece is in reality, as by conveying trauma through a medium of fiction, the writer can transform themself (or the reader) in meaningful ways.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “The Lake.” The October Country, Ballantine Books, 1955, pp. 58-64.
Nightmare fuel is kind of my buzzword for Halloween, used in the best possible way of course. Previously, we analyzed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. In that post, we discussed Alvin Schwartz’s nightmarish tales and Stephen Gammell’s tremendously monstrous artwork. The sequel is without a doubt similar as the first book. Yet, sometimes the stories and images are even darker than the previous offering. In this post, we are going to look at More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Schwartz.
About the book
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark came out on October 31st, 1984. The stories were again penned by Alvin Schwartz and the nightmarish imagery was conjured by artist Stephen Gammell. The book features a litany of terrifying tales, from confused ghosts to undead sailors rising from their watery graves.
It’s actually an eclectic mixture of stories, and some of these 28 stories include:
Something was Wrong
The Wreck
One Sunday Morning
Sounds
A Weird Blue Light
Somebody Fell from Aloft
The Little Black Dog
Clinkity-Clink
The Bride
Reviewers have pointed out that this collection is “scarier and more adult” than the previous collection. I think at this point, Schwartz had nailed down what made the original so successful and so much fun.
My favorite story from the collection
“The Bed by the Window” by Stephen Gammell
There are so many good stories across all three books and this book, too!
In my opinion, many of the best stories come from the section titled, “When I Wake Up, Everything Will Be Alright.” In this section, we find stories like “The Man in the Middle,” “The Cat in the Shopping Bag,” and, “The Bed by the Window.” Each of these is a macabre look into the tastes of Alvin Schwartz.
The Bed by the Window
“The Bed by the Window” is a story I think about often, because it’s a sad look at jealousy and envy in the face of death.
To start, the story describes the characters of George Best and Richard Greene, who are bedridden and share a room at a nursing home. After the third man in the room, Ted Conklin, dies, the remaining two men are shifted over one spot, winning George Best the prized bed by the window. There, he regales Richard with all sorts of descriptions of the outside world, but soon Richard becomes jealous. Murderously jealous.
The story states, “George had a bad heart. If he had an attack during the night and nurse could not get to him right away, he had pills he could take … All Richard had to do was knock the bottle to the floor where George could not reach it” (Schwartz)
Of course, this wouldn’t be More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark if somebody didn’t die. So, Richard willfully murders George. Then, he gets the bed by the window only to discover that “the window” was really just a “brick wall” and George had been describing things from his imagination to be kind to Richard.
It is a grim ending, and it is a dark story, but I’ve thought about it since I first read it when I was a kid and that tells me that regardless of its dark tone—it strikes a chord with me somewhere in the depths of my soul.
Legends are a big part of oral storytelling. They help humans understand their past and create engaging stories where there are none. The folkloric Bigfoot is such a story because of its plausibility and what it symbolizes in the vast American wilderness. In this post, we are going to define a legend and see how Bigfoot fits within that definition.
What is a legend?
Legends share many of the same qualities as myths. They have supernatural qualities, and unbelievable characters. The major difference is that they come from the recent past, are historical in nature, and are passed from one generation to the next. These qualities create a lasting aspect to the stories we hear about cryptids and strange happenings throughout history.
Origins of Bigfoot
The folkloric Bigfoot arrived in Northern California in 1958. This comes after journalist Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times “thought the mysterious footprints ‘made a good Sunday morning story’” (Little). Though little more than a fluff piece for the paper, the story sparked a huge amount of interest with readers. So the Bigfoot legend was born out of continued attention and press.
As far as the believability of this “evidence,” writer Ben Crair addresses what most skeptics already know about the history and reliability of Bigfoot. He states that Bigfoot “is not the first fabled hominid to roam North America.” In fact, he writes that “Sasquatches” have been a tradition in the myths of Native Americans and groups of indigenous people in the “Pacific Northwest.”
He writes: “… those 1958 footprints transformed the myth into a media sensation. The tracks were planted near Bluff Creek in Northern California by a man named Ray Wallace—but his prank was not revealed until his death in 2002, when his children said it had all been ‘just a joke’” (Crair).
In other words, the legend is most definitely a hoax, but what makes it interesting is how the legend surrounding it creates a lasting impression on readers and researchers. The folkloric Bigfoot may just be an invention of eager explorers and researchers, but it has an important role in our American lore.
Bigfoot’s Legendary Importance
Legends and myths have staying power through their use in traditions and oral storytelling. If you are a writer, this should be important. Because the way we tell stories shares a lot with writing narratives or using rhetoric to persuade and argue claims. Stories rife with pathos or logos can convince us of reality—just like the legend of Bigfoot.
