Posted by fústar in 
Evenin' all.
Given that one of very short stories up for discussion tonight ("Sredni Vashtar") concerns a great ferret god who lays "some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things", it's probably unwise of me to waffle on too much in an introductory fashion. Therefore, given my (fairly understandable) opposition to having my throat ripped out, I'll keep it brief.
What, you might reasonably ask, links this pair of tales (written some 70 years apart) together? I'm not altogether sure…possibly nothing. There's abundant hatred (both psychotic and desperately lonely) in each of them I suppose – but it's best to leave further such speculation for our back and forth chatter below.
The main reason I chose 'em was (as mentioned previously) because they represent, for me, two highly effective examples of what the "horror"1 short story can achieve "in (very) short compass".
Since the Dreadful Thoughts project still hopes to encourage/bully readers (and I am one) into submitting their own 500-word tales of terror (see here) then it seems perfectly appropriate to take a look at how the professionals have done it.
Plus, y'know, it's fun…
But enough of all that. Fire up your hookahs, uncork those draughts of vintage that have been "Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth" and let's do the Monster Mash.
Away we go.
- I'm happy to accept Saki's tale as "horror", using a broad definition of the term. [back]
Evening all. I read these on the bus on the way home presented in a 4 word wide column on my mobile internet doo-hickey so I’m off for a quick re-read. Add in a detour to deliver a milky bottle of goodness to my offspring and I’ll see you all in about 15 minutes.
As is customary, I feel it is important to describe tonight’s tipple.
It’s a “Chateau Montaigne, Bourdeaux Supérieur 2003″. Early days yet, but it’s going down quite satisfactorily – even though there was nearly, seconds ago, a moment of high tragedy/hilarity.
Coming up the stairs, bottle in hand, I attempted to step over a cat (ours of course) who was inconsiderately plonked in my path.
As I lifted my foot, my be-socked toe caught in the leg of my trousers and stayed there, causing me to wobble alarmingly and threaten to pitch head-first over the bannisters. I would have been found in a combined pool of my own blood and French vino.
I’m not sure which I’d have been more sorry to spill.
Sadly, tragically I’ve a hape of work to do tonight, sniff, so I’m going to sit here and do it and pop in and out but I have to get on it before I start falling asleep… so I’ll be quiet tonight, and if I talk to much send me back!
I adore these to stories – I’ve loved Saki for a long time, and the Tell Tale Heart I did in college – supremely maaaaaaad, isn’t it? Best mad!!!!! voice ever!
Despite all my guffawing about the future of digital books – I still printed both stories and them last night.
I’m with Fústar in taking Sredni Vashtar as a horror tale. Who is going to argue with a long, low yellow-brown beast with a taste for blood?
goodness, glad you’re still with us Fústar
Tonights tipple is a cheap bottle of Mad Dog White chosen by Tom Doorley, via Spar.
I think the horror comes from the idea of an innocent creating a vengeful god. A ferret’s pretty small. Not likely to kill a human of it’s own volition.
So the idea of a child calling it into being out of his own sadness and frustrated power, and then not regretting it, but rejoicing in his achievement.
That’s horrific. THough we’re definitely on the child’s side, right? That’s what’s so great about Saki, the way the underdog gets to triumph.
heh. My husband ran an off licence and he poopoos both Tom Doorley, and his Spar choices!
he did have Reasons, but being a woolly minded female I can’t remember them
Embarr, We’ll be waiting. there’s lots of “Mammying” going on around this club. I feel very male and useless…
Jo & David, Work away there for a bit…I’m just finishing my dinner!
Herbal teas by Pukka, to wash down as varied and many painkillers as I can find, for my teeth have exploded and my head’s gone septic.
You’re right to call Saki’s story more condensed, but it seems to sit easily enough in its brevity. Poe’s bursts at the seams, setting the land speed record in reaching the “effects” of dread, horror, mania; I daresay Edgar wrote it on a bet.
