Edgar Allan Poe's "King Pest": Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman

King Edward III

The first sentence of the story establishes its setting: it is “about twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, . . . during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward.”

Edward III ruled from January 25, 1327 to June 21, 1377—about fifty years. From 1361 to 1362, there was a resurgence of the cholera pandemic, so it is on an October night during this two-year period that “King Pest” takes place. (Others suggest that the story's title alludes not to the cholera pandemic but to the bubonic plague, or Black Death.)

As in most of Poe's fiction, the story begins with the general, a night during the reign of King Edward III, and moves to the specific, “two seamen belonging to the crew of the 'Free and Easy,' a trading schooner,” as readers learn that these sailors, Legs and Hugh Tarpaulin, have gone ashore to drink; they are “much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London.”

Poe takes pains to describe both men. Legs is taller than his companion, standing “six feet and a half.” He has “an habitual stoop in the shoulders,” and he is “exceedingly thin.” He has “high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes.” “Solemn,” he is not given to laughter.

Tarpaulin is his opposite, short (four feet) and “squat,” with “stumpy bow-legs . . . unusually short and thick arms”; finny fingers; “small eyes, of no particular color”; a nose which is “buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face”; and “thick” lips that he licks frequently. Tarpaulin regards Legs with “a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical.”

Penniless, the drunken sailors flee after seeing a sign forbidding credit, the tavern's landlady in pursuit.

(In England, pubs lower rents to the owners of the buildings their establishments occupy, but, in return, the owners of the pubs pay more for ale and other alcoholic beverages supplied by vendors.)

Parts of London that are infected by the plague are sealed off, the king having imposed a death sentence upon whoever bypasses barriers to rob from stores inside these restricted areas. In fleeing the tavern, Legs and Tarpaulin run down an alley, the end of which is blocked by a barrier, which indicates the presence, ahead, of the plague. To escape the pursuing landlady, the sailors climb the barricade and jump into the street on the other side of it, where a scene of horror meets their drunken gazes:

Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. The air was cold and misty. The paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed;—and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.

From inside “an undertaker's shop,” the seamen hear laughter, “shrieks,” and “curses.” Entering the building, Legs and Tarpaulin see an open trapdoor, through which they observe a table bearing “various wines and cordials, together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality” and a “huge tub” of punch. Seated around this table, upon coffin-trestles, or stands for holding coffins, are King Pest, Queen Pest, and four members of their family, the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous,' the Duke Pest-Ilential,' the Duke Tem-Pest,' and the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

Poe takes equal pains in describing these characters as he has in painting the portraits of his protagonists. Each is a grotesque, with exaggerated traits, as the descriptions of the monarchs suggest, their descriptions being typical of the descriptions of the others as well:

King Pest:

Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. His stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him a figure more emaciated than himself. His face was as yellow as saffron—but no feature excepting one alone, was sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head. His mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. This gentleman was clothed from head to foot in a richly-embroidered black silk-velvet pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a Spanish cloak.—His head was stuck full of sable hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song.

Queen Pest:

Opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit the less extraordinary character. Although quite as tall as the person just described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. She was evidently in the last stage of a dropsy [i. .e, edema]; and her figure resembled nearly that of the huge puncheon [an eighty-gallon cask] of October beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. Her face was exceedingly round, red, and full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion proved to be the mouth. Commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to the left—the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made, however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ruffle of cambric muslin.

In A Handbook to Literature, fourth edition, C. Hugh Holman defines “grotesque,” in its literary context, as the depiction of “characters” who are “either physically or spiritually deformed” and “perform actions that are clearly intended by the author to be abnormal” (207). This technique, Holman adds, “may be used for allegorical statement” and “for comic purposes” (207), as, clearly, Poe uses this technique in “King Pest.”

Finding the seamen's entrance rude and their inquiry into the nature of his family's business outrageous, King pest fines the sailors, sentencing Legs and Tarpaulin to drink a gallon of Black Strap “at a single draught—and upon . . . bended knees,” whereupon they will be free to take their leave or to stay as the king's guest. (In other words, King Pest sentences the seamen to be drowned in the ale, after which their bodies will be cast aside, in the undertaker's shop, or be discarded outside,)

It's possible that, drunk, neither Legs nor Tarpaulin understand the king's sarcasm. It is possible, too, that they understand his literal intent all too well but, bolstered by false courage, pretend ignorance as a pretext for braggadocio and bragging. Legs objects that he has drunk his fill earlier, at the tavern he and Tarpaulin visited, but his companion insists that he can drink more and offers to drink both the gallon that Legs has been ordered to drink and the gallon that he himself has been ordered to drink.

