Scenes of Buddhist Hell

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Warning! Do not read this article unless you have a strong stomach!

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Stark, horrific, and grotesque, the sets of statues are warnings to the faithful. In no uncertain terms, the sculptures show the fates of those whose bad karma caused them to be born in a place of long-term, but not eternal, torment in a layers of Naraka, the Buddhists' hell.

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In one set of sculptures, skeletal figures are marched, chained together in single file, their bloody arms, spines, buttocks, and legs exhibiting holes that have been punched into them, toward a gigantic bowl-shaped pan atop skulls. A fire under the pan indicates its purpose: to cook the unfortunates who climb into the pan, unfurling long tongues as they dance in the burning vessel or lie with their arms folded over the pan's rim. Dark-skinned guards, armed with spears and sticks, guard the damned. One of guards lifts a cursed male figure over his head, ready to toss him into the pan with the others who share his doom.

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Naraka is somewhat similar to the hell of Chinese mythology, upon which Naraka itself is based. Although the numbers of the layers, or courts, of the labyrinthine underworld differ among sources, some stating that there are three or four courts, others that there are ten, still another that there are eighteen, and yet others that there are thousands, the chief source for Naraka claims that there are Eight Cold Narakas and Eight Hot Narakas. Each has its unique form of punishment, several of which are depicted by the statues.

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Some of the punishments of the Cold Narakas include suffering from blisters, experiencing splitting skin, and having the body itself crack open and expose the victims' internal organs, which also crack apart.

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Among the torments of the Hot Narakas are being attacked with iron claws and fiery weapons, being showered with molten metal, being sliced into pieces, and having to walk and lie on the heated ground. Guards cut bodies into pieces with fiery saws and axes. The damned are crushed by rocks, burned alive, eaten by wild animals, impaled upon fiery spears, pierced by a trident, and roasted alive.

Each punishment, in both the Cold Narakas and the Hot Narakas, lasts from hundreds of millions to sextillions (10²¹) of years, and each lifetime in a Naraka lasts eight times longer than the previous one.

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Some of the statues depict the suffering that the damned encounter in Diyu, the Chinese hell (or hells); others seem to portray the plight of the condemned in the Narakas. Among the former punishments are suggested by the names of a concept of Diyu as comprising eighteen hells: Hell of the Hanging Bars, Hell of the Pit of Fire, Hell of Tongue Ripping, Hell of Skinning, Hell of Grinding, Hell of Pounding, Hell of Dismemberment by Vehicles, Hell of Ice, Hell of Disembowelment, Hell of Oil Cauldrons, Hell of the Mountain of Knives, among them.

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Some scenes involving the statues do not seem to match the descriptions in Buddhist scriptures concerning the nature of the Narakas, in which case the sculptures may, instead, represent various other hells in the Chinese Diyu. With thousands of hells, each group of statues likely represents one of the many places of Chinese, if not specifically Buddhist, torment.

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The sculptors are not timid in displaying the flesh of the damned, and there is even some grim humor in the displays of some of the figure's torments, especially when the punishments apparently are for the commission of taboo sexual acts or harboring forbidden appetites of the flesh. Phalli, for example, are sometimes of gargantuan size, as if the organs, as symbols of prurient desire, weigh down those who bear them. One male figure appears unable to stand erect, because the enormous size and weight of his phallus causes him to stoop at all times. Another male figure also stoops, carrying his flaccid organ over his shoulder as he shuffles along, past a female figure whose bloody vulva is being consumed by a dog while another male figure, whose thoughts have too much been occupied by sexual fantasies, perhaps, looks on, as it were, his phallus having replaced his neck and head.

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Oddly, the Asian figures are bright white; the only parts of their bodies to be represented in color are those of their sex organs: one male's is reddish brown; the others' members are dark brown. The female figure's vulva is red with the blood flowing from her half-devoured organs. The absence of colors except in regard to their sexual parts is intended, perhaps, to make their colorful, offending organs stand out all the more, by way of contrast.

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Images of mutilation, impalement, distension, anatomical displacement (eyes in elbows and replacing nipples, a fanged mouth or a complete face in an abdomen), grinding, devouring, decapitation, hacking, disembowelment, tongue ripping, spearing, knifing, pressing, roasting, physical transformation, hooking, and dismemberment make it clear that Buddhism is not simply the mellow, intellectual, contemplative discipline that it is often portrayed as being and is often understood, especially by Westerners, to be. These statues testify to the fact that there is also a darker, brutal, sadomasochistic, and decidedly more sinister side to Buddhist tradition, doctrines, and beliefs.

 

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Scenic Posters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

A common formula for many horror stories, whether written on the page or enacted on the soundstage, consists of five acts:

1. The status quo is portrayed.
2. A series of bizarre incidents occur.
3. The protagonist discovers the cause of these incidents.
4. The protagonist, often aided by friends, uses his or her knowledge of the cause of the incidents to put things right.
5. A return to the status quo is shown (although the ending may also hint at a possible sequel).

As in describing a scene in order both to represent and to dramatize it, it can be helpful to draw inspiration from a horror movie poster (the book cover, as it were, of a film), this same process can be useful in generating scenes which comprise the bizarre incidents which occur in act two (and, perhaps, later as well). Remember that the scenes so created must be causally related, although their ultimate cause will be withheld until act three.

