Eros by Ralph Waldo Emerson: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

The sense of the world is short,

Long and various the report,—

To love and be beloved;

Men and gods have not outlearned it,

And how oft soe'er they've turned it,

'Tis not to be improved.

“Eros” is a love poem of sorts or, one might say, a meditation on love itself, since Eros is the Greek god of sexual, or erotic, love. The first two lines of the poem present a problem, as it were; the remaining lines provide the solution to that problem.

The problem is that life is short, and it’s meaning is uncertain. “The sense of the world”—its perception, the smell and the taste and the feeling and the sound and the sight of the world”—is short,” the speaker laments, lasting, in most cases, far less than a century. In addition to the brevity of life, the meaning of existence is unclear, although the interpretation of its possible significance is as “long and various” as art, philosophy, and religion can make it.

To the problem of the shortness and uncertainty of life, the speaker offers a solution: “To love and be beloved,” he declares, is an adventure that has defied the learning of both 'men and gods,'” and represents something that, no matter how much it is studied, analyzed, or considered, is “not to be improved.”

The love of which the speaker speaks, as the title of the poem indicates, is physical, or sexual, love—erotic love. It is fitting that the remedy that the speaker suggests—sensual love—is physical, just as the organs by which life itself is perceived are physical. Human beings know the world through their eyes, noses, skin, ears, and tongues. Likewise, through their bodies—or, more specifically, through their sexual organs—they may experience something—love—that is not only meaningful in itself but that has both physical and spiritual dimensions, thereby transcending the merely material world that is, in itself, all too short and uncertain. The same body that perceives a short and uncertain life in the material world within which it exists can, in becoming the vehicle for sex and love, give life a meaning that, derived from physical organs, is, nevertheless, spiritual in its essence, thereby providing a means of transcending the merely material, or animal, basis of existence and experience.

The Covers of Gothic Romance Pulp Fiction Novels: Advertising a Genre

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The covers of Gothic romance pulp fiction novels tip us off to the nature of the genre's fiction. Often monochromatic, perhaps to set the mood, which can be described as “brooding,” the paintings that grace the covers of such fare tend to feature a woman alone, either framed by the window of an isolated mansion, or fleeing from an unseen threat, often through rugged terrain, frequently with a manor house or castle in the background and a threatening sky above.

Whether indoors or out, the mood of menace is heightened by eerie statues, such as gargoyles or satyrs, strange obelisks, cemetery headstones, stunted or malformed trees, black cats and bats, and skies that look somehow as jagged as a predatory animal's teeth.

Sometimes milady, who's usually in her twenties, stands upon the precipice of a cliff, with the sea below. She might flee headlong down a rocky, snow-covered slope.


Occasionally, her flight takes her through an isolated cemetery. A full moon might hang in a cloudy sky.

Open land and sparse vegetation may expose her flight. The sea, a forest, a cliff, or otherwise impassible terrain features impede or prevent her rescue or escape.

As often as not, the damsel in distress is barefoot, suggesting she took to her heels in a hurry. Full, heavy dresses are likely to encumber her, forcing her to hike her skirts. Almost invariably, she looks over her shoulder, as if in search of a stalker. Fog or Spanish moss hanging from the boughs of a remote estate may lend an air of mystery and menace. One wonders what terror launched her sudden flight.

On the relatively rare occasions that the distressed damsel is shown indoors, she is usually confined by a window frame, a dimly lit staircase, or a shadowy hallway, which she negotiates carefully, perhaps with a flickering candle in hand, looking, all the while, for some lurking menace.

 

Her adversary is seldom shown, and, when the pursuer or pursuers are included in the painting, they are at a distance, indistinct: a lone figure, small in the distance, silhouetted in a the arched entrance to a castle above and behind the heroine or a small band of nameless, faceless pursuers.

Several covers mention “love” of a problematic or dangerous sort: “The lure of love led her through a jungle of horror to a house of blood” (Candace Arkham's Ancient Evil); “She came to Ravensnest to save a life—and found her own threatened as she sought love in a house shadowed by death” (Caroline Farr's Mansion of Evil); “At Whitehall Mansion, Susan's fairy tale romance became a honeymoon of horror” (Elisabeth Offutt Allen's The Hounds of the Moon).

Occasionally, a cover offers a bit of text to characterize the heroine, suggest her plight, and hint at the story's plot: “Innocent and alone, she found herself fighting the forces of Middle Age witchcraft,” reads a blurb on the front cover of Wilma Winthrop's Tryst with Terror. Paulette Warren's Some Beckoning Wraith asks, “Could love and common sense overcome the vengeful spirit that haunted Malvern Manor?” In Lady in Darkness, Evelyn Bond spins a tale in which her heroine's “memory gone, Ellen” cannot tell whether “Whit was her husband—or her jailer.”

Perhaps readers needed to know at least this much about the books they considered buying, but, for me (and perhaps for you), the artwork, which tends to be almost without exception more than simply sufficient and is often splendid, is far more mysterious and intriguing than the bald summaries such text sets forth and needs no explanation or elaboration. In any case, the covers invariably indicate and, indeed, highlight the conventional elements of the Gothic romance genre.

Disappointment "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

To say that the ending to Under the Dome is anticlimactic is an understatement. To say, moreover, that it is sophomoric is to put the matter mildly. It is both a letdown and a disappointment.

King’s characters have suffered, most of them greatly; many of them have died. Were they real, flesh-and-blood people, the survivors would be traumatized, probably for life, by the death and destruction they have seen. Their friends, neighbors, and families, children included, are dead; their homes and businesses have been destroyed; their lives are in ruins. Why? What has caused this wholesale loss?

It could be argued that much of the death and destruction stems from the machinations of the greedy, self-serving, power-mad, criminal Big Jim Rennie and his cohorts. In the guise of doing what is best for the town, Big Jim has caused more than a good deal of mischief. He has abused his constituents, neglected the community’s real needs, and capitalized by pandering to the townspeople's weaknesses and fears. He has profited from the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine; he has ordered others to commit arson and violence; he has encouraged the incitement of a riot; he has murdered people with his own hands and has covered up the murders of others by his son. He has set friend against friend and neighbor against neighbor. His ordering of a raid against the drug addicts who hold hostage the propane tanks that he stole from the local hospital and other businesses to fuel his illegal drug operation resulted in a conflagration that decimated the homes and businesses of the thousands who also perished in the inferno, burned alive. Throughout the crisis that began with the descent of the dome and the many others that he himself created, Big Jim prospered while others suffered and died.