However, King Pest declares that his fine must be paid in the manner he has imposed, without alteration.

Tarpaulin refuses to kneel to the king, whom he recognizes as 'Tim Hurlygurly the stage-player.”

Trapaulin's refusal is met by a chorus of shouts, as the king, queen, and the rest of the family cry “Treason!”

Legs floods the undertaker's shop with ale from the hogshead that he breaks after his companion is deposited head-first inside the cask, to drown, and the sailors attack the king and his family, killing the man with the gout, drowning “the man with the horrors,” sending the man in the coffin away on the flood, and leaving the ladies in “hysterics.” Then, Tarpaulin abducts the fat lady in the shroud, while Legs kidnaps the Arch Duchess Ana-Past and the sailors return to their ship, which, presumably, is still anchored in the Thames.

What can be said of such a story?

Robert Louis Stevenson concluded, about its author, that “he who could write 'King Pest' had ceased to be a human being.”

Perhaps Stevenson was unaware that Poe's story is a comedy—a satire, in fact.

Are the story's king, queen, and other family members based on historical persons?

Poe's king is tall and bony; his complexion is “saffron.” His brow is “unusually and hideously lofty.” His mouth is “puckered and dimpled.” Unfortunately, history does not appear to provide us with a description of King Edward III's physical appearance. However, his tomb includes a likeness of him, carved in stone. Since the sculpture purports to represent his likeness, we can assume that it, indeed, resembles the king at the time of his death. Judging by this figure, King Edward III does appear to have been tall and thin, if not “gaunt.” His forehead does not seem especially “lofty.” His mouth is not “puckered and dimpled.”

Queen Pest shares one of the conditions that afflicted Queen Philippa of Hainault (1315 - 1369), but she otherwise does not resemble the true queen, King Edward III's wife, whom historian Ian Mortimer describes:

The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean-shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than her forehead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and also flattened, and yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper; yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body are well set and unmaimed; and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us. And the damsel will be of the age of nine years on St. John's day next to come, as her mother saith. She is neither too tall nor too short for such an age; she is of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank, and highly esteemed and well beloved of her father and mother and of all her meinie [i. e., small-minded], in so far as we could inquire and learn the truth (The Register of Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 1307–1326).

The condition which Queen Pest has in common with Queen Philippa is dropsy, or edema, or an illness similar to it, from which she expired.

Part of the satire lies in his descriptions of King Pest, Queen Pest, and the other members of the royal household, who suffer from various diseases, such as emaciation, dropsy (edema), delirium tremens, and consumption (tuberculosis). However, the story may not be about the English at all.

Poe supplies a hint of his intention in the story's subtitle, “A Tale Containing an Allegory.” As Dawn B. Sova observes in Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, “each character . . . represents a different type of 'pest,' from the intellectual who produces nothing original to the drunkard” (91).

It seems clear that Poe takes artistic license in describing the characters of “King Pest.” His story alludes to, but is not much based upon, historical incidents and these royal individuals. Its aim is not to narrate history, but to satirize politics and political actors. The targets of Poe's satire may not, in fact, be English at all.

One critic is convinced that the story satirizes “an extremely wet banquet on January 8, 1832, honoring both president Andrew Jackson and . . . the abolition of the national debt.” According to The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition, which cites William Whipple, one of the founders of the United States, King Pest is Jackson; Queen Pest is his wife Rachel; the Arch-Duchess Ana-Pest is Peggy Eaton; “the man with the bandaged leg and cheeks on his shoulders” is Colonel Thomas Hart Benton; “the thin man with the alcoholic tremor” is Francis Blair “of the Globe”; “the paralyzed man in the coffin” is Amos Kendall or William H. Crawford; Tarpaulin is Martin Van Buren; and Legs is probably Major Jack Downing (294).

