Part II: The New Rules on Fear

There are a few contemporary ABC books that engage with fear through disturbing elements in its illustrations, but Edward Gorey’s The Gashleycrumb Tinies (1963) satirizes and plays upon a parent’s anxiety and paranoia about the possibility of their own child's death. Each child character in the story, whose name begins with a letter of the alphabet, meets an untimely and gruesome end. For example, when “T is for Titus who flew into bits,” the reader sees a young boy opening a package at the door. Presumably, the package is a bomb that will explode when the boy opens it. This is one of the more subdued examples in the book, but it emphasizes a clear, satirizing moment in parenthood paranoia because the possibility of receiving an exploding parcel, and an actual child opening are close to zero.

But there are greater social fears Gorey speaks to in his book. “K is for Kate who was struck by an axe,” suggests something more disturbing to the parent, a child’s murder. “K” also underscores the “kill” in this gruesome scene, where Kate’s body is clearly dragged through the white snow from the woods. This cautionary tale hints at the original warnings found in stories like “Little Red Riding Hood:” don’t go off into the woods alone to talk to strangers or this might happen to you. These examples are one of the reasons why Gorey’s audience for his books has been notoriously hard to define. Some have argued that since his books fall squarely in the nonsense genre (like the infamous Dr. Seuss), this demarcation clearly places those works as children’s literature, although few parents might agree.

The elements of terror and fear found in darker cautionary tales, intrinsically creates an obstacle for young readers. Neil Gaiman and Gris Grimly’s The Dangerous Alphabet (2000) use of the carnivalesque removes the hurdle between young reader and genre through language play and accessible grotesque illustrations.  The Dangerous Alphabet takes place in an underground sewer waterway where two young children engage with childhood anxieties caused by real and imaginary monsters. Gaiman’s first half of the beginning rhyming couplet immediately rejects the traditional verse in a classic ABC primer. “A” does not stand for the obligatory “apple,” instead “A is for Always, that’s where we embark.” “Always” or “all ways” suggests how readers must ignore commonplace beliefs found in conventional, “safe” fictions for young readers, because this story intends to subvert those boundaries.

Grimly’s illustration for the sewer waterways in the “A is for” scene operates as a type of funhouse ride, more carnival than carnivalesque in a sense, but the grotesque caricatures allow for an exploration into the grisly underbelly of society from which children are often shielded. The boy, wearing an apprehensive look, places the obligatory apple in a cup as payment for “embark[ing]” on this misadventure. This act serves as a visual cue and departure point for readers to liberate themselves from any notion of the “safe” story.

The nature of the carnivalesque in The Dangerous Alphabet seeks to disrupt notions about the treatment of children’s texts in dominant culture. This mode also serves as a form of escapism for young readers from their parents, allowing them to traverse upon the murky waters with the young girl and boy characters. By navigating through their own fears and anxieties in tandem with the children characters, young readers find they will still come out safely from the funhouse ride without the help of the authoritative parent figure.

Be Very Afraid: The Literature Monsters are Here!

There’s nothing scarier than a terrifying monster in literature: the one not on a television screen, the one we can’t see or hide from because our imagination is running wild and incessantly conjuring up what it may look like in the story. Sitting alone in your darkened room, your every breath overly loud in the silent house, you’re unable to put the book down for fear of discovering that that dark shadow is actually sitting in front of you. Often times the question arises: why we are so attracted to horror stories?

When dealing in horror texts for children, adults often convolute what exactly is acceptable for children and what is too scary form, drawing a blurred line that changes over generations. And what is then even more curious is the question: why are children’s books — once dark and then sanitized until they had squeaky-clean happy endings — now becoming once again tales with darker themes?

Just think of it. Children already live in a scary world where there are giants all around them (adults) and chairs that are too high. The richness of the macabre in contemporary children’s literature seems only a continuation of the fairy-tale tradition, but now it’s been updated to take the anxieties of the modern world into account. Children’s darker tales and horror stories use fairy-tale-esque metaphors in order to tackle the fears and desires lurking beneath the surface of children’s lives — worries not just about death, but about alienation, insecurity, loss, and lack of agency in their lives. Just as adult horror stories provide a more palatable way to absorb the notions of death, bodily decay, and the bleakness of the human condition that would otherwise be too disgusting or distressing to deal with, so, too, do the vampires, ghosts, and ghouls in children’s literature address issues that even adults find too difficult to explain. Horror stories are honest with children in a way that adults, especially parents, are often not, and thus teaching them how to survive against monsters and, in turn, be powerful as well; they can confront their fear in a safe way.

The author of The Uses of Enchantment Bruno Bettelheim writes in his introduction, “While it entertains the child, the fairy tale enlightens him about himself, and fosters his personality development. It offers meaning on so many different levels, and enriches the child’s existence in so many ways…” (Bettelheim 12). And there is something for every child’s (and adult’s) taste, with as many variations of the supernatural as the number of snakes on Medusa’s head.