The townspeople are not blameless; both as children and as adults, they, too, have participated in the evils that befall themselves and others. Even the heroes and heroines of King’s novel have past sins for which to atone.

There are few true innocents under the dome, apart from infants such as Little Walter Bushey and the canines Horace, Clover, and Audrey.

Some citizens are guiltier than others: Big Jim Rennie, Junior Rennie, Pete Randolph, Georgia Roux, Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, Stewart and Fern Bowie, Roger Killian, Joe Boxer, Phil Bushey, Lester Coggins, and Sam Verdreaux.

A few, the children, are innocent or relatively innocent: Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, Benny Drake, Judy and Janelle Everett, Ollie and Rory Dinsmore, Alice and Aidan Appleton. However, as Julia Shumway’s account of the “watershed moment” in her own girlhood indicates, even children are capable of cruelty and evil.

Other characters are not developed enough for the reader to determine their guilt or innocence: Rose Twitchell, Anson Wheeler, Marty Arsenault, Rupert Libby, Stacey Moggin, Ron Haskell, Ginny Tomlinson, Dougie Twitchell, Gina Buffalino, Harriet Bigelow, Jack Cale, Johnny Carver, Lissa Jamieson, Claire McClatchey, Alva Drake, Tony Guay, Pete Freeman.

Finally, still other characters are guilty not because of corruption or meanness, but because of personal weaknesses or a significant, but lone, moral failure: Andréa Grinell, Andy Sanders, Dale Barbara, Angie McCain, Dodee Sanders, Freddy Denton, Piper Laurie, Rusty and Linda Everett, Romeo Burpee, Samantha Bushey, Stubby Norman, Brenda Perkins, Thurston Marshall, Carolyn Sturges.

King is careful, in most cases, to indicate his characters’ various moral offenses or failings, which include drug addiction, alcoholism, child abandonment, sexual promiscuity, adultery, henpecking, negligence, a reluctance or unwillingness to involve oneself in social and political conflicts and the duties of citizenship, assault (physical, sexual, and verbal), murder, malfeasance, theft, arrogance, a greater concern for economic advancement than for ending human suffering.

King suggests a practical means of distinguishing good from evil. Moral actions help others (or, presumably, oneself); immoral actions hurt others (or, presumably, oneself). In addition, in quoting Jimi Hendrix, the author suggests another, more nebulous criterion for determining what behavior is good and desirable and what behavior is bad and undesirable: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the earth will know peace.” For the most part, his characters’ deeds and misdeeds fit into one or the other of these classification systems. Clearly, Big Jim’s actions are motivated by a love of power rather than by the power of love; likewise, his behavior has a harmful, more than a helpful, effect on others, including his son (and, ultimately, himself). In other cases, the classifications are not as clear cut, but the moral theory that King suggests seems applicable to their conduct, nevertheless. Human behavior’s effects, whether good or evil, desirable or undesirable, right or wrong, continue beyond individuals' lives, effecting the lives of their posterity. Police Chief Howard Perkins’ collection of evidence against Big Jim certainly influenced the events that transpired in the town long after his own demise. Likewise, the lesson in humility that Julia Shumway learned when she was abused as a child by her classmates at the Commons’ bandstand had a definite effect upon her behavior in begging the alien child for mercy at the end of the novel and was critical in the salvation of the remnant of the townspeople.

In his exploration of moral and immoral behavior and the effects of both upon the human community, both present and future, King’s novel offers penetrating insights and a good deal of food, as it were, for thought and is a rewarding read. The story itself is also a fairly suspenseful, almost always intriguing, and entertaining experience. Like most of King’s other novels, this one is apt to stay with the reader, to become part of who he or she is. This is certainly a test of effective, even of good, literature.

The test, perhaps, of which characters King finds worthy of salvation is indicated in his catalogue of final survivors, which appears on page 1066 of his novel. If this is true, one can extrapolate from what the omniscient narrator and the characters themselves have revealed concerning these characters’ past deeds and misdeed:

(On page 997, according to the omniscient narrator, “on Saturday morning. . . “just thirty-two” survivors remained of the town’s population:

1. Aidan Appleton
2. Alice Appleton
3. Dale Barbara
4. Harriet Bigelow
5. Gina Buffalino
6. Romeo Burpee
7. Little Walter Bushey
8. Ernest Calvert
9. Joanie Calvert
10. Norrie Calvert
11. Ollie Dinsmore
12. Alva Drake
13. Benny Drake
14. Linda Everett
15. Janelle Everett
16. Judy Everett
17. Rusty Everett
18. Pete Freeman
19. Tony Guay
20. Lissa Jamieson
21. Piper Libby
22. Thurston Marshall
23. Claire McClatchey
24. Joe McClatchey
25. Big Jim Rennie
26. Julia Shumway
27. Carter Thibodeau
28. Ginny Tomlinson
29. Dougie Twitchell
30. Rose Twitchell
31. Sam Verdreaux
32. Jackie Wettington

By page 1066, seven others (Aidan Appleton, Ernest Calvert, Benny Drake, Thurston Marshall, Big Jim Rennie, Carter Thibodeau, and Sam Verdreaux) have died, bringing the total number of survivors to twenty-five. 