As stated by some sources, stories aren’t just things we relay around “a pool of lamplight in a nursery or round a campfire” (Health Foundation). Rather, stories exist each day and we engage with them often. Consider the amount of times you tell a person a story in one day, or a book you read. Additionally, they appear in our movies and shows, and in the advertisements targeted at us online.
Conclusion
To sum up, one reason reading fairy tales, folklore, legends, and myths is important, is because they are apart of a our very being. Regardless if it is just a big hairy cryptid tromping through the woods, we are informed by these stories. Bigfoot shows us that the wilds around civilization are still untamed. Unseen forces are still out there for society to uncover.
There are foundational books that shape the way we think about the world around us when we are kids. Some of those books are childish, such as Clifford or Amelia Bedelia. Meanwhile, some of those books are far more adult, like Goosebumps or the book we are analyzing today, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
All we really have to do is point out the illustrations of this book. No doubt, they are why most people remember the book fondly. Though, if we take a closer look, the stories are also designed in a way to be quickly consumed and universally shared. Join us as we delve into this strikingly dark collection of folklore.
About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Schwartz was a journalist and author of more than 50 books, and he drew a great deal of inspiration from folklore and urban legends. He also wrote about folk tales and legends aside from this sinister collection. Likewise, he wrote poetry about similar subjects.
This was a controversial collection when it was published in Oct. of 1981. Considering this, advocacy groups frequently challenged this book for its disturbing imagery and dark content.
For instance, in an article written for The Argus-Press, an “enraged” mother shares her concern about the content in More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
“This was way past being scary,” she said. “There were two stories in there that were really objectionable. One was really disgusting. It was about a man who murders his wife, chops her up, puts her through a meat grinder and sells her as sausage” (The Argus-Press)
The woman above is angry at the story titled “Wonderful Sausage,” which, is an excellently wicked little story. Certainly, the graphic depictions within the book caused some alarm, as well as the artwork.
As such, the true selling point of this book outside of Schwartz’s excellent storytelling is Stephen Gammell’s drawings. Gammell has worked on many different projects and won the Caldecott Medal for US picture book illustration in 1989. In all three collections of scary stories, Gammell’s illustrations are truly something to marvel at because they are ungodly scary and so completely original. This is exactly what you want out of horror art.
Here is an article comparing Brett Helquist’s more modern drawings compared to Stephen Gammell’s bleak, esoteric ones. You can see the difference in visual impact almost immediately.
Contents
The original book was published on Oct. 14, 1981 and features 29 stories, including:
The Big Toe
Me Tie Dough-ty Walker!
Alligators
Room for One More
The Wendigo
The Hook
High Beams
The ones listed are certainly highlights. However, a book so wrapped up in nostalgia has endless highlights. The stories range from horror to comedy to just plain strange. There is a great variety in this collection and they have that “folkloric” quality, which borders on urban legend.
They are just astonishingly spooky all around.
Conclusion
Horror gives us insight into our own fears, anxieties, and humanity. This is important for us to understand so we can make better sense of the world around us. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a great example of a book that does just that. It puts the reader in the face of murder, mortality, and all things that go bump in the night.
In talking about books written by Stephen King, I think there is some trepidation when it comes to listing one’s favorites. There are just so many great novels in his horror canon. Nonetheless, I am always quick to point out The Dead Zone (1979) by King as one of my favorites. I read it when I was in my early 20s. I remember staying up night after night reading it until I had completed it in a sad, bleary-eyed mess. It was a fantastic experience.
I think it is an important book.
With that said, in this post, I am going to summarize the novel and provide my overall thoughts near the end.
Synopsis
The Beginning
The novel opens with a young Johnny Smith falling and hitting his head on the ice while skating. This accident causes him to see a future accident. In his vision, a man gets his face burned with battery acid after jumping his car. This comes to fruition, though nobody thinks twice.
Meanwhile, somewhere else in the US, bible salesmen Greg Stillson thinks about his future (and dreams of power). Then after a bout of annoyance with a barking dog, he savagely beats it to death. It is a rough scene:
“Sometimes he wondered if he was going crazy. Like now. He had meant to give the dog a burst from the ammonia Flit gun, drive it back into the barn so he could leave his business card in the crack of the screen door.
Come back some other time and make a sale. Now look. Look at this mess. Couldn’t very well leave his card now, could he?
He opened his eyes. The dog lay at his feet, panting rapidly, drizzling blood from its snout. As Greg Stillson looked down, it licked his shoe humbly, as if to acknowledge that it had been bested, and then it went back to the business of dying.”