An inspiration for a scene might be the poster for Annabelle: Creation (2017). (In writing from movie posters, I usually select posters for movies I haven't seen, and I don't read a synopsis of the film. I want to be inspired by the poster's art; I don't want to steal the screenwriters' original treatment.) With this in mind, let's look at the way NOT to do this:

My senses on high alert, I stole glances to either side and over my shoulder, as I crept along the cold, damp corridor, feeling trapped by the ancient basement's gray stone walls, stone floor, and stone ceiling.

I was conscious of the tons of massive rock above me and of the cataclysm which would ensue should all that weight come tumbling down (not that it should), and I imagined the terrors that likely befell the poor lost souls shut away inside the subterranean chambers which opened off the warren of intersecting hallways—or would have opened, had they not been locked.

As I continued along the maze, I heard the grating of rusty hinges, as a great, thick iron door opened of its own accord. Its loud, high-pitched creaking noise made my heart shrink, even as I turned, staring with horror at the sight within the chamber thus revealed.

A girl stood, her arms raised and extended at shoulder level; her body limp; her legs, one of which wore a brace, together. She was pale, and her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was not standing, after all. She seemed to have recently died—after having been crucified. However, no nails had been driven through her wrists or ankles.

A chill of horror iced my spine, as I saw another disturbing anomaly: a doll seemed to float before her, positioned as though it were seated upon the girl's lap, although, of course, her hanging vertically from the wall precluded such a possibility. The doll must be pinned to the girl's dress.

But why would someone go to such trouble? The scene seemed some sort of bizarre tableau, but, if so, to what end? Or did it have a purpose? Perhaps the hole mise-en-scene was nothing more than the whim of a mind gone mad.

Run! For God's sake, flee this damned place!

At my peril, in my foolishness, my curiosity greater than my wisdom, I stayed, gazing at the figure of torment within the chamber to which the open door admitted my horrified gaze.

At the girl's feet, a small table had been overturned. I squinted, focusing my gaze, and drew back, horrified anew: the table, like the chair beside it, the doll, and, indeed, the girl herself floated! Suspended in midair, they were held stationary and aloft by a power both unseen and unknown.

The girl wore patent-leather shoes, which were all but invisible in the darkness of what, I realized now, was a window—or a long, narrow rectangular opening, without glass, within the chamber's wall, behind the female figure, unlit and indistinct. Its shape had added to the illusion that the girl had been crucified, for, in the dim light, it looked like a plank of wood to which her ankles might have been nailed, as her wrists, at first, had seemed to be fixed to the stone wall.

Aghast, I stumbled away from the open doorway, realizing my retreat only when my back encountered the immovable resistance of the corridor's opposite wall. As I continued to stare at the girl afloat against her chamber's wall, her eyes opened, revealing yet another horror: the whites were blood-red, her pupils elliptical and golden, as if ablaze with the fire of hell, an effect strengthened by the appearance, between her soft, pink lips of a split serpent's tongue!

The doll, the countenance of which was of a decidedly malevolent character, opened its mouth, and, in a voice more suitable to a demon than to a toy in the shape of a babe in arms, harshly croaked a plea both pathetic and horrendous: Help us!

Turning, I ran along the stony floor, the doll's croaking supplication seeming to reverberate throughout the underground hallways and subterranean chambers as if the labyrinth were the many mouths and throats of hell's damned souls crying in unison, Help us!

This description is too close to the picture on the poster to be used in a story of one's own, but, in writing it, I conceived an idea for a novel, or part of one, so the effort isn't necessarily lost, even though it didn't achieved its intended goal, which was to develop a scene that is inspired by, rather than merely repeats, a scene painted for a movie poster. It would be a mistake—and a significant, perhaps costly, one—to use the description I wrote of the Annabelle: Creation poster's picture in a story of my own; it is too close to the scene depicted by the poster and could, therefore, represent plagiarized content were it to be used as is in an independent work.

However, all may not be lost, even now, in this exercise.

Returning to my description (and to the poster), I can isolate the elements that are horrific and uncanny and repeat them in a new description that is sufficiently different to avoid copying the Annabelle: Creation artwork. So what are the poster's elements of horror and the uncanny? As I see them:

• isolation
• innocence mocked through parody
• religious faith mocked through parody
• victimization
• perversions of the Christian concepts of the crucifixion and the creation
• confusion created by a maze of underground corridors and chambers
• supernatural power displayed

With these elements in mind, a rewrite of the original description can perhaps salvage the scene, allowing it to be used in a work of one's own:

My senses on high alert, I stole glances to either side and over my shoulder, as I crept along the cold, damp corridor, feeling trapped by the ancient basement's gray stone walls, stone floor, and stone ceiling.

I was conscious of the tons of massive rock above me and of the cataclysm which would ensue should all that weight come tumbling down (not that it should), and I imagined the terrors that likely befell the poor lost souls shut away inside the subterranean chambers which opened off the warren of intersecting hallways—or would have opened, had they not been locked.