1. Alice Appleton (child)
2. Dale Barbara (Army colonel; cook)
3. Harriet Bigelow (elderly woman)
4. Gina Buffaloing (volunteer nurse)
5. Romeo Burpee (department store owner)
6. Little Walter Bushey (baby)
7. Joanie Calvert (mother)
8. Norrie Calvert (child)
9. Ollie Dinsmore (child)
10. Alva Drake (mother)
11. Linda Everett (police officer)
12. Janelle Everett (child)
13. Judy Everett (child)
14. Rusty Everett (physician’s assistant)
15. Pete Freeman (news photographer)
16. Tony Guay (sports reporter)
17. Lissa Jamieson (librarian)
18. Piper Libby (pastor)
19. Claire McClatchy (mother)
20. Joe McClatchy (child)
21. Julia Shumway (newspaperwoman)
22. Ginny Tomlinson (nurse)
23. Dougie Twitchell (nurse)
24. Rose Twitchell (restaurant owner)
25. Jackie Wetting ton (police officer)

Barbie did not stop the torture of war prisoners that his team was interrogating in Fallujah. Romeo is an adulterer. Initially, Linda was willing to believe false testimony and bogus evidence against Barbie. As a boy, Rusty tortured ants, burning them alive. Piper still preaches, although she has become an atheist. As a child, Julia was arrogant toward her classmates, thinking herself superior to them. The other adults are unlikely to be blameless (what adult is?), but the narrative does not provide enough information concerning their backgrounds to identify any specific wrongdoing on their part. As the abuse that Julia suffered at the hands of her classmates shows (and as the torture of the residents of Chester’s Mill by the young alien also indicates), children can also be guilty of wicked, cruel behavior, but, again, the reader is not made privy to enough information regarding the children who survive to know exactly what wrongs they may be guilty of having committed. Because of Julia’s humiliation, she learned humility, and she pleads with the young alien who has imprisoned her and the other residents of Chester’s Mill under the dome to release them so that they may live out their “little lives” in a scene reminiscent of both her own abuse (as punishment for her arrogance toward her fellow students) and Rusty’s realization that ants have “little lives” that should not be wantonly destroyed any more than any other life. The alien’s sparing of them may be regarded as a sort of redemption for them, a pitying, if not a forgiveness, of them. Just as one of Julia’s tormentors returned and gave her a sweater to wear home, the extraterrestrial child removes the dome to allow her and her fellow survivors to live out their “little lives,” an act that the novel’s protagonist attributes not to love, but to pity: “Pity was not love, Barbie reflected. . . but if you were a child, giving clothes to someone who was naked had to be a step in the right direction” (1072).

King’s morality (helping others = good; hurting others = evil) is a survivors’ morality. It does not depend upon God or love or anything else but the assumption that helping others is morally proper, whereas hurting them is morally improper. All of the survivors, despite the horrific experiences they have undergone and whatever their faith, if any, may be, or their philosophy of life, may agree to accept this most basic definition of righteousness. It is virtuous to help and depraved to hurt others. King’s characters pass or fail the morality test depending upon whether they help or hurt their friends, neighbors, and families. In quoting Jimi Hendrix (“when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the earth will know peace”) and in suggesting that, while it is not love, pity for another is “a step in the right direction,” King implies that, beyond the simple morality of survivors, there is a deeper, more mature standard for determining right and wrong, or good and evil, which is whether one loves and is loving; he also suggests that, for the majority of human beings, who are morally immature, such an understanding awaits the humility and wisdom that may follow from horrific and traumatic suffering.

The disappointment is the cause of the dome or, at least, of its descent. Earlier in the novel, several possible causes for this phenomenon were suggested, including that the dome was a living entity, that it is the invention of rogue scientists, that it is a means of terrorist attack, that it is a government experiment using the Chester’s Mill residents as guinea pigs, and that it is the work of extraterrestrials possessed of superior technological sophistication. It turns out to be a toy of sorts, and the ones who use it, children. Granted, they are children of extreme intelligence, but children, nevertheless, with no more compassion or love for the human beings whom they torture than children who set fire to anthills have for the ants they thereby kill. The problem with this premise is that it creates a context--a dome, if one pleases--in which adult behavior is perceived by immature, alien beings. They are cosmic creatures, but without the wisdom and love of the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God in whose existence Piper Libby comes to disbelieve and, finally, to deny, accepting, in its stead, a belief in the aliens:

Piper Libby. . . was thinking of all those late-night prayers to The Not-There. Now she knew that had been nothing but a silly, sophomoric joke, and the joke, it turned out, was on her. There was a There there. It just wasn’t God (934).

The absurdity of a pastor rejecting the traditional idea of God for one in which the deity is a group of extraterrestrial “kids” is ludicrous. For greater minds than that of King’s own, such as those of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, Soren Kierkegaard, and Paul Tillich, to mention but a few, such a revision of faith would be not only ludicrous, but also blasphemous. By reducing the complexity of human behavior, predicated as it is, to some degree, upon free will, to conduct that parallels the simple, instinctive, and probably completely determined behavior of ants is itself ridiculous, but then to make human existence a plaything of amoral and sadistic (albeit cosmic) children is to vacate any suspension of disbelief the reader is capable of extending to the author’s work. A belief in the God of the Jews, the Christians, or the Muslims is a basis for understanding human nature; substituting extraterrestrial children for such a deity is simply incredible and silly. Under the Dome is an entertaining novel, to be sure, but, one may be confident in the belief that neither William Golding nor T. S. Eliot need fear having their work confused with King’s novel, the master of horror’s allusions to their respective novel and poem notwithstanding.

NOTE:  Be sure to visit Chester's Mill's website!

Social Protest vs. (a) Religious Tolerance or (b) Hellfire Under the Dome

Copyrigjt 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Two forces which conflict with the authoritarian regime that arises in Chester’s Mill, Maine, in the wake of the descent of the dome, a transparent barrier that cuts the town off from outer, surrounding world in Stephen King’s latest novel Under the Dome, are the band of social protesters whom the town’s boy genius, 13-year-old “Scarecrow” Joe McClatchey, organizes and the congregations of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, pastured by the Reverend Lester Coggins, and the Congo Church, pastured by the Reverend Piper Libby.

None of these organizations, the reader is apt to think, seems likely to stand up to Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie; Police Chief Randolph; Jim’s sadistic son, Special Deputy Junior Rennie; or the U. S. military forces that guard the perimeter of the town.

McClatchey’s Committee to Free Chester’s Mill offers outdated political platitudes such as “FIGHT THE POWER!” and “STICK IT TO THE MAN!” Coggins preaches that the town’s isolation under the dome is the consequence of unconfessed sin. Libby encourages her congregation to “love one another,” characterizing the descent of the dome as a mystery like the affliction to which Job was subjected.

“In times of crisis,” King’s omniscient narrator informs the reader, “folks are apt to fall back on the familiar for comfort”; consequently, “there were no surprises for the faithful in Chester’s Mill that morning; Piper Libby preached hope at the Congo, and Lester Coggins preached hellfire at Christ the Holy Redeemer. Both churches were packed” (192). Of course, McClatchey’s message--“STICK IT TO THE MAN!”--is familiar, too, in quite another way, recalling similar sentiments from the 1960s, when political protest was all the rage.