I’d never read any Saki before. He’s always on bookshelves, but there’s always something else I want to purchase first. Anyway, Sredni Vashtar provides the backstory for Gef, the Talking Mongoose that I’ve been looking for all these years. It’s all clear to me now, the whole thing.
9pm’s def better
The tipple here is vodka with Pomegreat on ice.
There was added horror to my reading of Saki. I once lived in a mews behind my cousin’s house and the descriptions of the garden and indeed the Woman, who was not disimilar to my cousin’s wife in manner, gave me a little shiver!
I found the chant to be the most chilling of all. And the slow buttering and making of the toast. The actions of a psychopath but yet, it’s a small child that we completely root for.
jo: I have to say – the cheap Mad Dog is vinegar. Tom Doorley has a lot to answer for.
Fústar: Anything nice on the menu? (9pm might suit better from now on)
niall: a toothache brought on by the hutch god perhaps?
Have to agree with Jo’s reading of Saki. I was rooting for the underdog throughout the story (reminded me Rita Skeeter and Harry Potter and countless other children’s stories of adults in power)
RE: “The Tell-Tale Heart” I’ve just realised that the maddest bit isn’t in the literature.org link I posted above! Gah!
literature.org gives us this tepid version:
Whereas the text I have, in book form, adds brilliantly to the horror:
The dismemberment and demented “ha! ha!” are absolutely of the essence!
Here’s a better link:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/POE/telltale.html
Link in post changed now. Bloody censorship.
Oh, niall, a treat awaits you! God love you with the teeth though – give me child birth anyday :)
Embarr, I agree, but I don’t know about the psychopath bit. I like the purity of the idea – the aunt is a torturer of small children, hte child is powerless in the face of her every sadistic whim. S makes that very clear. So I like the idea that he cooly triumphs against evil. I find it much harder to take when he’s sitting there, waiting for his only other friend to be carried away,
demistified, stripped of his power, for his aunt to win again, and he’s just this little abused, defeated boy. I hate that!
So I’m glad that his power remains intact.
He’s really channeling the loony, isn’t he!
I agree, I didn’t mean that the child was a psychopath, more that the if you didn’t know it was a child, it would read as such.
All the best children’s stories have the child triumph over the adult.
RE: Conradin’s terrible loneliness – it seems Saki himself suffered a similar up-bringing.
His portrayal of Aunt/Female Cousin characters has led to charges of misogyny – something I think there’s an undoubted trace of in this evening’s text!
That’s for our inner child, isn’t it. We need to win. Us parents must remember that! THough I think these days, children win all the time ,and it’s us parents who need the encouragement and empowerment :)
Was he gay? I think he was. His stories are more mysanthropic than mysoginist, I think.
I read soemthing autobiographical once, about little marks he made regularly in his diary – turned out he was recording each time he masturbated!
ach excuse my spelling
Absolutely. I think it is important children win, life lessons in loss are for later.
Though of course, I hold the right to revoke this opinion as O gets older :)
Not sure that children win more these days than in the past – but it definitely rang true for my own inner child.
Which really, in this case, is a triumph of the world of imagination over that of (as Saki puts it) “the world that [is] necessary and disagreeable and real”, no?
The comparison between his cousin’s dour, sensible religion and his own vivid and fierce form of worship hammers this idea home too I think.
Embarr, no, you’re right, teenagers don’t need to win, dear me no, down with all that :)
Presumably Shredni V and the religion as described is his own fierce, joyous freedom and lack of inhibition, the world and spirit of a child. He actually responds very healthily to his oppression, he doesn’t let it warp or defeat him, but safeguards it in the ferret god instead.
Hmm, am I making that up?
It was the same triumph of imagination in Tell Tale Heart – this time working against the narrator, pushing him into that necessary and disagreeable world…
I think so. At least, that appears to be the consensus.
If I’d have done that when a young teen my diary would have been unreadable for the proliferation of dots!
Whose wouldn’t?