As I continued along the maze, I heard the grating of rusty hinges, as a great, thick iron door opened of its own accord. Its loud, high-pitched creaking noise made my heart shrink, even as I turned, staring with horror at the sight within the chamber thus revealed.

A boy lay upon an elevated stone slab inside a room resembling a tomb cut from a rock. He was naked but for a cloth laid over his groin. His arms were extended straight out, from his shoulders; his body was limp, his legs together. He was pale, and his eyes were closed. He seemed to have recently died—after having been crucified. Wounds from spikes driven through his wrists and ankles were crusted with the blood staining the altar upon which the body lay.

What had I stumbled upon? The result of the crucifixion of a child? What recent madness had happened here, in the bowels of a castle thought long deserted? Were the villains who'd committed this blasphemous murder still in secret residence? Was I being watched by the madmen who'd committed this unspeakable sacrilege?

Run! For God's sake, flee this damned place!

At my peril, in my foolishness, my curiosity greater than my wisdom, I stayed, gazing at the figure of torment within the chamber to which the open door had admitted my horrified gaze, until, aghast in contemplating the sight, I stumbled away from the open doorway, realizing my retreat had been underway only when my back encountered the immovable resistance of the corridor's opposite wall.

Now, as I continued to stare at the unfortunate boy, his eyes opened, revealing yet another horror: the whites were blood-red, his pupils elliptical and golden, as if ablaze with the fire of hell, an effect strengthened by the appearance, between his soft, pink lips, of a split serpent's tongue!

The features of his handsome face distorted, as a malevolent hatred akin to rage animated the corpse, its mouth opening as a voice more suitable to a demon than to a child, harshly croaked a plea both pathetic and horrendous: Help us!

Turning, I ran, finally, in headlong flight, along the stony floor, the demon-child's croaking supplication seeming to reverberate throughout the underground hallways and subterranean chambers, as if the labyrinth were the many mouths and throats of hell's damned souls, crying in unison, Help us! although, in their infernal state, neither deliverance nor succor was possible. All that was left them was this tableau of the damned, by which they not only tormented the living, but also continued their unholy protests against the Almighty whom, even in thethroes of their eternal torment, to curse and vilify.

This second description, inspired by the poster and by the unsuccessful attempt to capture in words, while avoiding copying, which would result, if included, as originally written, in my own, otherwise original work, in plagiarism, now works, for it is different enough to be my own, a work inspired by, rather than merely copied from, the original poster. It is itself original, instead of simply derivative.

All's Well That Ends Well

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror writers with longstanding records as bestselling authors are not exempt from writing novels with unsatisfying endings. When the novelist is Stephen King, whose novels typically run as many as eight hundred pages (sometimes more), an unsatisfying ending is more than annoying; it's horrible.

Many of King's novels do end poorly, as It, Under the Dome, Revival, and many others attest. After reading hundreds of pages in which reality seems fairly real (other than the presence of the centuries-old, shape-shifting “It”), only to discover that the universe isn't a product of the Big Bang, as astronomers apparently mistakenly believe, but that it resulted from a gigantic turtle's need to vomit—well, readers are apt to think the effect is anything but agreeable. In fact, readers might think they'll be sick enough themselves to vomit a universe of their own. Likewise, the ending of Under the Dome is beyond frustrating. After plodding through hundreds of pages (many of which are devoted to King's Democratic progressivism and his obsessive hatred of Republicans and of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in particular), readers discover that the invisible and impenetrable dome that cuts off Chester's Mill, Maine, is the result of a gigantic, mischievous female adolescent alien who placed an inverted dome over the town, much as a mischievous Earthling might invert a bowl over an anthill. Consequently, readers are likely to work out until they've acquired sufficient strength to rip this ridiculous novel page from page. While writing Desperation, King seemed to find nothing amiss with the views of Christian fundamentalists. He even sought out one of them, a pastor, as his adviser. But, as The Regulators, the companion novel to Desperation, indicates, King likes to turn the tables on himself. He does just this in Revival. He'd had no problem with the beliefs and teachings of Christian fundamentalists when he wrote Desperation, but, while writing Revival, he said he couldn't stomach the Christian fundamentalists' idea of hell, as it's described in the Bible. He doesn't cite chapter and verse, but here are a few passages, from the King James Version of the Bible, concerning hell, that most Christian fundamentalists would probably accept:

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains (Deuteronomy 32:22).

The sorrows of hell compassed me about . . . (Samuel 22:6).

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit (Isaiah 14:15).

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell (Mathew 5:29).

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33).

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched (Mark 9:23).

And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments . . . (Luke 16:23).

For . . . God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment . . . (2 Peter 2:4).

According to these verses, hell, an expression of divine wrath, is a locked pit below the earth. Made of several layers, it's a place of eternal darkness and everlasting fire, in which the damned, who are cast therein bodily, are beset by sorrows and live in constant torment (although both body and soul can be destroyed in hell). It's occupied by both fallen angels and by human sinners, and it's set against the kingdom of heaven, which shall overcome it.

This is the conception of hell that King finds ridiculous. In its place, he offers something so extremely absurd that it's laughable, and it is with this, his own conception of hell, which he believes is superior to the Biblical depiction of hell, that he concludes Revival, describing hell as a gigantic anthill full of gigantic, ravenous ants. Huh?