Against these traditional, or “familial,” approaches to crisis, that of social protest (“STICK IT TO THE MAN!“) and religious tolerance (“love one another”) or “hellfire,” King suggests a third alternative--the one that most of his fiction also implicitly endorses: the banding together of the community--or whatever part of it will band together--against a common foe. So far, at page 192, this is a small band, indeed: former Army captain and current short-order cook Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara; Julie Shumway, the Republican owner and editor of the local newspaper, Democrat; and, possibly, Brenda, the widow of slain police chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, who has not yet been enlisted in the community’s cause.

In times past (for example, in Insomnia), King seems to have been more liberal in his ideology than he appears to be today. ‘Salem’s Lot takes issue with disbelief and hypocrisy among the clergy. Since Firestarter, he has been leery of government authority; in Insomnia, he all but champions abortion as a fundamental feminist human right. In Needful Things and, to a lesser extent, Christine, he offers some rather obvious critiques of capitalism. (Needful Things is also highly critical of Christianity’s get-rich-quick prosperity brand of preaching, and was, in fact, according to King himself, inspired by the excesses of Jim Bakker).

In Desperation, though, which is perhaps King’s most religious novel to date, he seems to have reached a turning point and, indeed, a maturation in his thinking about religious faith. On an individual, personal level, such faith, as exercised on the part of Desperation’s David Carver and John Marinville, trust in God can, indeed, move mountains, King suggests, although, in the process, the faithful themselves are apt to be among those hurt the most, both physically and emotionally. If God promises his followers a garden, it’s no longer the Garden of Eden, it appears, but the Garden of Gethsemane.

With nearly 900 pages left to go, I’m not clear yet as to whether Under the Dome will separate the wheat (Piper Libby’s brand of the faith) from the chaff (Lester Coggin’s brand of Christianity), showing the reader what’s fake faith and what’s the real deal (or, perhaps, why both versions of the gospel message offered by these churches is only partially complete and sustainable). Regardless of the outcome of this line of thought, one form of resistance to tyranny that seems likely to stand is the one that is suggested again and again by King’s fiction: it takes a village to stick it to the monster, whether the monster is a nightmarish fiend or a disturbed fellow human being.

Capitalism doesn‘t escape implied censure, either, because, sure enough, in the next scene, which follows hard upon the heels of the papering of Chester’s Mill with posters announcing the Committee to Free Chester’s Mill’s upcoming protest, King introduces Romeo Burpee, who, as the owner of “the largest and most profitable indie department store in the entire state,” hopes to profit from the protest and the churches’ meetings by selling his overstock at “the biggest damn cookout and field day this town has ever seen” (197).

For Burpee, who is always on the lookout for “the main chance,” entrepreneurial capitalism is synonymous, at times, at least, with opportunism, and, when the opportunity presents itself, he is quick to capitalize upon it, as “ruthlessly” as possible. It seems that opportunistic capitalism can save the day no more easily than social protest for the sake of social protest or the preaching of organized religion, either in its gentle-as-a-dove or its serpents-of-hell formulation.

And, now, back to the marathon that is Under the Dome. . . .

The Monsters and Heroes of Fiction (Are The Monsters and Heroes of the Self)

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. -- James 4:7

Anything goes wrong in one’s life, from birth to death, can, if properly represented, become a monster, for horror fiction, as we explain in a previous post, is really about suffering and, usually, surviving, loss:

• The death of a baby = horror; what kills the baby = the monster.
• The loss of a limb = horror; what causes the loss of the limb = the monster.
• The loss of an eye or another organ = horror; the cause of the loss of the eye or other organ = the monster.
• Starvation = horror; the cause of starvation--maybe it’s bulimia or anorexia nervosa--or, more specifically, the emotional roots of such a disease = the monster.
• Loss of self-esteem = horror; the cause of the loss of self-esteem (abuse, abandonment, rejection?) = the monster.

A monster can produce offspring, many of which will not look like or act as their parents. The monster that kills a baby may cause a mother or a father--or both--to go insane, perhaps transforming a loving parent into a murderer or a suicide--or both. If the monster was a killer, perhaps the parent or parents will become a monster who takes the law into his, her, or their own hands. The abusive mother or father, or the parent who abandons or rejects his or her child may produce a serial killer when the abused, abandoned, or rejected child him- or herself becomes an adult and starts to slaughter and destroy. Perhaps, such a child will become an arsonist instead, or a sadist, or a master manipulator whose violence is subtle and psychological and all the more devastating because unexpected and unperceived. The sins of the father (and mother), the Bible tells us, are visited upon the children, unto the fourth generation. Monsters have parents; they also have progeny. But monsters can be overcome; they can be defeated; sometimes, they can even be killed. Eventually, they meet their match, and they are neutralized or destroyed. The destroyer of monsters is the hero within, the self that is bold enough and strong enough to meet the monster on his, her, or its own terms, on its home turf, and, single-handedly or aided by friends, go hand to hand and toe to toe against the beast. Gilgamesh is such a hero. Hercules is such a hero. Beowulf is such a hero. King Arthur is such a hero. Frodo Baggins is such a hero. Luke Skywalker is such a hero. Buffy Summers is such a hero. Fiction is replete with such heroes, as is life itself, for we--you and I--are potential heroes, just as it is you and I, as often as not, who are also the monsters. The monster is overcome by the hero’s gaining what he or she lacks. The acquisition of this need constitutes his or her transformation, and this transformation indicates his or her victory over the monster. There is no chance of victory for the murdered baby, but there is for the surviving parents; if they resist the temptation to become monsters themselves, they have, despite the loss of their beloved child, defeated the monster. If a person lives the fullest life possible, without self-pity, seeking his or her own welfare and happiness and the welfare and happiness of others as well, despite the loss of a limb, this person has overcome the monster that has lain in ambush for him or her and is a hero rather than a victim. The same is true of the man or woman who loses an eye or another organ. Resisting the demons of despair and self-pity, of helplessness and bitterness means defeating them. Starvation--which can be spiritual or emotional as well as physical--can be defeated if one is able to find the nutrients, whether of the soul or the flesh or both, that he or she lacks or can find the strength of character and will to defeat the monster of bulimia or anorexia nervosa, whatever hell their emotional roots may be planted in. Learning to love and trust others--and oneself--despite having been abused, abandoned, or rejected means overcoming the monster. There are many monsters. They are everywhere. There are many heroes, too, though, for the monster’s nemesis, its slayer, resides within.