(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)
Fast forward to 1970, Johnny Smith teaches English at a high school in Maine. He is also dating one of the other teachers at the school, Sarah Bracknell. They both go on a date that ends in a spectacular showing of Johnny’s latent ability. He wins a “Wheel of Fortune” carnival game multiple times. This upsets the game manager, and so Johnny and Sarah leave.
After taking Sarah home, Johnny is involved in a car accident and falls into a four-year coma. After he awakes he discovers that he can touch people and see events, typically tragedies, in their future. He has a revealing interaction with one of his nurses during the proceeding passage:
“He was still gripping her hand, looking into her face with’ a faraway, dreamy contemplation that made her feel nervous. She had heard things about Johnny Smith, rumors that she had disregarded with her own brand of hard-headed pragmatism. There was a story that he had predicted Marie Michaud’s boy was going to be all right, even before the doctors were one hundred percent sure they wanted to try the risky operation.
Another rumor had something to do with Dr. Weizak; it was said Johnny had told him his mother was not dead but living someplace on the West Coast under another name. As far as Eileen Magown was concerned, the stories were so much eyewash on a par with the confession magazines and sweet-savage love stories so many nurses read on station. But the way he was looking at her now made her feel afraid. It was as if he was looking inside her.”
(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)
The Middle
After Johnny’s ability becomes known, the press wants to capitalize on his “gift.” They inundate him with interviews, but he begins to reject his newfound fame by becoming more reclusive. After a tabloid prints a story on Johnny that dismisses his ability, Johnny believes he can resume his old life. However, the local sheriff, Bannerman, asks him if he can help solve a slew of serial-killings. Johnny is able to adeptly solve the case, which results in a shocking climax.
We cut to the door-to-door salesman (Greg Stillson) who is now the mayor of Ridgeway, New Hampshire. He has found success through making violent threats and other illicit activities against his enemies. Stillson later wins a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives while Johnny is teaching as a tutor in Ridgeway. Johnny decides to meet Stillson, as he has made a hobby of meeting elected officials. During the rally, he has a psychic vision that the vicious, dog-killing politician will eventually cause worldwide nuclear chaos.
“There was the sense of flying – flying through the blue – above scenes of utter desolation that could not quite be seen. And cutting through this came the disembodied voice of Greg Stillson, the voice of a cut-rate God or a comic-opera engine of the dead: ‘I’M GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE BUCKWHEAT THROUGH A GOOSE! GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE SHIT THROUGH A CANEBRAKE!’
‘The tiger,’ Johnny muttered thickly. ‘The tiger’s behind the blue. Behind the yellow.’
Then all of it, pictures, images, and words, broke up in the swelling, soft roar of oblivion. He seemed to smell some sweet, coppery scent, like burning high-tension wires. For a moment that inner eye seemed to open even wider, searching; the blue and yellow that had obscured everything seemed about to solidify into … into something, and from somewhere inside, distant and full of terror, he heard a woman shriek: ‘Give him to me, you bastard!’”
(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)
The End
Johnny decides to take matters into his own hands to stop Sillson. He buys a rifle with the intent to assassinate the prospective politician before he can do harm. However, his plans fail, and he is mortally wounded, but no before Stillson undoes his career with a fatal mistake. Before dying, Johnny touches Stillson and learns that he has prevented the violent future he saw in his premonition.
“Stillson got up abruptly, and with the last bit of his strength Johnny reached out and grasped his ankle. It was only for a second; Stillson pulled free easily. But it was long enough.
Everything had changed.
People were drawing near him now, but he saw only feet and legs, no faces. It didn’t matter. Everything had changed.
He began to cry a little. Touching Stillson this time had been like touching a blank. Dead battery. Fallen tree. Empty house. Bare bookshelves. Wine bottles ready for candles.”
(The Dead Zone| Stephen King)
The book closes with letters from Johnny to his father and other loved ones that detail his motives and rationale. It also features a brief narrative including Sarah, who visits Johnny’s grave and makes peace with his death. It turns out that Johnny’s headaches were caused by a tumor that gave him only a few months to live. Feeling too passive with his psychic gift, he decides to take action. So, according to Johny, there was no alternative to killing Stillson.
Overall thoughts
I love The Dead Zone by King for its pacing. The reader gets to live with Johnny Smith and his strange psychic gift. As some critics have pointed out, there really is not an antagonist for most of this novel. Instead, it relies on the themes of “recovery” and alienation for a large chunk of the story. All of this adds to the pacing of the story. The slowness of it (the day-to-day of the novel) feels a bit truer in regards to a story about suffering.