It’s a bittersweet victory for young Conradin, methinks, since he and we know that he’ll be dead in five years. Talk about horror. I like the fierce devotion to his animals:
In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet.
He may have been monitoring his vision! Masturbation was a fraught pastime in those days :)
David, I wonder is that a definion of what it is to have mad delusions or whatever, I have no worrdsearch tonight – when your imagination takes control of you, on a negative way.
Jesus, but we’re all saying “fierce” a lot.
Why dead in five years, I missed that?
I think I empathised with it because of the devotion to his animals, and no other outlet for his affection. You’d be hard pushed to love a hen, really, wouldn’t you?
Fierce is right though, isn’t it? Ferrets are bright and fun and sweet, but I wouldn’t want to see one in action, when the red mist descended!
Jo, I guess one could argue that his “imagination” (in all its power and fierceness) is invested in Sredni, whereas his need for love and tenderness is concentrated on the hen.
Once the hen is cruelly disposed of he has nothing left (?) but to express his imagination in as potent a way as possible!
David, Very good point. It certainly appears that the loathing the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” has for the old man is one fuelled entirely by a gradually more extreme inner (imaginative) monologue. The more the fury grows the more a certain hideous momentum gets going.
I think the use of red flowers, red berries & red thoughts shows the power of both a child’s anger and imagination. A child’s anger can be fierce and in the black, white & grey world of the Woman, red is an incredible contrast. Like that old short movie with the Red Balloon.
or the red (and contrasting yellow in Shyamalan ’s The Village)
While there’s nothing to suggest Conradin’s story is anything but a dead-end, I’m curious about what this boy, spared the painful confusions of moral discovery in the “real world”, given to possibly spurious notions of causality and divine privilege, did next.
Aha! I think the “5 years” bit is only mentioned in Andrew Birkin’s terrific adaptation. See the bottom of this page for a link (have a look later).
http://anno.co.uk/telegraph.shtml
In the story, I think, a gradual, slow fading away through illness (and loneliness?) is hinted at instead.. The point’s still valid though – he may be dying.
Jo,
Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.
Embarr, I agree.
My daughter is very interested in blood. She has a natural grá for the gore alright.
I think she may be the next Stephen King.
It’s the first sentence in the version I read, and in this one.
I guess we’re gonna need some standard editions, henceforth.
Niall, Dang you’re right. And the first line too! It’s still more emphatic in the film version though…he said hiding his face in shame.
Even Mrs De Ropp’s introduction is over powering ‘who counted for nearly everything’. Her opinion even outshone the doctor’s own professional diagnosis…
So, where does that put Master Conradin on our radar now?
What Conradin Did Next!
There’s a jolly, Just William type, book waiting to be written! Full of night-time raids of the pantry and cheeky vandalism with a sling-shot.
Oh and then a slow painful death…
Oh. Interesting. That makes it all the more urgent I suppose.
And more believeable, that he is more comfortable with death than he should be.
What would he do next? I think the story suggests he would rather just love and be loved in peace? I don’t think he’s bad in himself, just driven into a corner.
Jesus, Fústar!
Oh, I loved you phonie tubby, by the way. Creepier than any of this, alright!
The silky & effete doctor. What an odd yet so descriptive set of words.
I think he has a very strong voice, Saki, it adds to this stories, his humour and gruesome, dry glee
great contrast of what Conradin did next:
“night-time raids of the pantry and cheeky vandalism with a sling-shot.”
“love and be loved in peace? I don’t think he’s bad in himself, just driven into a corner.”
And then… a slow and painful death. (That’s a book I’d read.)
I’m a sap :)
You’re right Jo – Saki’s controlled humour and careful voice adds to the story – a stark comparison to the madness and derision from Poe.
you’re right about Saki. Not about being a sap. Honest! :)
Jo, Sure who doesn’t find child death funny? Oh wait, nobody…that’s right. Hmmm.
Glad you liked the Phoney-tubbies. Head down to the 24 hour garage any night and you’ll find them there looking for munchies.
