By Truong Tran
May 5, 2017
Horror is the deepest, strongest and also oldest feeling of a human. People usually afraid of what they do not know and cannot understand or explain. This is why human find ghost, monster, and devil scary. A human cannot prove the existence of ghost and devil and understand what they are capable of doing. Through the religious description about evil being, a human usually thinks of the devil as a monster with terrify looks. Devil is described as a being that wants to take human souls and would enjoy doing bad thing to people. But when it comes to the crime story, the unexplainable things are not supernatural creatures but the human themselves. The villain in crime story sometimes doesn’t have an outstanding devilish look. They are just ordinary human but what they did is hard to understand and impossible to accept. Their actions are just as evil as devil’s in many supernatural horror stories. This proves the fact that sometimes devil, monster, and ghost are not the only evil creature. A human can become evil and do many insidious things to others. Science blames it on mental illness, religion blames it on how that person had fallen into the devil’s temptation. But nobody truly understands. Many it is another side of human’s mind which was hidden from us but some people had found their way to bring it back. Human themselves sometimes is the villain in horror story
According to Crawford, P in his research "A New Era of Gothic Horror. School Library Journal"; hHorror was usually considered as a non-academic genre in literature. But young people seem to like to read horror and experience the feeling of being scared. At first many teachers, librarians do not think horror can affect young people in bad ways since horror is considered as low-level, lacking education and moral, but they all agreed that at least young people is willing to read now and that is better than not. But the point of views about horror had changed through the years. Many authors proved that they can convey messages about many issues which can be seen as life lesson through horror stories. But the most common issue that the readers can find in horror story is the philosophical questions about human nature. By reading horror, young people will have to face these questions and help them to create their own moral compasses and from their very unique points of view on the real world. These contexts can prove that horror can help people shape or change their views on the world and society, which is the principle of literature. That is why horror has all the requirement to be a genre of literature.
I myself believe that there are many horror stories that can be considered as literature. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates is an excellent example. ?” Many symbols that the reader might skip while reading the story can make people understand more about the underlying message that the author: Joyce Carol Oates wants to convey. Arnold Friend is based on a real-life serial killer, which is also a psychopath. His murders took place in Tucson and he was known for “The Pied Piper of Tucson” while his real name is Charles Howard 'Smitty' Schmid, Jr. Arnold’s outlooks have many similarities to Charles’s. Beside that the victim in real life are also at the age of Connie and have the similar features: from a good family, pretty and naive. This is one of another hidden content that Joyce wants to send to people: a well-educated girl from a good family is not immune to be a victim of this kind of criminal. There are also many more contexts in this story that many people might miss such as religious context, science, and technology context… These contexts prove that horror is based on true events. Horror is not only about supernatural creatures. The social context in this story which is how Connie, a girl from a good, classic American family became a victim of murder, change the way people think about crime and reality. In real life, in the end, it is not the bad guy to die; horror can happen to anybody and anybody could be killed at the end of the story, even though they are the “good people.”
If we took a deeper look at the spooky, supernatural horrors that we have read. We cab see the scary elements in that story is not only the supernatural factors but also the things that people are capable of doing to others. For example: in the “Tale-Tell Heart”, the scariest thing is not the sound of a dead person’s heart; but the thing that the narrator did to his victim. He did not only kill the victim. He tortured the old man by terrorizing him nights before deciding to end his life. How can a person do such things? Besides, according to John E Reilly in his article “The Lesser Death-Watch and “The Tell-Tale Heart””, the sound could be just the noise the the lesser death-watch, which is an insect that lives under the floor makes. The narrator in the story suffered from a mental illness which causes him to have a negative and hateful feeling toward his master’s eyes, the old man, the victim in the story. Because of the same illness, he deluded himself that the sound that he heard was the sound of the victim and it was seeking for revenge. He let his mental illness lead him into many more delusions such as how the police officers already knew about this crime and they were making fun of him. In the end, he confessed his crime while screaming to the police; which can also be understood as he has gone all crazy. Lesser death-watch is a kind of insect that live under the wooden wall or floor. This explains why the narrator heard the sound from under the floor, where he just buried the body. This essay can be used to argue that maybe there are no supernatural features in this story. The scariest part is not how the heart seeks revenge for his master but the narrator is a dangerous, crazy man who is capable of not only murdering but also mentally terrorizing the victim many nights before his death.
There are many more horror stories that could change our view on the world, people, and society such as the "Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs and "Young Goodman Brown" Nathaniel Hawthorne... But let's move backward to a long time ago. We all know and love fairy tales. Almost everyone in the world grows up with those colorful and magical fairy tales and the Grimms' Fairy Tales is one of the most popular stories. But in her studying, Aileen Graef claimed that many fairy tales can be full of horror. The famous “Brothers Grimm’s Fairytales” that people all around the world know and love might not be always full of colors and singing. In the original edition of 156 stories, there are many features that are not appropriate for children such as sex, self-mutilation, and murder. The book at first was not published for children or general readers. After two editions for adult, the Grimm Brother change their minds and made the book more suitable for middle-class families. After many more editions, the book was finally considered as the stories for children and household. Disney then popularized these story by making them into colorful and happy animations which many people adore. Some horror features in the original is: The evil queen is Snow White’s biological mother but she wants to kill and eat Snow White, she was punished by Snow White in the end of the story by being forced to wear a hot iron pair of shoes and dance to death; Cinderella’s step sisters have to cut off parts of their feets to fix the shoes. Fairytale is a way people use to teach children about life, about how they should become the good people and how karma works. Fairytale used to have many horror contexts but they got cut off to be more suitable for children; which means since a very long time ago, people found horror short story can teach people about life and create a new point of view on the real world. They wanted to use these story as a way to educate children so they edit them to be more appropriate. This proves that since the very long time ago horror is a genre of literature. People just stereotype horror literature with those cheap scary stories and rated horror as a low-level literature and lacking education.