Somehow, King sees a huge anthill in which huge ants crush sinners with their huge jaws as superior to the depiction of hell provided in the Bible, the King James Version of which is, without argument, one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the English language. With judgment this poor, it is truly a wonder that King ever managed to write his much better, earlier work.

The endings of the stories by Bentley Little, another prolific horror novelist, are as bad as those of King's worst books. They're tacked-on, rather than being integral to the plot, and, typically, they explain nothing concerning what has transpired in the hundreds of pages preceding them. They seem to hint at an explanation, but, as there is no actual explanation at which to hint, the intimation itself is nothing more than a half-hearted, meaningless gesture. Read virtually any of Little's novels, including the one for which he won the dubious Bram Stoker Award, and you'll see what I mean—but be prepared for a major disappointment. For example, The Resort suggests the bizarre incidents which occur at the present resort are somehow linked to those which occurred at an earlier, nearby resort, which now lies in ruins. How and why the two resorts might have shared some common causal link is unclear because unexplained. Therefore, readers are within reason to assume that there never was such a link. Likely, they will feel cheated of the time, effort, and money they spent in reading the novel.

Horror master Edgar Allan Poe offered a solution to the dilemma of the sloppy ending 172 years ago. In “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), he explains how he wrote his narrative poem “The Raven.” First, he decided how the story would end. Then, he selected everything—every word, every image, every figure of speech, every point of the plot, every character, every line of dialogue, every nuance of the setting—so that the final result, the story's effect, would be inevitable, given what came before and led up to it. It seems clear that neither King nor Little (nor many other writers, of the horror genre and of other genres, have any idea where their stories are going or why, but write only in the moment, making up the plot as they go.

Poe applied his technique not only to “The Raven,” but to most of his stories and other narrative poems. One story for which the ending isn't as clear and fitting as the conclusions of his other tales is “Ligeia.” As Kevin J. Hayes points out, in The Annotated Poe:

The ending leaves many questions unanswered. The reappearance of Ligeia can be interpreted as a phantasmagoric illusion [an image projected by the so-called magic lantern, a type of early projector], an opium-induced hallucination [the narrator uses laudanum], a psychological fantasy, a modern recurrence of a traditional transformation legend, or an actual event. . . .

Comments Poe made concerning the story's problematic ending indicate that he'd intended the story to have a supernatural ending. A friend of his, Pendleton Cooke, asked about the story's resolution. In response, Poe “suggested how he might have improved it”:

One point I have not fully carried out—I should have intimated that the will did not perfect its intention—there should have been a relapse—a final one—and Ligeia (who had only succeeded in so much as to convey an idea of the truth to the narrator) should be at length entombed as Rowena—the bodily alterations having gradually faded away.

It seems that Poe, unlike King, Little, and a host of other writers, learned his lesson about writing sloppy endings. He was careful, from then on, to plan more carefully the outcomes of his stories, the vast majority of which have the unified structure and the single effect for which he has become famous. For example, “The Pit and the Pendulum” is based an article, “Anecdote towards the History of the Spanish Inquisition.” According to this article, “when General Lasalle entered Toledo, he immediately visited the Palace of the Inquisition,” where he tested a torture device, which he found to be in good order.

As Hayes observes, the way in which the article recounted the story was ineffective from “a dramatic point of view,” so Poe reversed its chronology:

Though fascinated by the story, Poe nevertheless recognized what was wrong with it, at least from a dramatic point of view: it was backwards. By having Lasalle arrive in the first sentence, the article destroys all possibilities for tension and terror. Poe turned the story around, describing what happens to one particular prisoner while saving Lasalle's timely intervention for the final paragraph.”

Poe had learned the lesson that he would teach in “The Philosophy of Composition” and exemplify in the majority of his own short stories, essays, and narrative poems: in the words of the bard, “All's well that ends well.”

"The Cone": Style, Sentence by Sentence

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

As I mentioned in “H. G. Wells: The Art of 'The Cone,'” Wells is a master of style. He makes every word count toward the creation of the final effect he designs his stories to create. Style, as Jonathan Swift defines it, is “proper words in their proper places.” Mark Twain, like other writers, agrees that “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” AlfredHitchcock says something similar concerning images, the lexicon of film. It is not any single image that matters, he says, but the way in which they are assembled to evoke thought and feeling. On the importance of style, a science fiction writer, a satirist, a humorist, and a master of suspense agree, as does any serious writer or producer. Style is not a small thing; it is everything, for it shapes and invigorates everything: character, including dialogue, action, plot, setting, theme.

With a single phrase or sentence, Wells often accomplishes several narrative or rhetorical purposes at once in his exemplary short story, “The Cone,” as he does in his other tales. The story is a true tour de force, the literary equivalent of expressionistic and surreal paintings, but, as I discuss this aspect of the story in “H. G. Wells: The Art of 'The Cone,'” there's no need to repeat it here. Instead, I will concentrate on the effects, literary and rhetorical, he achieves by several phrases and sentences in “The Cone.”