But seriously, I don’t think there’s a “next” to this tale – which is probably a mark of its quality. The final full-stop feels terminal (in every sense). I don;t think he’ll recover and flourish, I just see him dying more or less happily – feeling “actualised” or whatever self-help gurus would call it.
Embarr, definitely. Saki doesn’t even give you someone else to root for in the face of this stifling old dust-hag. The kid is utterly alone.
I’d say the TTH was fun to write though. Mwahaha!! Fun and scary.
I think that’s the joy of the short story, the Next isn’t really so important.
Obviously child death isn’t funny! But mean aunt death is, in the grotesque way it’s portrayed here. I’m thinking of other stories too – like Esmé, where someone gets eaten by a pet hyena. It’s like James’ parents getting trampled by an escaped rhinocerous in the Giant Peach.
because they’re mean and you’ve rooted for the child you don’t mind that they get a sticky come-uppence.
Especially in James and GP.
I prefer the quiet and determined horror of Saki to the slightly hammy madness of Poe
Ah Roald Dahl, the champion of the beaten down child.
I reckon you’re right, Fústar. This may be the happiest we’ll ever see him, which is also, you know, kinda horrific. All in all, I really liked this story. I’ll part with it when we turn to Poe almost reluctantly.
The Roald Dahl comparison is a good one. Now there was a guy with (as they say) “issues”!
I think the Poe is a fun little rollercoaster, and god knows pop culture and the media are delighted by that sort of bloody serial killer behavior.
But I think it’s significant how much more we have to say about the Saki.
The other really speaks for itself.
Saki is so mannered, he writes about the uncontrolled controlled. I think Jane Austen would have loved him!
Poe’s tale is the more obvious horror – the man driven demented by his imagination.
The appearance of three happy police officers to your door at four in the morning would do that to anyone… despite the fact that you’re sitting above the corpse you just buried.
Also – in Tell Tale Heart, there is mention of ‘information’ being lodged at the police station…? Is it just the reports or did he himself alert them? (The lad protests too much to his own sanity)
I think that’s the joy of the short story, the Next isn’t really so important.
That’s a good point, Jo. I confess, I’m greedy and like to wring as much fright from the narratives as I can. In this case, a tithe of grubs for the hedgehog in the garden, praying the scullion who caught him wanking gets AIDS. Or, you know. Fits and a slow death, fine.
Aren’t children sort of “quiet and determined” in a way?! They have a silent and intense focus that can be a bit unnerving at times. Given that, I think the rhythm of Sredni V is wholly in keeping with the imaginative world of a child.
Sticking up for the Poe tale somewhat, I think you have to see it as a) An example of the horror short story in its very infancy, and, b) the voice of a psychotic adult.
That sense of paranoia, of accumulating (suppressed) rage seems distinctly that of a man who’s gradually become psychologically brutalised into this state.
I don’t think he did have issues, I think he just tapped into what we’ve been talking about in the same way. He came from an era where if children spoke out, they were hit with a cane! I think most of us at one time or another shouted ‘I wish you were dead!’ at our parents, or perhaps ‘I wish I was dead!’ , which is less healthy!
The whole gruesome death thing explores that, perhaps (though the rhinoceros death was an orphaning tragedy – the aunts were the baduns in J and the GP, I think!)
Again, I think it’s an explosion of feeling that expresses frustration and disempowerment, it’s not literal.
I like how, despite not fitting so neatly into the horror genre, we have spent more time on Saki.
Poe’s tale didn’t have as much to offer the discussion – despite the very convincing manic voice that he had to embody.
Oh, I agree Fústar, I think it’s great. The gibbering, paranoid hysteria. And it’s so scary, all that eye business.
Reminded me of Mad Eye Moody, actually, thinking of Harry Potter. JK R stole it all!
Your “What Conradin Did Next” is slightly more “Catcher in the Rye” than what I had in mind!
It is shocking how much JK Rowling did take… look at Gaiman’s The Books of Magic!