Additionally, The Dead Zone is both a supernatural and extremely human experience. There could not be more pathos in regards to the character of Johnny. He spends much of the book in quiet contemplation, wondering why he was given the gift of second sight. This confusion causes him great psychological harm. It also puts him in strange situations, including solving murders committed by a serial killer, and saving students from a catastrophe. Johnny isn’t running in and kicking down doors. Rather, he is focused on the emotional impact of his psychic powers. It seems as though he save those around him but with great cost to himself.
New verbiage is crucial in writing to explore different ways to communicate and convey messages. When it comes to literature, it is also important to understand what an author is trying to say. In this post we are going to define epithets and explore how to use them in our own writing.
What is an Epithet?
An epithet is a literary device that uses a descriptor to describe a person, place, or object. These are also known as a by-names or descriptive titles. As some sources define it it: “A characterizing word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing” (Merriam-Webster). Moreover, we categorize epithets a few ways:
A Kenning: Two-word phrase
A Fixed: Repeated use of a word (Odysseus as “Many-Minded”)
Argumentative: A “possible outcome” or repercussions
What Does this Mean?
Epithets can be tricky. As Vocabulary.com writes: “An epithet can be harmless, a nickname that catches on … On the flipside, an epithet can be an abusive word or phrase that should never be used, like a racial epithet that offends and angers everyone.”
Here are a few examples of epithets from all the categories:
Richard the Lion-Heart
Trash panda (racoon)
The Piano Man (for Billy Joel)
Rost-fingered
Catherine the Great
Wine-dark sea
The Great Emancipator (for Abe Lincoln)
How to Use Epithets in Our Own Writing
When implementing epithets in our own writing, we can go about it a few ways. One way is to enrich characterization by supplying nicknames to our characters that other characters have coined. As such, you create a richer world where there is definitive interaction between people.
Conclusion
In this way, epithets can make your writing seem more real and realized. Additionally, epithets can be used to address those derogatory experiences in life, racial or otherwise. Understanding the reasons behind an epithet can help us better contextualize history by understanding society at a given time.
The Great Vowel Shift sounds like some sort of cataclysmic event where the world suddenly split open and words spilled out everywhere. As a consequence, now suddenly humans all talk differently. However, that is not really the case at all. In fact, like most things, the shift was a gradual evolution from one era to another and it has a complex history. With that said, in today’s post, we are going to look at the causes and effects of The Great Vowel Shift.
Background of The Great Vowel Shift
In the beginning, vowels were a bit different from what we know them as today. That is to say, there was a difference in pronunciation, from longer and more complex sounds. The shift between the times of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and afterward are indicative of this change.
“The main difference between Chaucer’s language and our own is in the pronunciation of the ‘long’ vowels,” states Harvard University. “The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r’s, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations, such as ‘kn,’ that were later simplified.”
In other words, time moved on and through era, so the vowel sound began to change and evolve over time. Vowels started to be pronounced closer to the front of the mouth, which meant as the shift happened some words were pronounced differently. But often, people would pronounce words a specific way based on where they lived. Moreover, there were 8 steps in this change, and, as academia has suggested—this didn’t happen in a quick, orderly way, because evolving language takes time.
Why Did the Shift Happen?
The Great Vowel Shift occurred during the late Middle English period (and before and after, too). It was a “raising of all long vowels,” and there are many explanations given as to why this happened (Nordquist).
For example, because this happened between the 15th and 18th centuries, the shift could be attributed to the movement of people. As stated by some sources: “rapid migration of people from northern England to the southeast part of the country” caused this change as they were looking “to escape the Black Death that killed over 25 million people across Europe” (Omondi).
Moreover, this movement of people blended accents and the words that people use. It also saw the use of a lot more loanwords from France. This either made the English want to change the way their English words sounded in comparison or the two languages naturally blended together.
There are also arguments stating that England’s rich wanted to change the way they spoke so they would sound less like the common serf. In this way, the aristocracy could differentiate itself from the peasant.
Conclusion
The Great Vowel Shift was a massive change in how our words sounds compared to Middle English and transformed speech into what we know today. There are many reasons for this change (as stated), and we can see the shift’s affects even to this day.
Works Cited
“The Great Vowel Shift.” Furman.edu. Web.
“The Great Vowel Shift.” Harvard.edu. Web.
Nordquist, Richard. “What was the great vowel shift?” Thoughtco.com. June 4, 2020. Web.
Omondi, Sharon. “What Was the Great Vowel Shift?” World Atlas. July 18, 2019. Web.
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