Reversals of Fate and Fortune

By Gary L. Pullman

People--and, therefore, their images and likenesses, fictional characters--seek to acquire that which they lack. This is the basic motive in all fiction, for all characters, whatever their more specific, momentary motive or motives may be.

Biologists tell us that organisms, including people, seek to maintain homeostasis, or balance. If they experience a depletion of nutrients, they become hungry and eat, thereby replacing the nutrients they’ve lost. If pressure builds upon the bladder, they seek to relieve this pressure by urinating. If they feel anxious, they seek to find whatever they need to make themselves feel safe and secure. Writers, whether of horror fiction or otherwise, should make sure that, whatever other, more immediate and specific motive with which a character is blessed or cursed causes the character to act, he or she does so to acquire whatever he or she lacks or perceives him- or herself to lack.

Here are a few examples of what characters may lack and seek to acquire; there are many others. Some are not emotional, but material, physical, or social in nature. Often, the basic motive (the acquisition of something that one lacks) is related to a character’s more immediate and specific motive or motives, as we shall see in a moment, when we consider the motives of Marion Crane, of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho fame.


As Psycho opens, we learn that Marion is having an affair with Sam Loomis. However, she is dissatisfied with seeing her boyfriend on only an occasional basis, and she pressures him to marry her. He says he is unable to do so, because he owes his ex-wife alimony payments and is also otherwise in debt.


After she leaves Sam, she returns to work, where her boss’ latest client, an oilman, has brought the $40,000 in cash as the payment for a house he is buying outright for his daughter, who is getting married. The oilman’s daughter’s imminent marriage and happiness contrasts sharply with Marion’s unhappy, single state, perhaps worsening it in her eyes. The fact that she works for an employer who cares little for her comfort or needs, as is clear when he tells a client that his office is air-conditioned, but the outer office that Marion shares with a coworker is not, makes it easier, perhaps, for her to make her decision to abscond with the money that her boss asks her to deposit in the bank. With this money, she thinks, she can finance her own marriage and happiness. On the surface, the immediate and specific motive for Marion’s stealing of her employer’s money is to make it possible for her and Sam to wed. On a more basic level, she is seeking to acquire the love and companionship that she lacks. The basic, general and the immediate, specific motives mesh.

What is true of Marion is true of other characters--especially protagonists--as well. What about Norman Bates, the protagonist of Hitchcock’s movie? What is the basic, general need that he lacks, and how is it related to the immediate, specific motives for his actions? Toward the end of the film, a psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Richmond, explains all: Norman feels guilt for having killed his mother, who dominated him while she was alive, and seeks to “erase the crime”--that is, to make amends--by impersonating her, by becoming her. He killed his mother after she took a lover following her husband’s death; since he was jealous of his mother’s boyfriend, the psychiatrist explains, Norman believes that his “mother” would also be jealous of any woman for whom Norman feels an infatuation, which is why, dressed as his mother, he kills Marion (and, presumably, two other women who have disappeared in the vicinity of his motel).

Obviously, Norman lacks innocence, which motivates him to seek to acquire forgiveness by atoning for his crime, matricide, even if, in doing so, he must kill again, to maintain the act by which he seeks to acquire forgiveness--the impersonation of his mother.

What is true of Marion Crane and Norman Bates is true of other characters as well. By making sure that your characters’ basic, general needs, or motives, and their more immediate, specific motives mesh, you will create more fully realized and believable characters than you would if you were to motivate their behavior by only the momentary and particular desire to acquire something that is truly but a means to the end of gaining that which, on the more inclusive and permanent (often emotional or spiritual) level, they lack.

Blue Mountain Detour

Synopsis

A veteran with a guilty secret plans to spend some time with his family at a plush mountain resort tucked away in the splendid beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It will be great, Nathan Henderson thinks. But this is before they run into the detour that directs them into the heart of a human wilderness that’s more savage than the forest and darker than the falling night. Nathan alone stands between death and his loved ones, but, for a man like him, one chance in hell may be all he needs!

Sample

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Prologue

Nathan Henderson was sweating profusely, despite the chill autumn air that drifted in through the open bedroom window, fluttering the curtains. He tossed and turned, thrashing about beside his wife, Naomi. She muttered, turning away from him.

The enemy was a young man, hardly out of his teens.

He wore the black pajamas and the flip-flop sandals of the Viet Cong.

He had ambushed them from their hiding place in the bamboo hut on stilts with the thatched roof that stood at the end of the muddy road that led through the village, wounding two of their number before fleeing.

Troops on the periphery of the area of operations had captured him, along with several of his comrades. They were to be sent to the rear for interrogation, but Nathan’s commanding officer, Captain Preston, had intervened, and now they were Captain Preston’s prisoners. He had separated this young man from the others.

The enemy soldier squatted on the ground, surrounded by a trio of guards who kept their M16’s trained on him. They had tied his hands behind his back and blindfolded him with his own shirt. Now, on Captain Preston’s orders, a rope was placed around the young man’s neck.

It was a long rope.

The airplanes that were spraying Agent Orange had not reached this location yet, and the jungle that surrounded this isolated village was impenetrably thick on every hand. A single, narrow trail meandered through the dense undergrowth. Tree limbs and heavy foliage obscured one’s vision.

They had called in air support upon encountering the enemy, but it was entirely possible that Viet Cong soldiers remained hidden along this trail, awaiting their opportunity to ambush the company as it resumed its march to its objective. It was also likely that the trail itself was mined or booby-trapped.

Some of the men in Nathan’s outfit were setting fire to the village’s huts. The heavy, dry grass of the roofs caught fire easily, and in minutes the huts on either side of the muddy road were blazing. Nathan could feel the heat on his face as the flames danced in his peripheral vision.

They had brought the bodies of the dead villagers outside, laying them in the mud along the side of the road to be collected for burial later, after the area had been captured and secured.

As usual, it was a sultry day, and Nathan sweated profusely.

“All right,” Captain Preston said, “get the bastard up on his feet.”