Along these same lines, A Companion to Poe Studies adds to this interpretation, noting that King Pest is described as “the President of the Table”:

He is tall and gaunt, with a yellow complexion and a lofty forehead, his head decorated with sable plumes. This is Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1937) . . . . The story takes place in “the parish of St. Andrew's Stair” [the direction in which Legs and Tarpaulin flee from the tavern's landlady]. The stairway of Jackson's home named “The Heritage,” near Nashville, Tennessee, was named “St. Andrew's Stair.” The undertaker's shop, therefore, must be the kitchen of the White House, and the other persons are the members of the Jackson “family,” including some members of Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet. Queen Pest, the lady with the big mouth, is Peggy Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John Henry Eaton, whose chastity Jackson defended; Arch Duke Pest-Iferous, who has large ears, is Amos Kendell, fourth auditor (< L. audire, to hear) of the Treasury; Duke Pest-Ilential, who has goggle-eyes, is Francis Preston Blair, Sr., assistant editor of the Frankfort (Kentucky) newspaper, The Argus (giant with a hundred eyes), and editor of the Washington Globe (globus, ball; hence, related to “bulging” or “goggle”-eyes); Duke Tem-Pest, who is cheeky, is Secretary of War Eaton, whose wife became the center of a teapot tempest that split the president's cabinet wide open; and Arch Duchess Ana-Pest, the diminutive, haut-ton lady who is consumptive is Emily Donelson, Jackson's acting First Lady (his wife, Rachel, died ten weeks before his inauguration). Emily died of consumption in December 1836 (126).

Although these interpretations don't agree in every respect, it's clear that both critics believe that the allegory to which Poe alludes in his story's subtitle is, indeed, political in nature and targets American president Andrew Jackson and various members of his political “family.”

Notes

Peggy Eaton and her second husband, Secretary of War John Eaton, were scorned by the wives of Andrew Jackson's cabinet on the basis of unfounded rumors that Peggy had had an affair, which caused her first husband John Timberlake to commit suicide in 1828. (In fact, Timberlake died from pneumonia.) The wives would neither call upon the Eatons nor invite them to parties and other functions. Although Jackson tried to end this “Petticoat Affair,” by forcing the wives to accept the Eatons, their ostracism of the Secretary of War and his wife was supported by Johnson's vice-president, John C. Calhoun. As a result, Jackson supported Martin Van Buren, who had accepted the Eatons. Van Buren's resignation helped to end the scandal, and Jackson replaced his disloyal cabinet members. At the end of Jackson's term, Calhoun was not renominated as vice president, and he resigned. Van Buren replaced him on the ticket as Jackson's vice president and succeeded him as president in 1837.

In The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House, historian John F. Marszalek may shine some light on why Poe describes Queen Pest as having a cavernous mouth that extends from ear to ear:

She did not know her place; she forthrightly spoke up about anything that came to her mind, even topics of which women were supposed to be ignorant . . . .

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Blair was “an ardent follower of Andrew Jackson,” whom the newspaperman “helped” to elect during the 1828 presidential election. A year later, after becoming the editor of the Washington Globe, Blair was doubly effective in influencing politics at the national level, as he also belonged to the Kitchen Cabinet, the president's own unofficial advisory group.

For Untouchables: Masochistic Horror

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In the middle of a pandemic, most of us might not care to read stories involving plagues and pandemics. However, horror fiction appeals to masochistic readers as well as to others and, if the truth were to be told, there is, in most, if not all, of us, a bit of the masochist. Fear is disturbing. It is stressful. It is unpleasant. Paradoxically, however, it is also quite pleasurable to many of us. If it were not, there would be no profit in making horror movies or in writing horror novels or short stories.

Critics and psychologists suggest that the reason that we enjoy horror dramas and narratives is that we know that, despite what happens on the sound stage or on the page, we ourselves, as spectators or readers, are safe. What happens to the victims in the story cannot happen to us. We enjoy the invincibility of the secret voyeur. We watch, untouched and untouchable. That is our power. We survive the slaughter because it cannot do to us what it does to the characters in the movie or the book. (Only, in the case of the coronavirus, we may not be quite as invincible as we might imagine!)

So, for the masochistic supermen and superwomen among us, Chillers and Thrillers suggests a pair of horrific tales by the father of modern horror himself, Edgar Allan Poe. One of the two tales caused Robert Louis Stevenson to opine that “he who could write [this story] had ceased to be a human being.” Which story occasioned this assessment of its author, “The Masque of the Red Death” or “King Pest”? Chillers and Thrillers will leave the answer to this question to you to decide!

Plots That May Challenge of Change Common Perspectives

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Not all of the examples in today's post are exclusively related to the horror genre, but each of the techniques could be or have been used by writers of horror fiction.

Usurpation: a minor character becomes the main character.

John Garner uses this approach in his novel Grendel (1971), a retelling of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, in which the villain of the poem, portrayed as an anti-hero, becomes the main character.