At the outset of the story, his omniscient narrator comments, “They [Mrs Horrocks and the artist Raut] sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air was fresher there.” This sentence accomplishes three things:

1. It suggests that the air is not “fresher” near the open window, because it is not “fresh” anywhere.
2. The fact that they are “trying to fancy” fresh air near the window means that they are not succeeding. The open window admits no fresh air; like their attempt to imagine fresher air, the open window is a mere prop and, therefore, a failure.
3. The illicit couple's attempt to “fancy the air was fresher” characterizes them. In the face of a reality they find unpleasant, they imagine their circumstances are different. They seek to impose their own preferences upon the world, adjusting what is to what is suitable to them. In this, the sentence's use of “attempt” suggests, they also fail.

Wells gets much out of other phrases, too. In the story's fifth paragraph, his narrator describes an approaching train: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight trucks—passed” not only shows the passing of the cars, but also makes readers count them as they go past: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight trucks.” The counting helps to make the paragraph active, but it also reinforces the number of cars in the train. The ironworks, we think, is a busy, productive place. In the same sentence, the narrator adds that the cars “were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel,” causing readers to imagine each car being “extinguished” as it enters the tunnel's “throat.” This description includes one of the many personifications Wells uses to bring his ironworks to life as an active, vengeful, and menacing entity.

For Raut, the ironworks represents “Gehenna,” meaning “a place of burning, torment, or misery,” or, “(in Judaism and the New Testament, Hell).” The ironworks is impertinent, daring to belch “fire and dust into the face of heaven.” Raut's words suggest that the ironworks is an affront to God Himself, an impious, wicked hell the very existence of which is an insult to heaven. “Fire and dust,” the insults, as it were, which the hellish ironworks belch “into the face of heaven,” are later juxtaposed to the Biblical phrase “pillars of cloud” and “pillars of fire” in which God appears to Moses and the Israelites as He guides them across the desert after their escape from pharaoh: “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.” (Exodus 13:21). The substitution of “fire” for the more eloquent phrase “pillars of fire” and of sullying “dust” for the more elegant expression “a pillar of a cloud” degrades the poetic language of the Bible, substituting crass terminology for its elevated diction. While Raut accuses the ironworks of insulting God, it is he, through his paraphrases of scripture, who actually does so.

In two clever sentences, Wells creates a sort of reverse-personification. His omniscient narrator describes blast furnaces, which stand “heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron,” as if they are hearts full of passion and rage; Horrocks himself, as their manager, is the mind, or soul, that controls these savage breasts. His “seething” passions and the “incessant turmoil of [the] flames” of his rage are the vengeful hearts that will burn Raut alive. 

 

Throughout descriptions of the ironworks, Wells's omniscent narrator uses phrases suggestive of violence, blood, death, and hell to depict the ironworks, the scene of Raut's eventual demise: “ghostly stunted beehive shapes,” “a ringing concussion and a rhythmic series of impacts,” “fitful flames,” “hammer beat heavily,” “palpating red stuff,” “blood-red reflections,” “succession of ghosts,” “blood-red vapour as red and hot as sun,” “white as death,” “fire writhing in the pit,” “sulphurous vapor,” “boil the blood,” and “hot suffocating flame.”

References to Gehenna, “the pit,” “pillars of cloud by day,” “pillars of fire by night,” “sin,” “sulphorous vapor” and “God” give the story a Biblical, if not an expressly Christian, context, as does Horrocks's horror at what he has done when “his sanity returned to him,” following his apparent crime of passion and he observes the effect of his vengeance, the sobbing, “inhuman, monstrous creature” that had been Raut. However, this context is undercut by Raut's reference to Jove and the omniscient narrator's allusion to “half-naked Titans.” Not only does the adulterous behavior of Raut and Mrs. Horrocks and Horrocks's seeking of vengeance against Raut suggest that religion is, for them, merely conventional, rather than sincere and devout, but Raut's use of the expression “by Jove,” like the omniscient narrator's employment of the phrase “half-naked Titans,” also implies that none of the characters is religious. Whether Horrocks' own plea to God at the end of the story is genuine or merely an expression of his horror at the sight of what he has done is open to question.

Through his conscious and deliberate selections of words and constructions of phrases throughout “The Cone,” Wells creates and maintains a style that is not only appropriate to his tale, but one which complements it at every turn, creating ironic contradictions; movement and pace; a religious context; complex characterization through allusions and personification; a sense of violence, blood, death, and hell; doubt concerning the characters' true devotion to the religious faith that is implied by the story's allusions to religious themes and theological concepts; and, overall, the unity of effect that produces a seemingly inevitable resolution of the story's central conflict. Wells' style delivers a great deal, largely thanks to his deliberate use of language—“proper words in their proper places”—a and to his own inimitable artistic genius.

What’s So Scary About Horror Movies?

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

What makes a horror movie scary? Why do some films frighten us while others don’t send similar chills up and down our spines? Why is Stephen King a master of this genre, both in its printed and motion picture forms? What’s the difference between a truly frightening horror movie and a merely horrible one? By analyzing those moments of fright and horror, perhaps some clues may be pieced together, allowing us to discern just what is so scary about horror movies. As a result, we can both better appreciate the techniques of the horror maestros and, if we are ourselves writers of horror fiction, improve our own work.