A guard reached below each of the enemy’s armpits and lifted him to his feet.

“Start him walking,” Captain Preston ordered.

One of the guards placed the sole of his heavy boot in the prisoner’s back and shoved his foot forward.

The Viet Cong soldier stumbled forward, tripped over his own feet, and sprawled onto the ground.

Captain Preston, the guards, and the other soldiers watching the incident laughed, some of them, like Nathan, nervously. The other Viet Cong prisoners also wore their shirts as blindfolds, but they had no doubt heard their captors’ dialogue and some, at least, understood English well enough to know what had just occurred. They were very still, very quiet.

Sweat trickled into Nathan’s eyes, stinging him. Sure, Nathan told himself, the boy had killed two American soldiers, but what Captain Preston and the rest of them were doing wasn’t right. The Geneva Conventions, as well as common human decency, censored this sort of behavior. Nathan thought, I should intervene; I should say something.

“Get him on his feet,” Captain Preston commanded. The guards bent forward, each gripping an arm, and lifted the Viet Cong soldier. Captain Preston reached up behind the prisoner’s head, and unknotted the makeshift blindfold, pulling the shirt away.

The enemy soldier blinked at the bright sunlight. Like Nathan, he was also sweating profusely.

“Let’s move out, ladies,” Captain Preston ordered.

One of the guards poked the muzzle of his rifle into the prisoner’s back, and the young man marched forward.

The others stood watching, waiting until he reached the end of the rope. Then, they followed their point man.

They all knew that, at any moment, rifle fire might erupt from the bush, and they were on their guard. They were tense, and their eyes moved continuously as they scanned the thick underbrush, eyeing the gaps between the dense thickets and close-standing trees. The only sound was their own footsteps. Like everyone else, Nathan was frightened, and his fear was a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow. His jaw was clenched, and his finger was taut on the trigger. He was prepared, at any moment, to dive for cover and fire at any enemy, seen or unseen, that might ambush them.

Nathan had given no more thought to the Viet Cong soldier ahead of them on the trail. The morality of using him in this manner nagged at Nathan’s conscience, gnawed at it like a dog worrying a bone, but staying alive was all that mattered to him at the moment. If he got out of this jungle alive, he could occupy himself with the luxury of contemplating good and evil, right and wrong.

The explosion was a terrible shock, even though they had been expecting it--or something like it.

Their prisoner screamed and fell to the ground.

A column of dust, like smoke, wound into the sky.

Their human minesweeper had found a mine.

“You!” Captain Preston said, nodding toward Nathan and grinning, “go get that rope off him!”

Nathan swallowed.

“Now!” Captain Preston ordered.

I should refuse, Nathan thought. There’s no way I should be part of this. He glanced nervously at his fellow soldiers. Their faces were hard and inexpressive. Their eyes showed nothing.

Nathan ran toward the fallen enemy.

This is wrong! he told himself. Don’t do it!

The young man’s face was flushed. His body was awash in sweat. His lower right leg was gone, and the broken-off bone showed through the mangled flesh of the stump. His blood was a red pool in the dry, scorched soil of the narrow path. He moved from side to side, moaning and groaning through clenched teeth.

Nathan reached out, untying the rope.

He hurried back to his own men.

“Tie it around the next one,” Captain Preston commanded.

A replacement for the wounded minesweeper had already been shoved forward. He was another terrified, thin, young man. His blindfold had been removed, and the prisoner stared in horror at his fallen comrade. He struggled between the guards on either side of him.

“Hold him still, damn it!” Captain Preston barked.

Nathan slipped the noose over the prisoner’s head. Let it drop around his neck, and tightened it.

“Move out!” Captain Preston ordered the terrified youth.

The prisoner refused to budge.

One of the guards hit him between the shoulder blades with the stock of his rifle, and the enemy soldier staggered forward.

The guard hit him again.

The prisoner stumbled forward, taking one slow step after another, scanning the ground before him for tripwires, disturbed earth, or any other sign of a booby trap or a land mine.

“No,” Nathan moaned, “no, no, no! It’s not right!”

“Nathan,” his wife called, awakened by her husband’s plaintive objections to whatever nightmare was unfolding for him this time.

“It’s wrong!” Nathan wailed.

Naomi shook his shoulder, and his eyes snapped open as he reared up in bed beside her. His face was a mask of horror.

“Nate?” she cooed. “You were having a nightmare.”

His eyes darted about the room, seeing a chair against a thicket of brush, a lamp on a dresser in front of a stand of trees, a wall beside the bloody, legless man on the forest trail. One of them had shot him, Nathan remembered, as they filed past the wounded prisoner.

“It’s all right,” Naomi said. “It was just a dream.”

The nightmarish figure writhing on the ground dissolved. The jungle disappeared. Vietnam vanished again--for the moment, at least.

He breathed deeply, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “Sorry I woke you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “Go back to sleep.”

He almost chuckled at the suggestion; it was so absurd.

“I think I’ll have a nightcap,” he said.

“A drink?”

Her tone, disappointed and concerned, touched him. It also irritated him. He had lived through hell, and sometimes, when the demons revisited him, he needed a drink. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why did she have to be so disapproving of him for wanting to drown the memory of that bloody young man whose leg had been blown off when they’d used him as a human minesweeper? For a moment, Nathan saw the enemy soldier again, writhing on the ground, wailing through clenched teeth.

“I need something,” he explained, “to relax.”

She sighed, looked at him for a long moment. “All right, then, a drink, but just one. Please.”

He tossed back the blankets and rose, making his way around their bed.

When he reached the doorway, she said, “I love you.”

He swallowed. “I love you, too,” he replied softly.

Vietnam had come to symbolize the terrible incidents that had made up his life during the war. The country’s name or even a map of the land made him remember the cruelty of human beings toward one another and how, so many years ago, a young man himself, he had participated in such cruelty. For him, Vietnam had come to mean the worst that was within humanity and the worst that was within him.

For years after he had hung up the green beret forever, he’d drunk himself into a stupor every night.

Then, one evening, he’d met her, and she’d seen what she’d called the “goodness” in him. He had smiled ruefully at that. “There’s no goodness in me,” he’d replied, and he’d told her about Vietnam.

She had saved his life.