In Gregory Maguire's 1996 novel Wicked: The Life an Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, a retelling of L. Frank Baum's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Altered History: a sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history is based on the premise that historical events occur differently than they actually took place. There are many examples of this sub-type, including:

Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee (1953), in which Robert E. Lee wins The Battle of Gettysburg, paving the way for a Confederate Civil War victory.

1945, a 1995 novel by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, wherein the United States defeats Japan, but enters a Cold war with undefeated Germany, rather than with the Soviet Union.

The-Future-Is-Now: visionary predictions of things to come form the basis of this type of plot.

George Orwell wrote a Future-Is-Now dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which a totalitarian government uses science and technology, propaganda, revisionist history, and other techniques to control its citizenry.

Intersection Stories: explorations of the crossroads between two opposites or extremes.

Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge (1968), a novel featuring a transgender protagonist, meets male and female and masculine and feminine binaries as it lampoons and challenges feminism, gender, sexual orientation, and social mores.

In Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers an early (1882!) comic novel by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, magic causes a father and a son to switch bodies, the father revisiting adolescence as his son experiences maturity.

Of course, Robert Louis Stevenson's Gothic horror novel, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), investigates the intersection of good and evil.

Alien Archaeologist: an alien or some other type of fish out of water (who may or may no be an archaeologist) studies human society and culture, often interpreting his or her experiences in an altogether unfamiliar manner.

My short story, “One Dilemma After Another” (in One Dilemma After Another, Volume II) (2018) is an example: an extraterrestrial military scout tries to hide among us, but his attempts to mimic human beings confronts him “one dilemma after another.”

Schizophrenic Studies: a subject is examined from a variety of points of view.

William Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury tells the history of the Compton family from the perspectives of Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason, whose stories touch on many of the same incidents, but provide their narrators' own peculiar interpretations of the vents.

Using these techniques often results in a truly “novel” (i. e., fresh) novel, since each technique offers a way to challenge or change readers' perspectives on the subjects of the books that are based on these approaches.

Doctors of Death

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

“When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.” – Sherlock Holmes, “The Speckled Band”

Some believe Jack the Ripper was a medical doctor, perhaps a surgeon. Other serial killers are known to have practiced medicine, include H. H. Holmes, Harold Shipman, Michael Swango, Marcel Petiot, Shirō Ishii, John Bodkin Adams, Josef Menegle, Robert George Clements, Thomas Neill Cream, Louay Omar Mohammed ai-Taei, Maxim Petrov, and Kermit Gosnell.

As Sherlock Holmes (okay, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) observes, medical doctors make splendid criminals. They have the knowledge, the discipline, and the skill to kill, but they also often present the persona of a caring and humanitarian professional in whose hands patients are well-advised to place not only their trust, but also their lives. In fact, their victims often come to them, as patients who are both physically and emotionally vulnerable. They look upon their doctors as their best hopes for survival. Ironically, “when a doctor goes wrong,” he or she is apt to be just the opposite. Alas, patients sometimes learn too late that their trusted physician or surgeon is, in fact, a cold-blooded killer.

Horror movies have featured their share of diabolical doctors, some of whom are researchers, others of whom are medical practitioners or surgeons. Dr. Jekyll, of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, (1886) appears to be a chemist; Dr. Moreau, of H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), is a physiologist and vivisectionist; and Dr. Griffin*, of H. G. Wells's novel The Invisible Man (1897), is an optics researcher. (Mary Shelley's Victor von Frankenstein is not a doctor, but an amateur scientist of sorts. Likewise, Dr. Anton Phibes [of the 1972 movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes] is not a medical doctor; he has degrees in music and theology, one of which is a doctorate.)

Several other novels and movies also feature doctors of one type or another, but the ones we've identified are sufficient for our (or, rather, Sherlock Holmes's) thesis: “When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.”

* * *

Dr. Jekyll

In creating the dual character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson seems to have separated the private person from his persona. The former is the public face, the persona, presented to the world; the latter, the private person, known only to himself (and not entirely known, even then).

All of us are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We have private selves and public selves, and these split aspects of our personalities are not always in synchronization with one another. Privately, we desire and fantasize and, perhaps, in some ways act upon less-than-honorable, or even shameful, impulses and proclivities which, in our public lives, we would never dare to acknowledge, much less entertain or act upon.

We are hypocrites, all—or would be, had society not, in its wisdom, allowed us to a differentiate between our private lives, wherein ignominious and disgraceful thoughts, feelings, and secret behaviors are allowed without penalty, as long as they harm no one, and our public lives, wherein we are expected to conform to the mores, traditions, customs, and laws of civilized society.