That’s a good point on the infancy of the horror short story. It’s easy to forget it was a new format. I love TTH but the Saki just effects me more. That could be due to the fact that I (insert embarrassed face) had not heard of Saki prior to this and have studied TTH in the past.
I read Saki early as my father was a big fan, it suited his nasty sense of humour perfectly. He was so delighted by all the stories.
So it’s given me a nostalgic fondness for them. Except the Easter Egg, which is about terrorism and children getting blown up, I didn’t like that :(
I hope we get a chance to do Gabriel Ernest.
Anyway, Embarr and Niall, I was going to say I’m jealous, I’d love to read them all for the first time. Though a reread will probably do me – how did I blank out the opening like about Conradin’s illness, for example.
David wrote:
Poe’s tale is the more obvious horror – the man driven demented by his imagination.
Seriously. I may be reading this with the benefit or curse of hindsight, but I’d rather a subtler allusion to the dismemberment – the Ha! Ha! is over the top. Perhaps the horrific was different when it was published – here is a man beyond the pale, bereft of conscience, betrayed only by his mania!
Yet, it’s just that mania that takes the horror out of the humdrum world, full of its blaggards, blowhards and naifs, and deposits it squarely, safely in a fantasy world, where ghastly acts are the charge of madmen and only nattering intellectuals deserve {and get} their comeuppance, cf Whistle.
The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, eg, would have been severely compromised if the protagonist were a babbling nitwit. It’s scarier when it’s the auctioneer who closed the sale of your house, or kid from the caravan park across the road who let you read his comics.
David, this (funnily enough) reminds me of an old pal of mine, who I no longer see. He was a huge Poe fan and used to do these amazing pen drawings based on Poe’s tales (Premature Burial being a favoured theme).
One night, when having some sociable (free house, parents away) drinks the Guards were called by an over-vigilant neighbour who thought my parents’ place was being burgled.
Despite his total innocence (we were 18 and legal) he pegged it up stairs and hid under the bed. I explained it all to the Guards and they trudged out slightly embarrassed.
It took quite a while to persuade my pal that it was safe to come out. At that point I told him “But you’d done nothing wrong!” His response? “I felt like I had!”
The Tell-Tale Heart, how are ya?
It is a caricature of a madman alright. I find it scary and funny. I wouldn’t enjoy it as much if it wasn’t funny. It would be more tragic, more horrific.
The manic laugh has become a joke now, especially now we know more about psychology.
But it has its place, surely!
That’s a great anecdote.
That’s a funny story! I think a lot of Irish kids feel that way round the guards. I did and I was a squeaky clean middle class girl.
I wondered if it was an Irish thing. In the States, he would have smashed up all your shit. “Well, like, the cops came, and they clearly thought I was guilty, so I might as well have done something. I mean. Fuckin’…”
I don’t see it that way. This is obviously some sort of “death row” (or equivalent) confession of a mad man. There’s no detached, subtle narrator at work here. It is, as you suggested earlier, an explosion of mania. Given that, I think the “Ha! Ha!” adds rather than subtracts. It fits in well with a sense of an outpouring rather than a considered retelling.
I also love the way he thinks that his careful chopping up of the corpse somehow proves that he is not mad and that the murder was somehow a justified act committed against a despicable, vulture-eyed, foe!
I love that story! I am always nervous around Guards, they make me feel guilty everytime.
Exactly, fústar. He’s quite a sympathetic looney, really.
Haha! Nice story – highlights the guilt Poe’s character felt…
Niall: I agree, the manic ferocity is a bit much but I think the story fits easier into the horror category. I hadn’t thought of Saki has horror until tonight…
As for the Young Poisoners Handbook being told by a nitwit – sounds like a Jim Carrey remake…
It just seems too perfect that the pal in question was one of the people who first turned me on to the world of Poe, Harry Clarke, Aubrey Beardsley etc. He lived the guilty, fretful life he read about…god bless him.
