Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy - Posts Tagged "existentialism"
Existential Angst and Horror
You awaken at 2 a.m. There is no light in the room. You hear your heart pounding through your pillow. Your mind wanders. "How many heartbeats do I have left? What will happen to me when I die? Will I see the light, or will I pass into nothingness, my consciousness fading away until I am nothing at all?" It seems silly to worry about death being nothingness. You wouldn't feel it. But the thought of that wonderful self-awareness, that consciousness, "I-ness," that once awakened to the play of sun and shadow on the bedspread, that loved, became angry, laughed--passing into the void along with the body--no thinking forever--is beyond fear. It is horror at one day having to face non-being. If you are religious, you wonder if your religion is false. Isn't life after death too wonderful to believe? All that supposed evidence from mediums and ghosts--couldn't that be ESP from the minds of living persons and have nothing to do with the afterlife? You stay awake, sweating, heart racing, lost in despair.
To me, the most frightening aspect of horror fiction is that it can capture that mood. It may do so directly, in a story about someone suffering existential angst--the late William Peter Blatty described that horror in some of his characters. It may be indirect, a dark hole as wide as a rictus in a Lovecraften beast. It may be captured when you identify with a character in a horror story, crawling on the floor in the dark with some unseen dread about to spread its wings and bury the character in eternal darkness. Horror fiction can remind us that this life will end, and without a belief in an afterlife, nonbeing is like Tolstoy's well. A man hangs from a rope, about to fall into a seemingly bottomless well. A white mouse gnaws one side of the rope; a black mouse, the other. Just before the man falls, he reaches with his mouth and grabs some berries near the top of the well. Then the rope breaks, the man claws the walls, fingernails scraping with a sound that scalds the ears. The white mouse represents days; the black mouse nights. The berries represent the joys of this short life. Horror dares to tell the teen who thinks he is beyond death that death will come. It tells the rich heiress that money will do no good to a rotting corpse. It bursts our naive optimism in science by showing that there is no alternative to death. If a writer can take a bit of Camus, a bit of Sartre, a hint of Lovecraft, and mix them into a bowl, darkness will spill out of the bowl to engulf the reader.
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
To me, the most frightening aspect of horror fiction is that it can capture that mood. It may do so directly, in a story about someone suffering existential angst--the late William Peter Blatty described that horror in some of his characters. It may be indirect, a dark hole as wide as a rictus in a Lovecraften beast. It may be captured when you identify with a character in a horror story, crawling on the floor in the dark with some unseen dread about to spread its wings and bury the character in eternal darkness. Horror fiction can remind us that this life will end, and without a belief in an afterlife, nonbeing is like Tolstoy's well. A man hangs from a rope, about to fall into a seemingly bottomless well. A white mouse gnaws one side of the rope; a black mouse, the other. Just before the man falls, he reaches with his mouth and grabs some berries near the top of the well. Then the rope breaks, the man claws the walls, fingernails scraping with a sound that scalds the ears. The white mouse represents days; the black mouse nights. The berries represent the joys of this short life. Horror dares to tell the teen who thinks he is beyond death that death will come. It tells the rich heiress that money will do no good to a rotting corpse. It bursts our naive optimism in science by showing that there is no alternative to death. If a writer can take a bit of Camus, a bit of Sartre, a hint of Lovecraft, and mix them into a bowl, darkness will spill out of the bowl to engulf the reader.
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
Existential Angst and Horror
You awaken at 2 a.m. There is no light in the room. You hear your heart pounding through your pillow. Your mind wanders. "How many heartbeats do I have left? What will happen to me when I die? Will I see the light, or will I pass into nothingness, my consciousness fading away until I am nothing at all?" It seems silly to worry about death being nothingness. You wouldn't feel it. But the thought of that wonderful self-awareness, that consciousness, "I-ness," that once awakened to the play of sun and shadow on the bedspread, that loved, became angry, laughed--passing into the void along with the body--no thinking forever--is beyond fear. It is horror at one day having to face non-being. If you are religious, you wonder if your religion is false. Isn't life after death too wonderful to believe? All that supposed evidence from mediums and ghosts--couldn't that be ESP from the minds of living persons and have nothing to do with the afterlife? You stay awake, sweating, heart racing, lost in despair.
To me, the most frightening aspect of horror fiction is that it can capture that mood. It may do so directly, in a story about someone suffering existential angst--the late William Peter Blatty described that horror in some of his characters. It may be indirect, a dark hole as wide as a rictus in a Lovecraften beast. It may be captured when you identify with a character in a horror story, crawling on the floor in the dark with some unseen dread about to spread its wings and bury the character in eternal darkness. Horror fiction can remind us that this life will end, and without a belief in an afterlife, nonbeing is like Tolstoy's well. A man hangs from a rope, about to fall into a seemingly bottomless well. A white mouse gnaws one side of the rope; a black mouse, the other. Just before the man falls, he reaches with his mouth and grabs some berries near the top of the well. Then the rope breaks, the man claws the walls, fingernails scraping with a sound that scalds the ears. The white mouse represents days; the black mouse nights. The berries represent the joys of this short life. Horror dares to tell the teen who thinks he is beyond death that death will come. It tells the rich heiress that money will do no good to a rotting corpse. It bursts our naive optimism in science by showing that there is no alternative to death. If a writer can take a bit of Camus, a bit of Sartre, a hint of Lovecraft, and mix them into a bowl, darkness will spill out of the bowl to engulf the reader.
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
To me, the most frightening aspect of horror fiction is that it can capture that mood. It may do so directly, in a story about someone suffering existential angst--the late William Peter Blatty described that horror in some of his characters. It may be indirect, a dark hole as wide as a rictus in a Lovecraften beast. It may be captured when you identify with a character in a horror story, crawling on the floor in the dark with some unseen dread about to spread its wings and bury the character in eternal darkness. Horror fiction can remind us that this life will end, and without a belief in an afterlife, nonbeing is like Tolstoy's well. A man hangs from a rope, about to fall into a seemingly bottomless well. A white mouse gnaws one side of the rope; a black mouse, the other. Just before the man falls, he reaches with his mouth and grabs some berries near the top of the well. Then the rope breaks, the man claws the walls, fingernails scraping with a sound that scalds the ears. The white mouse represents days; the black mouse nights. The berries represent the joys of this short life. Horror dares to tell the teen who thinks he is beyond death that death will come. It tells the rich heiress that money will do no good to a rotting corpse. It bursts our naive optimism in science by showing that there is no alternative to death. If a writer can take a bit of Camus, a bit of Sartre, a hint of Lovecraft, and mix them into a bowl, darkness will spill out of the bowl to engulf the reader.
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy
The blog of Michael Potts, writer of Southern fiction, horror fiction, and poetry.
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