Wanting to kill, or even entertaining fantasies about murdering, another person is permissible to us in our private lives, the lives that our counterparts to Mr. Hyde live, but such ideas, emotions, and dreams are strictly forbidden to us in our public lives, the lives of our Dr. Jekyll dopplegangers live.

In crossing the line between the private hell of his personal life and the public life of affected propriety, Stevenson's protagonist committed a horror more horrible than the murders he perpetrated. Stevenson's novel is a cautionary tale: this far, one may go, but not a step farther. The boundary between the vile, secret self and the acceptable persona must be respected at all costs. When it is, murders and other immoral acts are unlikely to occur; the monster within is kept at bay.

Dr. Moreau

As we point out in another post, mixing human and animal perverts both natures, dehumanizing the former while objectifying the latter. Men and women, like animals, are better off as men and women or as animals than they would be as manimals or womanimals. By being hybridized as chimeras, neither human nor animal is improved.

Compared to humans animals are not, by nature, very bright. They live mostly by instinct, unable to comprehend the ways of men and women, whom, according to scientists, they regard as alpha members of the pack of which they themselves are lesser members. Unfortunately, with intelligence comes the capacities for treachery, infidelity, malice aforethought, and all manner of other evils. There are no innocent adults, and even children are often cruel to one another. They do not need teachers; such cruelty comes naturally to them. An animal, especially a domesticated one, is more innocent than any child.

By mixing humans and beasts, as Dr. Moreau did, both are made different and are devalued in the process. Indirectly, through is hybrid creatures, Dr. Moreau causes the deaths of others, but his greater crime is the immorality of vivisection as the means he employs for grafting human beings and animals. His means to his ends set him apart in his villainy, just as does Dr. Jekyll's means to his ends set him apart for the same reason.

Dr. Griffin

Humans depend upon their five senses to perceive the world. Primarily, they depend upon sight. To render oneself or anything else invisible is to eliminate the sense of sight, at least as it concerns the persons or objects made invisible. Invisibility blinds us, and blindness hampers our powers to conduct reconnaissance or surveillance and to protect ourselves and defend others. To confer invisibility upon someone or something is to disable those who are thus deprived sight of the person or thing made invisible.

To use a unique and extraordinarily effective ability against others, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless is tantamount to betrayal. Dr. Griffin's invisibility allows him to accomplish just such an immoral act. Instead of using his power to benefit others, he abuses it, even committing acts of murder. Again, his ends to his means is worse than the deaths he inflicts upon his victims, because these ends set him apart from his peers as not only ruthless but also inhuman.

* * *

Stevenson and Wells, although not, perhaps, in the first rank of literature, many might contend, are, nonetheless, superior to the vast majority of writers of their time or, indeed, of any time. The quality of their writing, its urbane and sophisticated style, the subtlety of their novels' various themes, their superb craftsmanship, their attention to detail, and the unhurried manner of their narratives, in which, most often, structure and function are so perfectly balanced as to appear to be one and the same thing, make their stories of such a character that the morality of the tales are not overwhelmed by the sensationalism of their plots. Directly, or by proxy, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Griffin are serial murderers. Although their criminal deeds are described in lurid detail, the murders they commit, as extravagant as they are, do not cloud the moral implications of their heinous acts.

Quick Tip: The Importance of Setting

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In “‘Closer Than an Eye’: The Interconnections of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Colin N. Manlove does a great job of reminding his readers of the importance of the setting to a story. “The Gothic novel,” he writes, “usually employs as its setting some remote land, castle, tarn or wilderness: but here [in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde] the hideous events take place in the midst of the relatively populated streets of London. . . because the purpose of this novel is to show the dark side of one peculiar man’s respectable and citified self.” Moreover, the setting, common to both the novel’s protagonist and the other residents of the city, show him to be of the same sort as they; “they are seen in some way to share in his situation. . . . All in the story tread the same streets, inhabit the same fog” (The Dark Fantastic, 3). In the same article, Manlove points out the way that Robert Louis Stevenson creates, through description, a link between his main character and a row of buildings along a street:

The street of shops looks outward to a public; it is concerned with putting on a fine front and drawing people in. The building that juts forward has only an unopened door, no windows, and neither bell nor knocker on the door. Its preoccupation is with exclusion. . . . Yet it is part of the street, even if it is not integrated with it and thrusts its way forward. Both the street and the house are personified: the street drives a thriving trade, the shop fronts invite “like rows of smiling saleswomen” and veil their more florid charms on Sundays. The “sinister block of building. . . thrust[s] forth its gable on the street,” had “a blind forehead of discoloured wall” and bears “the marks of negligence in every feature.” It is not much of a leap to see the shops as suggestive of the respectable, ambitious civil area of mind--in short, all that Jekyll is to seem to be . . (6).