She had allowed him, if not to forgive himself, to go on, at least, and he had stopped drinking, mostly, and enrolled in college. Five years later, he’d earned a degree in engineering. Ever since, he’d helped to rebuild civilization rather than destroy it; he’d made sweet love to her, fathering two children; and he’d almost stopped drinking.

He went down the hallway and opened the first door on the right, looking in on his fourteen-year-old son, Henry.

The boy slept the sleep of the innocent, dead weight under the blankets. His eyes moved rapidly beneath their lids, signifying that he was in dreamland, and Nathan thanked God that his son was smiling instead of thrashing about, screaming.

“Sleep tight,” he whispered to his son, closing the bedroom door.

The next room on the left was Julie’s bedroom. He opened it, and saw his sixteen-year-old daughter slumbering soundly as well, dreaming, perhaps, of dancing in a long, formal gown with a handsome suitor under a full moon.

He hoped that neither of his children knew anything of his nightmares or of his cowardly behavior in Vietnam, but he knew that kids often knew more than their parents supposed. It was possible--hell, it was likely--that they had heard his screams in the night. They might even know about the human minesweeper. They might also know about the other incidents, his other nightmares. If so, it was another of the many sins he sorely regretted.

Downstairs, Nathan filled a glass with brandy, and he took a sip of the dark, bitter liquor. It burned its way down his throat and spread its warmth through his stomach.

Tomorrow, he and his family would leave their suburban sanctuary and, for two weeks, anyway, return to nature. They’d rented a cabin deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Nathan was determined that he, Naomi, Julie, and Henry were going to have a good time while strengthening the ties that bound them.

Too frequently of late, his daughter and son had argued. The family was beginning to drift apart, it seemed to Nathan. Their places at the dinner table were vacant more times than he liked, and neither Julie nor Henry ever seemed to be home much anymore. When they were home, they lived in their rooms, in front of television shows that depicted premarital sex and drug abuse as normal behavior or lay abed with headphones blaring obscenity-laden music into their heads.
Nathan hoped that getting back to nature, even if only for a couple of weeks would--

He shook his head.

Their two-week trip wouldn’t so a damned thing, he knew, except make his kids whine more than usual and his wife even more committed to the conveniences of suburban living.
Well, it would be a change of scenery, anyway. It would be a way to relax without alcohol. It would be a way to get away from it all, with just his family around him.

He lifted the glass to take another sip of the brandy, but decided against it, setting the glass aside, and crept up the stairs to the room he shared with his mate.

She was still awake.

As usual, she had waited up for him.

“You’re back sooner than I had expected,” she told him.

He climbed into bed beside her.

“Yes,” he answered, snuggling against her warmth.

She kissed him.

He smiled in the darkness, appreciative of his wife’s love and devotion, grateful for his children’s love and affection, thankful that, in Naomi, he had found a woman whose heart was bigger than Vietnam.

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Bases for Fear, Part I

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in this and the next couple of posts, we ask of life, “How do I fear thee? Let me count the ways.”

Animals. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re faster and stronger than we are; they have greater stamina than we have; they have teeth and fangs or other offensive weaponry; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. In addition, humanity’s relationship, as it were, with the beasts has been as much one of exploitation on our part as it has been one of faithful service on the part of those which we’ve been able, as we say, from our point of view, to “domesticate.” There may be, we fear, as much loathing as loving in the animals’ feelings toward us, their presumed “masters.” Among those that are not “domesticated,” there is not the least pretense of affection for us; there is but the “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun” of William Butler Yeats’ “rough beast” that, “it’s hour come round at last,/ Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.” Occasionally, wild animals that circus performers or magicians believe they have “domesticated” cripple or kill their “masters,” as the white tiger mauled the Las Vegas magician Roy Horn, formerly of Siegfried and Roy. In one of The Chronicles of Narnia novels, one of C. S. Lewis’ characters warns others that Aslan “is not a tame lion.” The same may be said of all other wild animals as well. Exploitation, whether of nature, animals, or other human beings, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U .S. Government Photos and Graphics

Bats. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re faster than we are; they may have greater stamina than we have; they have talons and teeth; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. They’re associated, traditionally, with vampires. They’re also hybrid creatures--at least in the popular imagination--part mouse and part bird, as it seems, and, therefore, an anomaly, a perversion, as it were, of nature. They can’t even get the wings right: they’re leathery rather than feathery, and the damned things can’t see; they use a bizarre “radar sense.” Perversity, real or apparent, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U. S. Government Photos and Graphics

Cemeteries. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They are full of dead bodies, entombed or buried, but dead bodies, nevertheless, or ashes. Those buried are buried for a reason, which has little to do with public sanitation and everything to do with their designation as “human remains,” the physical decay of the corpse, and the revelation that, in the end, we may be nothing more than bones and dust, which makes life both rather horrible and absurd. Cemeteries, like the dead bodies or human ashes they contain, the remains or the cremains, are, as mementoes of death, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Demons. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They represent the embodiment of evil. Whether they are legion or represent only a particular vice or depravity, they are malevolence incarnate. Often, they are depicted with claws and fangs. They may have fur and tails. They may have horns and hooves. Bestial in appearance, they are frightening because they’re faster and stronger than we are; they have greater stamina than we have; they have teeth and fangs or other offensive weaponry; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. They are enemies of God himself and tempt men and women to sin and, ultimately, to denounce God and to be damned for eternity to hell. Demons frighten because they represent the powerful temptation to defy God, surrendering one’s will to self-destructive impulses. The pursuit of the inner demons of self-destructive behavior is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Evil. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. Evil is a mystery. It is an ambiguity and an inscrutability, and the incomprehensible and the irrational are seductive. Evil is a song sung by more than a few sirens. Evil is dark. It is fascinating. It is compelling. It is insistent and enchanting. It is hypnotic. It is spellbinding. It captivates because it has no center, no self, no soul, and its shape is ever changing, always shifting, becoming whatever one lacks but wants and should not have. Its root is pride, but it often puts forth tendrils of envy and leaves of spite. Evil’s protean ability to be all things to all people is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Frogs. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They don’t. That is, they don’t frighten many, but they do frighten some, and, if we let them represent not merely themselves but all amphibians (let’s throw in reptiles, too, for good measure), these creatures are frightening to the majority of people, for those who do not fear frogs are likely to fear lizards or turtles or snakes or eyes of newt. These creatures are primordial in appearance. They suggest the earliest of beasts, the hopping and crawling and creeping ones as much as the running ones, and, as such, they seem to suggest the least evolved life forms, those closest, as it were, to the primordial soup. They’re living embodiments of the days before we existed, suggesting that a world without us is possible--perhaps, someday, even probable. They’re also suggestions that we, who pride ourselves upon having evolved to the very pinnacle of nature, may perhaps regress to the level at which we are, once again, subhuman creatures whose only act of communication is the primal scream. Reptiles and amphibians (and imaginary and imaginative creatures derived from them), represented here as frogs, are reminders of our animal origins and of the possibility that we could regress instead of progressing and are, therefore, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

