When looking over and re-reading the short stories from the beginning of our syllabus, I noticed a connection that I hadn't seen before: there is a heavy emphasis on monsters either based on or members of the animal kingdom. Specifically, I'm dealing with panthers, ants, cat people, and squid in my paper. Why can we be just as frightened by animals as we are by monsters based on human beings? A few thoughts:
1) I think that it's frightening when intelligence exists where it should not. To be chased by a cunning human is one thing, but for some reason its just more "wrong" when the cunning attacker is an animal.
2) Animals provide good targets for the horrific biology techniques presented by Carroll: they can be massified and magnified much more easily and with much greater effect than a human foe. (Trying to apply the "twenty square miles" of ants in Leiningen to humans doesn't work so well.)
3) Pitting man against nature in horror stories provided a method of expression for the conflicts going on at the time of these stories' publishing: imperialism and colonization. European authors saw nature, including both its animals and its unfamiliar cultures (given no more respect than animals), as a primary foe. These horror stories provide a window into the history of this conflict.
Generally, the stories I studied were examples of natural horror and the animals presented as monsters were an extension of nature's power. Zombies, vampires, ghosts, and demons have their place in the genre, but for short horror stories written in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the natural world seemed to be most prominent.
1 comment:
I agree with all three of your thoughts, but especially the third one. Considering the period in which many of those stories were written and the prevalence of British authors, it makes sense that "horror" would revolve around the things which caused problems and fears in real life for the authors or their peers. As the undeveloped parts of the world were being discovered, Africa was considered to be the "Dark Continent" by European imperialists because of the mysteries which lay hidden in its jungles and deserts, including animals and cultures unseen by Europeans. Also, consider the setting of many of these stories: in Leningen versus the Ants, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Boarded Window, the story takes place in the non-developed world, be it South America, an island, or the early American "West" which was what this area was called long ago.
As you said, these stories not only provide horror literature, they also give readers a glimpse at the mindset of the people living in the societies from which these stories were born. Indeed, as a history major I know that many historians use literature as a primary source when trying to learn about the culture of a past society, and it can serve as a very valuable tool. Thus, not only are these stories with animal monsters effective (mostly) horror literature, they are also useful historical tools!
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