Chillers and Thrillers’ articles have likewise stressed the effectiveness of appropriate settings to horror, one example of which is the essay concerning Bram Stoker’s short story “Dracula’s Guest.”

The Horror of the Double

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do./ Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. (Romans 7:19-20)

According to psychologists, we repress many of our desires. Sigmund Freud suggests that these repressed urges can reappear in disguised versions of themselves, often as instances of the uncanny. Apparently, such thinkers suppose, we are much like a computer: the data we delete—that is, those which we intend to delete and believe that we have deleted—are actually erased only when the computer needs the hard drive space upon which the “deleted” data are stored, awaiting the moment (if it ever comes) that they are overwritten with new data. Until this happens, the “deleted” data remain, rather as a body remains, even after it has died, until, eventually, nature, in her own sweet time, recycles the cadaver’s no-longer-living constituents.

In other words, we are all doubles. There is the persona, or public face, and there is the secret self, known, sometimes, not even by our conscious selves, consisting of those impulses and interests which we have rejected (repressed and suppressed), usually because the collective voice of society—or maybe only our parents or our friends—suggested that these desires are asocial, criminal, deviant, perverse, unnatural, or otherwise undesirable.

A Casper Milquetoast could harbor an Attila the Hun (or vice versa), just as the well-mannered, well-spoken Dr. Jekyll harbored the hideous Mr. Hyde. It’s not only Peter Parker, after all, who has a secret identity. We all have skeletons in our closets—in fact, we ourselves might be those very skeletons—or, at least, the repressed self within might be.

Horror stories, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray—or, for that matter, Stephen King’s The Dark Half or Dean Koontz’s Mr. Murder—are horrifying, in part, because they threaten to reveal the secret, not-so-nice second self which we have hidden away in the basements of our unconscious minds. It wouldn’t do to let anyone see the repulsive, slimy, deviant thing we harbor within, which is an unseemly and unacceptable caricature of who we truly are (or appear to be).

For different folks, the secret self is—well, different folk. For Stevenson, Mr. Hyde might have been the consequences of an unresolved moral dualism; for Wilde, homosexuality; for King, his public image as a popular writer; for Koontz, some version of his abusive, half-mad father. Whatever—or whoever—we’re hiding deep inside ourselves is apt to be partially or fully monstrous, as were the inner demons that inhabited Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Son of Sam. It’s best that they be kept under psychic lock and key. Unfortunately, sometimes the mental jails and prisons—the dungeons of the mind—fail in their mission to keep these beastly secret selves incarcerated, and they escape.

If Ed Gein’s or Charles Manson’s inner demons could get away, why not our own, someday? The possibility is more then frightening; it’s terrifying, and it is this fear of being revealed—fully revealed—for who—and what—we are that is the rock-solid foundation of stories in which the horror stems from the fear of the exposure of one’s secret, hidden doppelganger.

The Monster as the Mirror of the Protagonist’s Soul

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Monsters are often metaphors, as we saw in the “Metaphorical Monsters” post. However, monsters are often also foils to horror stories’ main characters. As Robert Louis Stevenson showed us, in The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the monster is, or can be, just an alter ego of oneself, one’s bitter half, rather than one’s better half. In Jungian terms, the monster is the shadow archetype, comprised of the collection of those aspects of oneself that an individual represses.

As a foil, the monster’s character traits are opposite to those of the monster’s attributes. They illuminate by contrast, showing readers or viewers more clearly what the main character is like. Usually, there is only a single foil, but there may be more than one. For example, in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith, the rogue slayer, is a foil to Buffy, and, because of Faith’s irresponsibility, we better discern Buffy’s reliability and trustworthiness; Faith’s narcissism allows us to better see Buffy’ altruism; Faith’s amorality lets us better perceive Buffy’s morality. Although Buffy is spontaneous and independent, she is not, like Faith, rash and reckless--well, not as a rule. The only other slayer whom viewers observe over several episodes, Kendra, is a foil to Buffy as well, although she’s not a monster, as Faith, at times, in a way, tends to be. Kendra contrasts sharply with Buffy in several ways, among which are:
Buffy is spontaneous; Kendra is inhibited.