I just got shirty with the Guards and told them that they owed us for the window they damaged while pouring in. I was a lippy bastard back then…
Okay, sorry.
Anyway, it’s testament to Poe’s ability, I think that he can still tickle the hairs on the back of my neck and clench my teeth as he twists and twists that writerly rope in _TTH_. Whatever my objections to the narrator’s mania, Poe’s “effect”, as described in the The Philosophy of Composition, is achieved:
Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone—whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone—afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.
The dude ate his own dog food.
What! REally? And presumably dog food would have been pretty basic offal then.
Freud said the scariest thing is the at which is familiar but just slightly not quite right. something unfamiliar hinted at. Which is why possession’s so scary, perhaps. Eating dog food is a little like that!
I meant to say, I thought the bit about the blaked out lantern, and creeping into the sleeping man’s room so slowly, softly, then turning it on by degrees as the old man lies there in silent terror – blood curdling!
I also love the way he thinks that his careful chopping up of the corpse somehow proves that he is not mad and that the murder was somehow a justified act committed against a despicable, vulture-eyed, foe!
I think that’s mordantly funny, but not exactly terrifying! Of course, the cops must have found it deeply unsettling when they prised those floorboards.
I am just in from picking up herself. I have now read the first paragraph of the story. The silky and effete doctor is an agent of Mrs de Ropp, hence his opinion counts for nothing, nor does is encompassed in the three fifths of the world which are neither conradian or his imagination.
Good start. Very Roaldian. I’ll go on.
The thing I like best about TTH is the progress of the mania. A quality of a person, who has never wronged you (and who you, in fact, love) starts getting on your nerves. This irritation grows by degrees until it seems (in psycho-logic) perfectly reasonable to kill this abomination whose idiosyncrasies you have now come to loathe!
It really reminds me of Crime and Punishment and that vibe you get from certain Russian literature of the period. By living with (or in the same building as) another you’re somehow imprisoned with them. They become symbols of your own frustration, sense of confinement, and self-loathing. Killing them become an empowering act for a wretched soul.
The slow build of the entry into the room is likewise brilliantly breathless.
Jo,
Sorry, that’s some awful corporate slang I picked up in another life.
My favorite bit is that protracted entrance:
It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this
Will have to bow out kids, did my first Yoga class this evening since pre baby & am wrecked!
Another fabulous night & great stories, Fústar. Looking forward to Monday fortnight.
copernicus, Plow on dear boy. You’ve got Poe to read too. We (or at least I) will wait for you.
Embarr, night night and thanks for stopping in. A distinct pleasure as always. Tell the baba and the hubby I send my best (kisses for the former, a manly slap on the back for the latter).
Ok, niall, I need some kind an careful explanation on that one!
How could anyone not laugh at the hour to get his head through the door. Yet it’s a grotesque image too. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeer’s Jooooohhhnnnnyyyy….. giggle
I could swap the kisses and the slap and become like a character in one of our stories…
Night all!
‘a manly slap on the back for the latter’
Oooh Matron!
Night Embarr, I wish you quality sleep – sigh!
I’m following Embarr and bowing out too I’m afraid – plenty of work still to do before bed and Tom Doorley’s wine choice is running through me fast.
Was going to hold to be commenter no. 100 and try to claim the manky toy but have to get the head down. Suspect I’ll send the ‘heavies’ to get it instead.
Night all.
Fustar, good call. It definitely has that sweaty fervor found, and sustained for hudreds of pages, in my favorite Russian literature. Inspector Porfiry certainly seemed a more formidable adversary than these police officers, though! That said, I prefer Raskolnikov’s motivations, because he’s just an impoverished, albeit brilliant, student, as if there were any other kinds in Dostoevsky’s writing, who buys into a philosophy and overdraws. I find it closer to The Cask of Amontillado, in that sense.
Matron, please!
Something else about TTH that I enjoy – the fact that terror is felt by both the murderer and the victim.