One way to analyze what scares people is to ask them. Fans of the genre maintain web sites, respond to interviews, rate movies, and keep blogs concerning what they like and don’t like about horror films. Since these individuals represent the market for which you are writing or intend to write, their comments, observations, points of view, praise, complaints, and questions are a goldmine waiting to be excavated.

Another way to discover what’s scary about horror fiction is to read interviews on the subject by the masters of the genre. Many of these interviews are available online or in the back issues of magazines available at your local library. You can also type in a phrase such as “what’s so scary about horror movies?” or “scary horror movies” into an Internet search engine’s window and see what results occur. Of course, another way to find out what scares the hell out of moviegoers (and readers) is to watch horror movies (or read horror stories)--and take notes!

As you visit these sites and read horror stories or watch horror movies, make a list of your insights and thoughts about the question, What’s so scary about horror movies? Before long, you’ll have a huge list. Remember, though, you’re not interested in summarizing the plot per se. Instead, you’re interested in identifying frightening moments in the film or story and understanding why these incidents scared you.

Your list might contain some of these elements:

Unexpected shock: something springs out of a closet, falls from the ceiling, bursts through the floorboards, or springs upon a character from behind, seemingly having come out of nowhere. Another example is the sudden and immediate disfigurement or dismemberment of a character. Reflections, especially strange and incongruous images, in a mirror or other glass surface can also frighten.

Red Herring: one incident occurs, such as an unexpected shock, that distracts us from the big scary moment that is just about to occur. For example, a cat springs at the character, screeching, and scares the hell out of us just before the axe murderer buries his weapon in the character’s abdomen or back.

Scary Music and Other Tone Setters: the soundtrack plays jarring, or frantic, music that sets up the expectation that something nasty is about to happen; what follows is something nasty--or a red herring. A thunderstorm is an old stand-in for such discordant music. The interplay of light with shadows, like weather and musical effects, sets the tone (horror) in many horror movies; printed horror fiction uses descriptions and juxtapositions to accomplish the same purpose.

Lights Out: a character is knocked unconscious, by the villain or by an accidental fall, only to awaken in deep, hot water, metaphorically speaking, a la “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Gross Out!: Stephen King says he will scare his readers if he can and disgust them if he must. Blood, guts, and gore usually do the trick.

Dead Meat: showing or describing skeletons or corpses, especially partially decomposed bodies, horrifies and disgusts.

Stalking: the monster stalks the protagonist, sneaking up on him or her, or ambushes him or her; the stalking or the ambush is “previewed” for the reader or the moviegoer, however, rather than occurring as an unexpected shock: we see the villain sneaking up on or lying in wait for the main character, so we anticipate the bad guy’s next move (but the protagonist doesn’t).

Being Watched: showing the main character being watched by someone gives moviegoers and readers the willies.

A Tunnel of Trees and Me

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Imagining that one is a location scout or a cameraman while taking a stroll may not put money in the bank, but it does enliven one’s promenade. Things take on a sinister and ominous look as one imagines camera angles, the types of shots to be shot, the characters and objects to be emphasized or deemphasized, the lighting to be used, and the music that would accompany the images upon the film.

One can, quite easily, scare the hell out of oneself.

Perhaps, as a result of such a stroll--a walk that takes place in the imagination as much as it does through any particular landscape--one may even conceive of a story that will set other people’s nerves on edge.

Some landscapes or landscape features are natural symbols of emotional states. Once, while searching for my brother’s place--he and his lovely wife live in a remote canyon in the southern part of California--I somehow entered what was, in effect, a tunnel of trees. They stood thick along either side of the narrow, unpaved, rutted road, their branches interweaved, both side by side, throughout their impenetrable stand, and overhead. It was night, but, by shutting out even the ambient illumination of the stars and the moon, the tunnel of trees made the night darker than it would have been otherwise. My headlights were the only source of light, and all this relatively faint illumination disclosed was the dirt road ahead and the thick green foliage on either side of me and overhead. The emotion that this seemingly unnatural growth of trees and foliage created--or seemed to create, for, obviously, the sentiment was my own, and not the earth’s--was anxiety akin to panic at the sense of being trapped. Claustrophobia produces, I must say, an alarm like no other type of fear, one that is as pervasive as it is evasive and as overwhelming as it is engulfing.

Fortunately, in a mile or so, I exited this tunnel of greenery as abruptly as, having made another in a series of wrong turns, I had entered it. I was even fortunate enough to find my brother’s house. I related the strange experience, and his and his wife’s insistence that neither of them knew of such a road anywhere near their domicile further enhanced the eeriness of the experience. Wouldn’t a story--or a film--that included a scene of a protagonist or a lesser character entering such a corridor as the one I had chanced to enter be a scary tale?

Probably. Certainly, handled with adroitness, it could be.

But this is only one of the many such possibilities that a walk in the park--or, better yet, a walk in the dark--viewed from the perspective of the monster, the serial killer, the madman, or their victim, could inspire.

　

Demonic Aspects of Demon Art

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Okay, I admit it: I have never seen a demon.

Not a real one, not a demon in the flesh, as it were.