• Buffy is affable; Kendra is reserved.


• Buffy lives with her mother; Kendra was removed from her parents’ home shortly after she was born and does not remember her parents.


• Buffy has a boyfriend; Kendra is not allowed to date and is unsure even how she should act around members of the opposite sex.


• Buffy is a modern, liberated young woman; Kendra is subservient to men.


• Buffy blows off research (and homework); Kendra is more a bookworm than Buffy’s watcher, Rupert Giles.


• Buffy is autonomous; Kendra is a follower.


• Buffy is independent; Kendra is dependent.


• Buffy is a fashion enthusiast; Kendra owns only one shirt.


• Buffy shares her secret identity with her friends; Kendra keeps her identity as a slayer secret.

We could go on (and on), but you get the picture: both Faith and Kendra are foils to Buffy.

However, we begin, with Kendra, to digress. Let’s resume our consideration of how monsters can be foils to a main character.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, does not employ a foil, per se, as much as it does a symbol.

In Wilde’s story (which is surely a study of hypocrisy and false appearances), the protagonist, Dorian Gray, remains young and handsome while his portrait is aged by the sins he commits. Gray claims to love an actress, Sybil Vane, but, when, lovesick for her suitor, she loses her ability to act, he jilts her, causing her to commit suicide. Thereafter, for nearly two decades, inspired by a “poisonous” novel he receives as a gift, Gray undertakes a career in debauchery. The portrait continues to age and to become more and more repulsive, reflecting Gray’s inner state. Enraged, Gray murders the artist, Basil Hallward, who painted his likeness (and who gave him the novel). He blackmails a friend into disposing of his victim’s corpse. After a close call during which Sybil’s brother, James, seeks to murder him to avenge his sister, but is subsequently killed himself in hunting accident, Gray repents, vowing to reform. Hoping to see a change in his portrait, he finds that it is uglier and more aged than ever, whereupon, in a newfound capacity for self-reflection, he wonders whether curiosity or vanity prompted him to check on his portrait’s appearance. He tries to confess his sins and change his ways, before it is too late to save his soul, but he hasn’t the will to do so, and, instead, he plunges a knife--the same weapon with which he’d earlier dispatched Hallward, and is found by his servants, aged and shriveled, it being necessary to examine the rings he wears in order to identify his remains. The portrait is the picture of youth and health that it was when Hallward had first unveiled it.

Gray’s portrait is limited as a means of illustrating the temptations Gray faces and their specific effects on his own life and the lives of those he encounters. For this reason, perhaps, Wilde shows his protagonist’s behavior and its consequences directly, using the portrait to symbolize the effects of his treacherous behavior and his dedicated debauchery upon the protagonist’s inner man. Outwardly, he remains young and handsome, but his portrait shows the true state of his soul. It also indicates, from time to time, his emotional state, as when the picture sneers after Gray has treated Sybil in an abusive manner, thereby showing the contempt that he feels for her but does not show in his actual behavior toward her--not until he jilts her, at any rate. There is only so much that can be accomplished through the use of an inanimate object, after all.

Stevenson’s novel divides the good self from the bad, with Dr. Jekyll’s creation a potion that transforms him into the hideous Mr. Hyde. The monstrous alter ego differs from its creator in several important ways and, thus, serves as a true, if limited, foil:

• Dr. Jekyll is moral; Mr. Hyde is without a conscience.


• Dr. Jeckyll is socially respectable; Mr. Hyde freely indulges his passions, including his sexual lusts.


• Dr. Jekyll is a cultivated man; Mr. Hyde is a little more than a wild animal.


• Dr. Jekyll is a man of reason; Mr. Hyde is a sociopath.


• Dr. Jekyll is law-abiding; Mr. Hyde is criminal.

However, the dichotomies aren’t really this simple, for, after all, it is Dr. Jekyll who invents the potion, and it is he who, of his own, free will, drinks it. Mr. Hyde is not another; as an adversary, he is not an external “other,” but the repressed aspects of Dr. Jekyll’s own personality. The conflict in Stevenson’s story is psychological and moral, not social (although the conflict does have social implications). Mr. Hyde is the self whom Dr. Jeckyll desperately wants to be, at intervals and for a time, at least; he is, in Jungian terms, Dr. Jekyll’s shadow, the repressed, largely unconscious part of his personality. In the end, Mr. Hyde takes over completely, killing himself and, as a result, Dr. Jekyll as well. Stevenson suggests that social norms and personal restraints, or morality and conscience, may not be sufficient, in the end, to control the beast within. When they are not, the result is not only crime and sin, but also death and destruction. The use of Mr. Hyde as a foil to Dr. Jekyll allows readers to see a greater, and, indeed, a hidden dimension of the protagonist, suggesting that, appearances to the contrary, Dr. Jekyll may not be as moral, respectable, cultivated, reasonable, and law-abiding as he seems, and, of course, he also allows Dr, Jekyll to discover this same truth about himself.