The murderer (our narrator) inches ever so slowly into the room, holding his breath, terrified that the old man will wake and that the vulture eye will turn its gaze on him and find him out.
The old man, meanwhile, wakes and sits for an age in the bed listening in silent terror for a noise in dark. His heart beats, the moment fizzes with horrible tension. He feels death stalking him.
A terrific dynamic and one not frequently seen nowadays.
David,
I think you got it!
Jo, that’s a great visual. When exactly should one say “Here’s Johnny!” in that circumstance?
Also, Eating one’s own dog food, explained.
Ooh Matron! x 1 Million.
Not sure what her husband would say about that.
Night, David.
The murderer (our narrator) inches ever so slowly into the room, holding his breath, terrified that the old man will wake and that the vulture eye will turn its gaze on him and find him out.
I also like this, because he’d been doing this for a week already, and has been given every opportunity to change his mind. The guy must really be oppressed by that rheumy eye!
cheers niall, I have learned something new. And I’m so glad it wasn’t disgusting :)
So fústar, what would be scarier, being killed by a terrified looney, or a calm controlled one?
This is up there with another favourite ‘would you rather’ – be boiled to death, or sliced to death. A friend said it would depend which end the slicing started :)
Presumably at the moment when “With a loud yell” he “threw open the lantern and leaped into the room”.
Jack’s entrance in The Shining is, in fairness, somewhat less subtle.
One last thought as I am an obsessive refresh button presser. I always thought that the filmy eye was a blind one and that all his faffing with the lantern was unnecessary, therefore adding to the madness. But I think I might have just made that up.
Like Crime and Punishment there’s a real feel here of youth despising old age and “weakness”. The old man means nothing by his” rheumy eye” but it means something to his killer. It means infirmity, helplessness, slow fading away.
Youth hates old age and wants to destroy it. A common enough literary theme.
Probably so, but he seems to feel the gaze nonetheless. In fact, the deadness of the gaze seems to infuriate him further.
Hideous eyes burning into and judging you are pretty common to Poe. See the “fiery eyes” of “The Raven” for example.
That’s astute. Saki might even see that hatred going both ways.
I don’t think Saki’s adults resent youth though, I think they are far removed from it, and see children as a necessary evil, to be squashed!
I see the hatred of the eye as Freud’s idea of (insert German word learned in college now momentarily forgotten – anyone?)the familiar becoming strange. Our dog used to hate anyone with a limp. It might have been personal, a traumatic association form puppyhood, who knows. I like to think of it as fear of the not quite right, like the way we used to put people who didn’t conform and unnerved us into mad houses – I saw film of someone being put in the asylum because they had a dislocated hip and walked with that funny, rolling limp…
Aha! Now there’s a connection.
Mrs. De Ropp does, indeed, seem only comfortable with Conradin’s illness and not his childish vivacity.
Does she want him to get better? Probably not.
Seems we’re winding down. I shall enter the bedroom as slowly and stealthily as I can. I do hope herself won’t mind. Turrah.
Well, my internet connection packed in. Is everyone gone to bed?
Night, night, Niall. Don’t murder and dismember her. Please.
copernicus, Just about. Though Jo and I are still standing if you wish to say owt.
Jo, I think you’re referring to “The Uncanny”? A good point, and a concept that has a big place in horror, but I still think it’s more of an age issue.
If the “old man” was a young man with a rheumy eye I don’t think the story would carry the same psychological wallop.
yes, but I’ve got 11 more essays to correct, so I’ll be quiet for a while. :( ughh. I’m working to be able to afford pizza so I don’t have to cook while I’m frantically working… duh.
Here’s a seven minute animated version on YouTube. I bet it’s good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4s9V8aQu4c
The bumpf says it was the first animated movie to be x rated.
Oop, can’t let Jo’s last comment go – cf. Fustar’s comments for O Whistle and I’ll Come to You, Lad:
Indeed! There’s something about the erratic, jittery movement of the creature that thoroughly freaked me out.