I know a couple of people who have seen demons--or claim that they have, at any rate. Their statements are somewhat like those who claim to have seen extraterrestrial spaceships: they tend to contradict one another. Of course, “seem” is the key word here. Perhaps they are not contradictory at all. There may be enough demons to warrant varying descriptions of them. In all probability, one would think, there would be as much variety, at least, among the infernal hordes as there are among any other creatures. I mean, who would believe that such a creature as a starfish could be real, if one didn’t know that they actually exist? Or a jellyfish? Or a chameleon? Each of these animals seems highly unlikely, and, certainly, they are all quite different in appearance and characteristics, yet they all exist. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, in nature as in anything else, demons, one might conclude, included.

In any case, what I’m more concerned with in this post are the aspects of demons--the characteristics that make the, well, demonic--that is, terrible, horrible, and just plain scary. As usual, one can discover quite a bit by simply taking a gander at artists’ conceptions of these infernal fiends, seeking, where possible, to identify similarities that suggest generalizations and differences which suggest differentiae.

The first thing I notice, in perusing pictures of fallen angels, is that most of them have human--or humanoid--faces. They have eyes, noses, ears, mouths--the usual--but these features are not typical of the ones a person would see in the mirror--well, hopefully not. For one thing, the complexion is likely to be of a most unusual color--yellow, red, green, perhaps--which is, of course, nothing like any skin tone that one is likely any time soon to encounter among human beings. Their features are also likely to be deformed in some way. They may have no irises, for example, the whole of their eyes being a glutinous white, or their pupils may be elongated and elliptical, like those of a serpent’s eyes. Some demons’ eyes actually glow like hot coals, if artists’ conceptions of the infernal folk are reliable guides. Demons’ ears may taper to points like the ears of a goat. Their teeth may include one or more sets of fangs. Their tongues may be forked like a snake’s tongue.

Besides the deformity of facial features, demons also sometimes come equipped, as it were, with attributes borrowed from animals: horns, scales, tails, cloven hooves, claws, that sort of thing. Those who have wings don’t, as a rule, have feathery pinions, but leathery, bat-like appendages. A few artists depict demons, usually of the female sort, with snakelike, Gorgon curls. The ancient Greeks’ satyrs (fauns in ancient Roman mythology) served as models for the more traditional type of demon familiar to many.

From Wolfman’s Gallery

However, more imaginative artists, including Hieronymus Bosch, H. R. Giger, and Javier Gil have rendered demons with more individuality and grotesquery.

Bosch’s demons tend to be anthropomorphic birds and beasts, often armed with weapons, or strange mixtures of several animals, hybrids of his fevered imagination. His The Temptation of St. Anthony and The Garden of Earthly Delights showcase some of Bosch’s more bizarre concepts of demonic creatures, each of which has a symbolic character that is now, alas, largely forgotten. In the vision of hell that is part of the Garden triptych, Bosch includes a demon--perhaps Satan himself, seated upon a chair that is a combination of throne and toilet. The demon, which wears an upside-down cauldron for a miter, and clerical garb, but has a transparent, insect-like abdomen, which projects downward, through the throne-toiler, devours men alive, defecating them into a round cistern below its seat. Not far from this demon of apostasy, there is a fiend whose hindquarters alone are shown, its upper body hidden in the cannibalistic demon’s flowing sash. It exhibits its buttocks to a naked woman who is seated against one of the legs of the popish demon’s throne-toilet. Instead of flesh, however, the kneeling demon’s posterior is a mirror in which the woman’s face is reflected. Straddled by the mirror-bottomed demon, whose legs end in antlers or barren tree branches, the seated woman is gripped from behind by an ass-headed fiend. A toad, symbolic of sexual lust, rests above her breasts. Her besetting sin appears to be vanity or, as psychologists would characterize her personality disorder today, narcissism.

Hieronymus Bosh, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Better known for his extraterrestrials (Alien, Species), H. R. Giger has also offered his own highly imaginative take on a ancient, albeit not particularly well understood, demon known as Baphomet. In his painting, a nude white woman--white not in the sense of Caucasian, but literally white, both of hair and of flesh--is suspended before a wheel, above and behind a bust of Baphomet, below whose head, upon the pillar which it tops are the heads of entwined serpents (or maybe birds with long necks; it’s hard to say which). The nude woman wears an inverted cross about her neck and brandishes, one in each hand, a pair of sharp-pointed objects that resemble the ends of a demon’s horns. Mounted upon the wheel, and facing in, toward her, are a series of hypodermic syringes whose needles appear to penetrate her outer thighs. The Baphomet head seems half dead: its ears are at half-mast, so to speak, its whiskers look wilted, and its eyes are half-closed, one showing only its whites, the other an iris that is rolling upward, into the skull. In lieu of a necklace, a hinge or metal plate resembling the end of a belt is fastened to the neck of the pillar, a buckle seeming to fasten it in place. The goat-head’s beard is tightly braided, one lock extending into a tail-like strand that ends in an arrowhead shape.

