Argumentative Essay

Previous theorists have examined works of horror and horror as a genre. Among these theorists are Edmund Burke, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Noël Carroll, who examined the techniques that generate horror, the characteristics of the monster, and the role of readerly affect, respectively (Burke, 1757; Cohen, 1996; Carroll, 1990). I will refer to Cohen, Burke, and Carroll’s work as the traditional views of horror – but make no mistake, there are other authors who have written on the topic of horror (see, e.g., Freud (1919), and Lovecraft (1937)). Although the factors the traditional views examine are integral to horror, I argue that these views alone are incomplete. That is to say, each theorist analyzed only one element of the tri-directional relationship

In fairy-tales monsters are unexceptional; in horror stories monsters are extraordinary (Carroll 16). Horror-monsters “breach the norms of ontological propriety” (Carroll 16) and are met with resistance, for they are seen as atypical (16). This parallels Cohen’s claim of monsters occupying the space between binaries (Cohen 4). But monsters in horror are not only abnormal, they are also “unclean and disgusting” (Carroll 21). In other words, horror-monsters are intended to be met with not just fear but also repugnance. This is true of both the characters in the story and the reader (Carroll 22). Horror stories aim to induce in the reader a specific affect – a subjective experience – which Carroll calls art-horror (24). Monsters in horror stories elicit “revulsion, nausea, and disgust” in the audience (Carroll 22). Art-horror encapsulates the mixture of disgust and fear that the reader experiences (Carroll 24). A significant argument Carroll advances is one about the convergence of the reader’s and characters’ attitudes (18). As it sounds, Carroll argues that the responses of the reader and the character are meant to correspond to one another (18). Crucially, these responses need not be identical, but it is important that they converge, for the characters “exemplify for us the way in which to react to the monsters” (Carroll 17). If we accept Carroll’s argument, then the characters in works of horror do a significant amount of work in eliciting the intended affect (the art-horror). We could imagine how the reader’s perception of a monster might then be altered by the character’s response to that monster, or how a certain technique might affect the efficacy of the reader-character dual