…and Sinead’s, a little later:
I had totally forgotten about the blindness. When we deal with the inexplicable there is always a sense of omnipotence – beings that can do everything, see everything etc – but the ghost’s clumsiness is interesting.
Your comment about the familiar made strange seems right in line with these observations. Fear and hatred of the Perverse.
Did you get to the bottom of what linked the tales?
Oh sweet, it’s narrated by James Mason. James Mason, eh.
Copernicus,
The young despise the old, and the old get their asses handed to them. Whose side are you on, then?
Yes, the Uncanny! how did I forget that? I was much more intellignet before I had children and never slept again.
I’m sure there’s a German word too.
His fear is probably that the unseeing eye can “see” his madness, which he can keep hidden to ordinary eyes.
He’s at constant lengths to deny that’s he’s mad, offering “proofs” which to the sane prove the complete opposite of what the narrator thinks.
Hence his “ha, ha!” of triumph at having confounded his would-be captors. He seems to confuse madness and stupidity. Of course, he doesn’t understand his own condition. Or accept it.
Okay, my head’s halfway through the door, but I have to thank Fustar for his hospitality and talent for being the {g}host with the most. I look forward to these.
And of course, the tell tale heart is his own heart, hammering in his own ears which gives lie to his pose – “Listen to how calmly, how precisely I tell my story.”
I’m just old enough to actually start understanding that one day I’ll be old too…
And old enough to be alarmed at how YOUNG young people are. Imagine, being born in 1990! How bizarre.
The real horror of madness is that you may not know you’re mad.
Also quite chilling that the mad may not make their madness obvious, until they jump out of a corner of your bedroom where they’ve stood for an hour, superhumanly not moving a muscle – or sanguinely watch you go to your death at the teeth of a starved and vicious rodent.
Interesting challenge on Poe’s part to present the story from the perspective of the unknown thing in the dark. Not that it avails the old man. Or the reader who still get the wind up them.
Jo, Das Unheimliche. And I’ve started noticing that the young, while not hating me exactly, seem to barely notice I’m there.
niall, you’re most welcome. I look forward to ‘em too – i.e the many fabulous comments of the guests. Edge in carefully now…
copernicus, will watch the James Mason ‘toon tomorrow. Can’t give it my full rheumy-eyed attention right now.
I don’t think a ferret’s a rodent :)
More like the Nihilists’ marmot in the Big Lebowski. That was so funny: ‘Nice Marmot’.
I so agree – if a silent figure was even standing in my darkened bedroom I’d piss myself with fear!
Exunctly. I sort of mentioned that earlier when pointing out how the story invites us to share in the terror of both the murderer/narrator and the victim.
The thing in the dark has a voice, and a disturbingly convincing one at that.
In great “mad narrator” fiction, like this and the aforementioned Crime and Punishment (though maybe the “madness” there is more of a philosophical perversion), there’s a sort of super-logic to the madman’s narrative.
It all seems to make perfect sense when looked at from a broken and twisted perspective. A madman who feels permanently in the wrong is not a very satisfying horror figure I suppose.
I wonder would that be a definition of Hamlet at some stages?
Funny? I nearly shat myself! You’d have to be a man, I suppose, to understand the awesome terror of a wet gnashing beastie inches from your “johnson”.
Funny you mention it. I actually thought of Hamlet earlier in terms of the TTH narrator. I didn’t mention it out of respect for the Dane. He had, after all, a far more legitimate axe to grind!
I’d forgotten that! I just meant the initial greeting :)
Well as midnight approaches I think I’ll say good night and try and slip quietly into the waiting arms of Morpheus (i.e. Jess – my wife).
Hope yer dreams ain’t too demented.
That sound nice :)
I can hear my husband snoring on the babymonitor…
Sleep well!
Looks like I missed a good one- damn stomach bug!
Tim, get that bug seen to – before it starts whispering terrible nothings in your intestines. We’ll expect you next time.
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