Two long, curving horns rise from the demon’s head, a third, smaller, straight horn ending in a bony crown, between them. The long horns frame the nude woman, and the crown atop the third horn rises between the woman’s spread thighs, occupying the space at which her sex would appear, were it not so obstructed. In viewing the placement of this decidedly phallic horn, one gets the impression that penetration is occurring, although it is not: the horn is in front, not inside, the woman’s sex. She seems both to be crucified and to float. Above her, in place of INRI, the acronym for the Latin phrase “Jesus Nazareth King Jews,” is the Roman numeral “XV.” There is no indication as to what the number signifies. It seems clear, however, that the nude woman is a demonic, probably satanic, priestess, possibly a temple prostitute, who worships the devil, mocking the sacred work of Christ by the inverted cross she wears as her necklace.

Although some moviegoers might not make the connection, supposing that the appearance of the beautiful woman who turns into an ugly old hag in Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of Stephen King’s The Shining is just another of Jack Torrance’s many hallucinations and is, as such, a manifestation of his madness, the temptress is a modern-day example of an ancient demon, the succubus, a female demon that was believed to have sex with men, usually in their sleep. (The male counterpart is the incubus.)

H. R. Giger, Baphomet

As I observe in my “Sex and Horror” series, sex, as it is depicted in horror fiction, is typically of a perverted sort that is intended to defy God’s commandment to humanity (through his directive to Adam and Eve) to “be fruitful and multiply” in order to “replenish the earth” with future generations of the human species. Anything that is not reproductive (and, by definition, therefore, heterosexual) is sinful, mainstream theologians argue. Indeed, non-reproductive sex between heterosexuals is also sinful, such thinkers contend. Javier Gil’s demonic art (i. e., his work which features demonic figures) typically portrays just such sexual activity--activity that is of a non-reproductive character, including orgies, homosexual unions, bestiality, and assorted perverse behavior. Most of his works of erotica which include demonic revelers are too pornographic for display in Chillers and Thrillers, but I offer the following picture as a milder representation of Gil’s demonic art.

Javier Gil, Untitled

What may we conclude from our examination of demons as they appear in artists’ conceptions of them? They resemble us, but they represent the worst aspects of ourselves, or of humanity: unbridled animality, sin, moral and sexual perversion, disobedience to God, an elevation of the fleshly aspects of human existence above the spiritual elements of human nature, blasphemous and sacrilegious communications, false religions or religious doctrines, and of a concern for pleasure without regard for propriety (or sanctity). These are the demonic aspects of human nature, reflected in artistic conceptions of demons as personifications of such impulses, conditions, and conduct. Writers of horror and fantasy fiction can take a clue or two from their more visual counterparts concerning what is evil and how it may be represented. (The article, “Demons,” in the online edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia has some interesting insights into the subject matter, too, especially concerning the positive and negative, or good and “sinister” senses of meaning that the word had in the original Greek usage!)

Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

I once read somewhere that, although there are many ways to inflict death, there is, ultimately, only one cause of death--cessation of oxygen to the brain.

Something is similar with regard to the ultimate object of fear. Many persons, places, and things instill fear, but they all do it the same way--by threatening us with loss. The loss with which we're threatened is related to a significant possession, to something that we value highly: life, limb, mind, health, a loved one, and life itself are some possibilities.

It's been argued that we fear the unknown. I think that, yes, we do fear the unknown, but only because it may be associated with a possible threat to us or to something or someone else we value.

What is death? Simply annihilation? Or, as Hamlet suggests, is death but a prelude to something much worse, to possible damnation and an eternity of pain and suffering in which we're cut off from both God and humanity? That's loss, too--loss of companionship, friendship, communion, fellowship, and love. Against such huge losses, annihilation looks pretty cozy.

Horror fiction--the fiction of fear--wouldn't have much to offer us, though, if all it did was make us afraid of death and/or hell. It does do more, though, quite a bit more, as it turns out, which is why it's important in its own way.

First, if Stephen King (by way of Aristotle) is right, horror fiction provides a means both of exercising and of exorcising our inner demons. It allows us to become the monster for a time in order to rid ourselves of the nasty feelings and impulses we occasionally entertain. Horror fiction is cathartic. It allows us to vent the very feelings that, otherwise, bottled up inside, might make us become the monster permanently and drive us, as such, to murder and mayhem.

Horror fiction provides us with a way of exercising and of exorcising our inner demons, but it also reminds us that life is short, and it suggests to us that we should be grateful to be alive, that we should appreciate what we have, and that we should take nothing for granted--not life, limb, mind, health, loved ones, or anything else. Horror fiction is a literary memento mori, or reminder of death. In the shadow of death, we appreciate and enjoy the fullness of life.

No one ever wrote a horror story about a man who stubbed his toe or a woman who broke a nail. Horror fiction's themes are bigger; they're more important. They're as vast and profound as the most critically important and most highly valued of all things. Horror fiction, by threatening us with the loss of that which is really important, shows us what truly matters. As such, it's a guide, implicitly, to the good life.

Horror fiction also shows us, sometimes, at least, that no matter how bad things are, we can survive our losses. We can regroup, individually or collectively, subjectively or objectively, and we can continue to fight the good fight.

Chillers and thrillers are important for all these reasons and at least one other. They're entertaining to read or watch; they're fun!

Sources Cited:

Aristotle, Poetics.

King, Stephen, "Why We Crave Horror Movies," originally published in Playboy, 1982.