In this drawing by Gustave Dore, God gets cranky, drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea he parted to facilitate Moses' escape with the Hebrews

God. Why does he frighten? The answer is simple. God is not only powerful, but he is also all-powerful. There is no recourse against his will. As Alexander Pope succinctly phrased the matter: “Man proposes; God disposes.” We are all in the hands of God, like it or not, and his will is our fate. Some fates, we understand, are more pleasant than others, but ours, whatever they may prove to be, are chosen for us, are, in fact, assigned to us from the foundation of the world. Free will is an absurdity and an illusion. God is sovereign, and we are his subjects. God is love, but, sometimes, from the human point of view, love can seem cruel, for the ways of God are not the ways of man. It can be, as Jonathan Edwards said, “a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and, if anything, it is his servants who suffer the most. God is executing his will, not ours. God is a transcendent and wholly other power against which nothing avails unless he suffers it to do so, and it can never be known with certainty what he will suffer and what he will not, and such uncertainty and dependency upon the omnipotent and wholly other is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Hell. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. Hell is nowhere. It is the end of the line. It is endless and eternal futility. It is the “vanity of vanities,” the bottomless pit of despair, an existence apart from the ground of being, from being-itself, from God, the creator and the sustainer of life, of meaning, of purpose, of value, and of love. It is an outer darkness of death-in-life, of meaninglessness, of purposelessness, of worthlessness, of nothingness. “Abandon hope all ye who enter herein,” Dante’s portal to hell warned. Existential meaninglessness is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U. S. Government Photos and Graphics

Ice. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. It freezes. It makes frozen objects brittle. According to the History Channel’s series Ice Road Truckers, even steel, when it is frozen, can snap like a rubber band under pressure. One episode, in fact, shows a thick chain shatter. Truck engines, in the Alaskan wilderness, must be kept running overnight when the temperature is low enough, and equipment that is idle too long may refuse to start. Ice can also snap large branches from mighty oaks, and its weight can crush a roof. Although strong--the diesel big rigs of Ice Road Truckers travel upon highways that are, to a large extent, nothing more than rivers and an ocean that have become solid ice--ice remains treacherous. It can cause vehicles to skid out of control or to plummet through its thinner parts, into a watery grave. Ice can also cause a body to freeze to death, despite layered clothing, heavy boots and coats, and shelter from the storm. Ice is symbolic of a cold nature, of a hostile and inhospitable temperament, of a lack of love and compassion, of the inability or refusal to sympathize and empathize. For all these reasons, and, especially, because ice is treacherous, it is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

In the next post, additional bases for fear will be identified and considered, but, ‘ere we part, let’s summarize our findings with regard to the nine bases of fear that were listed in this post:

• Exploitation, whether of nature, animals, or other human beings, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Perversity, real or apparent, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Cemeteries, like the dead bodies or human ashes they contain, the remains or the cremains, are, as mementoes of death, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• The pursuit of the inner demons of self-destructive behavior is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Evil’s protean ability to be all things to all people is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Reptiles and amphibians (and imaginary and imaginative creatures derived from them), represented here as frogs, are reminders of our animal origins and of the possibility that we could regress instead of progressing and are, therefore, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• God is a transcendent and wholly other power against which nothing avails unless he suffers it to do so, and it can never be known with certainty what he will suffer and what he will not, and such uncertainty and dependency upon the omnipotent and wholly other is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Existential meaninglessness is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Because ice is treacherous, it is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

The God of Desperation

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

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 the soul and body in hell. -- Matthew 10:28

Some say that the most frightening character in Stephen King’s Desperation is not the demon Tak or any of his human hosts but God.

The God of Desperation is not the Sunday school God, and he’s inscrutable and alien, unknowable and mysterious. He’s also omniscient and omnipotent. Everyone, it seems, underestimates him, including his servant, the pre-teen David, whom, because God’s power is evident in the boy, Tak fears and loathes.
When one of the characters is hesitant to follow the plan God, through David, lays out, saying that doing so could cost all of them their lives, David replies that God doesn’t care whether any of them lives or dies; all he wants is to stop Tak, and he’s prepared to do whatever he must to accomplish his purpose.

By the end of the story, most of the townspeople are dead, as are David’s family--both parents and his younger sister--and David concludes, “God is cruel.” The reader has seen that Tak rejoices in cruelty as well as death and destruction. What might have happened had the demon escaped from the Nevada desert town? Stopping him, even at so great a cost as the lives of those who resisted the demon, might have been worth it.

Years before, having been released early from school, David had nailed his pass to a tree outside his tree house, hundreds of miles from Desperation. At the end of the story, another character finds the same pass in his pocket and gives it to David. On the pass the words “God is love” appear. Which God seems, cruel or loving, is a matter of perspective, it seems, and perspective, in this world, is always finite.

Tak learns that, far from there being no God in Desperation, as he’d supposed, it was God who, from the beginning, had ordered all the events that transpired since--and maybe even before--the demon escaped from his imprisonment in the collapsed copper mine outside the town. Tak was defeated before he began his campaign of terror. For the demon, God seems to rule by virtue of his might. The God of Desperation is like the elephant in the parable of the blind men. Whatever part of the animal one happens to touch suggests the nature of the animal, but it is none of the things the men imagine it to be; it is more, and other.

By bringing God to Desperation to battle a demon never heard of before, rather than a familiar spirit such as Satan, King renews the mystery and the majesty of God. The God of Desperation is, again, transcendent and unknowable--mighty, cruel, loving, all of these things and much, much more. In Desperation, it is a terrible thing, once again, to fall into the hands of the living God.