If you are not a book person, we can still study literature and its genres by movies. Horror movies are familiar with any of us nowadays but do you know that many horror movies are based on real events? Many people know about this famous horror “The Amityville Horror” film series (1979-12017). This series based on the true event that took place on Long Island. The oldest son of the family which is also the murderer of both his parents and all four of his siblings. The oldest son whose name Ronald DeFeo, Jr claimed that he was controlled and forced to kill his family by the paranormal force. A year after that another family moved in the house and had to flee the house and put the blame on the supernatural activities in the house. There is no prove the existence of the paranormal activities of the house. However, the crime is real and people are killed. People usually focus on the supernatural factors and forget about the real life crime in this case. This article can help to argue that the supernatural, in this case, is unsure but the crime horror is there but people have the tendency to forget the crime but only remember about the supernatural factors.
In an online article with the name "6 Serial Killer Movies based on Real Life Murderer" by DeAnna Janes, there is a list of horror movies that are based on real life criminal. The article is a list of six serial killers in real life and how their way of murdering people. These serial killers are the material of Hollywood to exploit to create crime horror movie. The most disturbing case was Jeffrey Dahmer and the movie that is based on his crime: Dahmer. He killed in total 17 people. His first kill occurred when he was in high school. He lured gay and bisexual men into his trap, drugged them, tortured before killing them. This list is a strong weapon to fight against the idea that horror is not realistic. Many horror stories especially crime horror stories are based on the true event and real people. Horror movies in the past have many metaphors on the current society issues. Directors put many real life issues in the images of horror and in that way, many people can approach to these issues in an indirectly way. Some example is the image of the King Kong can be understood as in the Great Depression time, white men are intimidated by an alone but the strong and confident African American man. The Japanese movie Godzilla brings a message about how nuclear weapon can destroy the whole country. Vampire movies at one time was a warning about the risk of getting HIV/AIDS. This article is another proof of how horror can reflect real life issue with its metaphor. The best way to warn people about something is making them afraid of it and only horror can do this job.
As I already mentioned, same with horror stories; if we watch a supernatural horror movie and slowly break down every single detail; we will find out that the real horror is in the people, not the ghosts or monster. Let's take a look at "Dead Silence." The movie is about the curse of a puppet master had put on the whole town and especially on a family. All started with a night when Mary Shaw, a famous puppet master in town was performing with her most favorite and also famous puppet: Billy. Everything went smooth and the audience loved her until a young boy pointed out that Billy was not talking but Mrs. Shaw was simulating his voice. Mary Shaw was angry at the boy and the puppet threatened him. One night, the boy went missing and the whole village blamed Marry and gave her the death penalty. Mary put the curse on the whole family. She comes back from the death and hunts down every man of the family. Near the end of the movie, the audience would find out that Mary had to kidnap the boy that public humiliated her and turned him into a puppet. Of course, people would skip the fact that Mary could kill and turn a very young boy into a puppet, which is an action that normal people would never do. Another disturbing fact about the movie is how the village decided to kill her brutally without any evidence of her crime. Once again this article can be used to argue that people will easily notice the supernatural horror and get scared by it but take the crime horror lightly. Even though the supernatural will almost impossible to happen to them but the crime horror sure will.
Horror is one of the most lasting and important genres of literature. Almost every writer in every country and culture in the world had tried to write horror. The supernatural element in horror is a useful, powerful and strong literature metaphor to help the writer to deal with many issues in society that they could not discuss directly. Horror is not just about scaring people. Sometimes, the metaphor in horror has a strong and power message just as the metaphor in any different genre of literature. It was truly difficult to convince people to see horror as a literature genre since nowadays there are too many low levels, lacking education and moral horror novels, movies. They make people think that it is all horror about scary face ghosts, devils jump out from the dark to scare you. But if people take time and find a good, classic horror story, they will see and understand why horror can change their view or assumption in the real world. True horror will take them to the dark side of human minds, the side that science somehow still could not fully discover and answer. For example: the most reasonable explains for the act of some serial killers when they could not answer the questions “How could he do that?”, “How could he become something like that” is insanity, mental illness. But is it the true reason? I think we will never know. We cannot understand everything inside someone’s mind. Like I said, horror shows us this deep, dark side on human, but left us alone to figure the answer. Just like literature, horror changes our view on humans and the outside world, but in a dark and negative way. Horror’s job is making people fearful. But horror in literature does not only make us afraid the story but also the world because the world is already changed in the way we see it. Horrible things can happen to us; not only the bad guys are deserved to die; anyone can be the villain and an ordinary person can do things which we cannot believe and will not understand why did he do that; how can he be able to do that. Isn’t it way scarier than a white ghost or a red devil?