Here is a list of the 5 scariest monsters in literature we’ve compiled. Until next time, Happy Halloween!

1. Jabberwok — The villian in the nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll was published in his novel Through the Looking-Glass. The Jabberwock stood “with eyes of flame,/ came whiffling through the tulgey wood,/ and burbled as it came!” This terrifying monster first came to life with John Tenniel’s famous illustration. His interpretation of the creature included the body of a dragon with a catfish-like head, with his “claws that catch” and his “jaws that bite.” Judging by the grotesque yet whimsical description, no one would want to wander into a forest and run into this beast!


2. Bunnicula — Because what’s more terrifying than a vegetable-sucking, domesticated rabbit? Bunny rabbits are supposed to be the picture of innocence! Until this Bunnicula open their mouth that is. James Howe’s series about the fanged little creature perfectly blends humor and mythical lore about vampires and makes kids look twice at the animals they are responsible for. 


3. The Nothing — Now this is possibly the most existential monster in children’s literature. The Nothing is the evil, mysterious force of Fantasia in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, which the protagonist Atreyu is sent to destroy in order to save the citizens of Fantasia. In order
   
   to protect them from death and sickness, Atreyu must face The Nothing, and in the process, learns that this force is the embodiment of the darkest parts of humanity, everything evil and destructive, depriving the world of meaning and hope and creating a nothingness that will soon engulf us all. 


4. The Dark Family — This particular “monster” is perhaps the one kids can relate with the most, because children often have that tense relationship with their parents and other adults. Children struggle to make their voices heard in a world that assumes they know and see less than they do or that their knowledge is somehow lesser or invalid. R.L. Stine’s The Girl Who Cried Monster’s parents are literally the monsters at the end of the novel, and this trope of adults who do not validate what their children know is common in The Goosebumps series and costs the adults dearly in the end. However, nothing is more representative of the Dark Family than Coraline’s Other Mother. She is the ultimate representation of the anxieties of smothering, possessing parents, for she “loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold… Coraline knew she was a possession, nothing more” (Gaiman 127).
   
   
   


5. The Goblins — Maurice Sendak is no stranger to darker tales for children. While you may be familiar with Where the Wild Things Are, he wrote another story, Outside Over There, the story of set of goblins that kidnap a young baby, replacing him with an icy doppelganger that melts in his sister’s arms; his older sister then leaves the house through a window to “outside over there” to rescue her kidnapped sibling. In an interview, Sendak says that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case and seeing the baby’s remains in a newspaper clipping inspired him to write Outside Over There. In an interview with the Paris Review, he states, “You had to form a kind of fake life, to protect yourself. Because you learn very quickly that parents can’t protect you. It leaves a lurking fear. You never feel safe, never believe, really, that your parents are any safer than you, or could protect you from the unknown.

Notes:

• Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1976. Print.


• Steinbrg, Avi. "Maurice Sendak on 'Bumble-Ardy.' The Daily. n.p. 27 Dec. 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Thoughts for Your Weekend

Hopefully this weekend you are able to savor your coffee (or tea) slowly while sitting in one place instead of while you're driving to work or booking it across campus. Perhaps you'll even indulge in a stronger drink. Whatever beverage you choose to relax with, take the time to consider the following events, publications, and links.

• There will be a symposium titled "California Indian Oral Tradition and the Land" taking place at SDSU Tuesday, November 5th. If you've enjoyed hearing about the intersections of children's lit and Indigenous lit (Columbus Day blog, memory in Rabbit-Proof Fence blog), or if you've been interested in the interactions between narrative and place, you should consider attending. The symposium will take place in the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center from 10am-5pm and is free. 
• Neil Gaiman fans: Back in August Waterstones Oxford along with Oxford Playhouse hosted an evening with Neil Gaiman and Phillip Pullman. Thankfully they recorded it! You can download a podcast of the discussion. Gaiman also gave a talk earlier this month for The Reading Agency in London. You can read and watch the full speech here. 
• Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are was published in fall, 1963 making the book 50 years old! To celebrate the occasion a number of our favorite children's lit scholars have blogged about the book. Read posts by Phil Nel, Betsy Bird, Julie Walker Danielson, and Travis Jonker. I was tickled by the visual homages to Where the Wild Things Are in Bird's post. 
• Clementine Beauvais wrote an indignant blog post titled "The Argument from Parenthood." She addresses the troublesome phenomenon of parents defending problematic texts at academic conferences for the sole reason that their children enjoyed the text under discussion. Hmm, I didn't know this happened... 
• I also chuckled quite a bit while reading Beauvais's post "The Post-Doc Complex" in which she discusses the absurdity she's stumbled into upon finishing her PhD. Claiming she can now identify with Britany Spears' liminal state in 2001 of "not a girl, not yet a woman," Beauvais laments, "All I need is grants/ For conferences in France/ While I’m in-between… All I need is more/ Free access to JSTOR."