Other horror characters also have alter egos, or second selves. Count Dracula appears to be a cultivated, cosmopolitan, suave, and sophisticated man of refined tastes, capable of witty repartee and hospitality. He seems to be a well educated man of reason, and, in fact, he can be downright charming. However, he is also a vampire, and, as such, harbors all the attributes of the fiend that shares his body. He is parasitic, secretive, cunning, treacherous, deceitful, hypocritical, and narcissistic--all the things that, secretly, the count longs to be. The fact that man and demon inhabit the same body suggests that they are the same person, and that the vampire’s behavior represents the expression and enactment of temptations that the count normally represses. There is a fine line between the acceptable and the forbidden, at times, and the more political and economic power one has, the more opportunity he or she also has to do that which remains unthinkable to men and women who occupy lesser social positions. As a count, Dracula can be forgiven much more than a peasant would be forgiven.

He is a victim, however, of changing times, as another character, as his foil, suggests. Just as science and technology are beginning to replace religious faith and superstitious beliefs as the dominant worldview, so are nobles being replaced by a growing middle class, a member of which, Dr. Abraham van Helsing, a professor, summoned by his former student, a psychologist, proves to be the death of Dracula. The vampire’s supernatural power is no match against the professor’s use of hypnotism and medical science. Part philosopher and part “metaphysician,” van Helsing is also “one of the most advanced scientists of his day,” Steward informs the reader, and, as such, has one foot in the old, and the other in the new, world. He is a transitional figure. As such, he is a fitting antagonist and foil to the noble Count Dracula, whose world of monarchy and mysticism are coming to their ends. As with Buffy, whose foils are Kendra and Faith, Dracula has more than one opposite: the vampire is a foil to the count, just as is the professor.

Scientists have identified several possible origins for legends of werewolves, including the tendencies of some serial killers to engage in “cannibalism, mutilation, and cyclical attacks,” and have contended that the bizarre behavior of such wolf-men might have been caused by a variety of actual diseases, including “ergot poisoning” and “rabies, hypertrichosis. . . porphyria. . . . congenital erythropoietic porphria. . . . photosensitivity. . . . clinical lycanthropy” and “psychosis,” many of which conditions involve hallucinations and bizarre behavior. Be that as it may, werewolves represent another instance of a character with an alter ego, since, except during full moons, the wolf is a man (or a woman). However, this possibility for an innate, or built-in, foil that shows the opposite traits of the same character and represents a dichotomy within the same character’s personality hasn’t been well developed, probably because, although there is a long and voluminous body of folklore involving werewolves, there has been no definitive story about one, which integrates and centers the tradition on a single, well-developed, memorable character like Count Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, or Dorian Gray. However, since a foil has traits which are opposite to those of the protagonist (even when the main character and his or her foil are, in effect, the same character, as when the foil is an alter ego rather than a separate character), it would not be difficult to identify the characteristics that such a protagonist would possess, whenever he or she comes along. All one needs to do is to identify the traits of the werewolf and then list opposite attributes:

• The werewolf is bestial; the protagonist will be humane.


• The werewolf is fierce; the protagonist will be gentle.


• The werewolf is driven by its instincts; the protagonist will be cautious and deliberate.


• The werewolf is wild; the protagonist will be cultivated.


• The werewolf is destructive; the protagonist will be creative.


• The werewolf seeks sanctuary among the trees of the forest; the protagonist will find refuge in a society of his or her peers.


• The werewolf fears humans; the protagonist will be sociable and altruistic.

In such a fashion, we could go on, listing character traits and their opposites until we had the basis for constructing a protagonist for whom his or her werewolf avatar would be an appropriate and effective foil. Some day, a writer may pen the werewolf equivalent to Dracula. At such a time, the novel’s (or film’s) main character will most likely resemble the character we’ve delineated, for the monster is likely to be his foil and, thus, alert us to the hidden impulses and temptations within the protagonist whom he or she replaces whenever the monster within escapes the bounds of repression.