A herd of ants that stretches ten miles long and two miles wide.
I couldn't help but notice that practically no one else took this position during the class discussions. It seemed that the menacing cephalopods took the center stage of terror between the two villains. The giant squid that seek out innocent sailors are proving themselves more horrifying than the ants.
But I am forced to disagree with this stance. Carroll talks about many things when defining horror. The ones that stand out for me are illiciting emotion from the reader and massification. While reading the two stories, I felt little to no emotional reaction as the squid digested the men. It was not grotesque enough. There was not enough description of limbs being ripped to shreds and blood shooting out in all directions. But for Leiningen? Oy. Now that was grotesque. The mental image of ox being eaten to the bone or of a man pulling his hand from the pit to discover it being eaten alive is enough to give me nightmares. It is disgusting. It is even more disgusting to think about the size of the ants. They are ants. They are not very large or menacing in appearance. They don't seem like something that would eat you down to the bone. This adds to their horror because it is so unexpected. Such a small creature doing that much damage is far more terrifying than a giant squid eating a man. It is conceivable to imagine a giant squid eating an entire man because a giant squid is, well, giant! It makes sense that it could easily digest a man based on its sheer size. What doesn't make sense is ants eating human flesh down to the bone.
Beyond that is the massification used specifically in Leiningen. I don't see the massification in the squid. They are giant squid. It is expected for them to be large. One could argue that the amount of squid that have gathered together is an example of massification, but I won't buy into that until the squid are ten miles long and two miles wide. Ten miles long and two miles wide. That's how many ants Leiningen faced. Millions of minute beings crowding together to do their bidding. An army of ants approaching, ready to tear you limb from limb.
Now that is horrifying.
2 comments:
I have the same problem a lot of people have (I assume) when imagining something like ants 2 miles wide 10 miles long; it's impossibly large.
Such a large thing is incomprehensible to me; I get that it's big, but I can't really fathom it. Maybe it's a personal failing on my part.
I admit that, if forced to choose between rushing to either a loose formation of murderous cephalopods and billions of life-destroying ants I'd probably go with the squids.
It's interesting that a true consensus of what is horrifying among individuals is so difficult to reach -regarding what constitutes a monster, that is. And I think that the criteria set forth by Carroll leave room for personal interpretations, especially that emotional response part. I neither find the army of ants nor the school of squid have me squirming in my seat (if either were after me personally, I might change my mind). It's funny how individual levels of desensitation, cultural conditioning and knowledge of the nature of a "moster" can drastically alter the "horror factor."
Post a Comment