"shiver by shiver, we gain insight"

The quote is from Guillermo del Toro in his introduction to a Penguin horror imprint series that he edited. In his introduction he quickly traces the history of horror from the gothic novel through to H.P. Lovecraft. It doesn't necessarily run through anything new for those who have looked deeply at horror in literature, the idea being that horror is like fairy tales, it puts a face, creature to outright fear, on the things that we as a society fear.

For example: In the 1970s, an era when murder rates had doubled and rates for all crime had quadrupled in the past 10 years, you get the slasher flick--the stranger come to stalk and kill.







In the 1980s and 90s, we were coming to terms with HIV and AIDS and the idea that sex can kill. Vampires, sexy and deadly, were the horror. (Yes, vampires are still big in pop culture, but they are hardly horror now.)






With current fears of GMOs, science going too far, global warming, and an apocalypse of our own making, zombies are the horror motif of choice. (It may be running its course though. How long before we have The Zombie Diaries and True Rot? )










So when del Toro starts out his introduction with, "To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls," this isn't a mind blowing concept. What he traces is the line from gothics with their over-the-top imagery and emotions, to the more subtle and nuanced horror of the modern era, taking a brief look at the major authors and works along the way. It's when he come to Edgar Allen Poe that I paused and began to see parallels to our modern world and especially our modern political system. I thought of a Poe story del Toro didn't mention, but that fit what he was saying of Poe's writing and the way Poe saw the world, which was through the darkness in ourselves. Poe shows us inside the heads of monsters. Shows up why they do what they do. How they can resort to such evil.

"He knew that a rational, good-hearted man could, when ridden by demons, sink a knife in the eye of a beloved cat and gouge it out. He could strangle an old man or burn alive his enemies. He knew that those dark impulses can shape us, overtake us, make us snap--and yet, we would still be able to function, we would still presume to possess the power of rational thought.

"Why would anyone say we are mad?"

Later del Toro will give the overarching reasons for what turns Poe's protagonists into monsters, "that two thoroughly modern demons...: perversity and arrogance."

Which brought to mind the monster in a little known story of Poe's called, "The Devil In the Belfry." If you want to read it, here is a link. I'm going to completely spoil the story below.

The Dutch town of Vonderwotteimittiss believes it is idyllic. Each house is the same as any other, including the people in them. The artisans can only carve 2 objects, a timepiece and a cabbage, but they do so with incredible skill. Each person carries a watch, which they look at constantly. Even their pigs and cats have watches, tied onto their tales by the children. On their mantles are no less than 3 clocks bookended by carvings of cabbages. In each kitchen the same dinner is being made.  Each house has a small garden where exactly 24 cabbages have been planted. The narrator calls it, "the finest place on earth."

Life in this town is devoted to time. To keeping time. In the center of town is the House of the Town-Council on in the steeple is a seven-sided clock. It had never broken down. It and all of the other clocks and watches were exact to the minute so that when the big clock rang all the other watches and clocks, "opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo."

The Town Council have adopted 3 resolutions:

• "That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things--"
• "That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss"
• "That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages."

Obviously you know what is going to happen. 

Someone comes from over the hills. Someone "foreign looking" and "of a dark snuff color." Someone who is not dressed in the same clothing and is dancing steps that are not keeping with the time of the village. This stranger climbs the tower, kills the fat and lazy man meant to keep the clock in good order, and takes over the belfry. At this point the big clock sounds 12. And as it does all the citizens watch and count along with it. After it rings 12 times, the citizens start to put away their watches. But then the clock strikes 13.

And all hell breaks loose. (You saw all this coming of course.) The clocks cease to keep regular time and begin to dance. The cabbages turn red. "But worse than all, neither the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of the little [watches] tied to their tails, and resented it by scampering all over the place, scratching and poking, and squeaking and screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abdominal din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive." And to top it all off, the stranger in the belfry keeps ringing the clock bell with the rope between his teeth and on his enormous fiddle is playing Irish songs--foreign songs in a regular Dutch town!

Back to del Toro and his essay, and the quote that really set me off on this thought process. "It is in this arrogance that Poe's characters reveal their true nature: That they are not victims but executioners."

Which is how "The Devil in the Belfry" ends. With the narrator pleading for the reader and "all lovers of correct time and fine kraut," to descend on the town en masse to "restore the ancient order of things in Vondervotteimittiss."

To kill the stranger.

Which brings us to our own era, where we in America are facing the racism of this country through the current political campaigns of the Republican party and the amount of support Donald Trump has garnered.

This is a shock for white people. Many of us would have loved to believe that anyone who made the statements that he has made about Muslims and Hispanics and all people of color would be immediately excoriated. His political career would be over the moment he made those statements. And we're reacting in shock that it hasn't made his political career go splat. His supporters seem to be growing.

We've been protected from all this racial hate. We didn't see it unless we went looking for it. Even if we did go looking for it, it was hidden under social restrictions and "political correctness." Especially where I've lived for most of my life in the predominantly white farming country in the midwest. Trump has stripped away those restrictions and made it okay to say these things outright again. We're faced with the reality that it never went away.

It's not an easy reality to face as our friends, neighbors, family support this madness. People we thought were reasonable and kind. Our favorite uncle. A close friend. Where did this monstrous part of them come from and how did we not see it before? What were the signs we missed? What are they thinking?

Poe knew. Del Toro knows. Poe showed us deep into their minds. How they believe they are reasonable as they call for blood and deportation. As they declare some people are not fit to live in our country for the most stupid reasons possible.

I first read this story I was in middle school. I lived in a town of roughly 200 people in Wisconsin where black people were about as prevalent as unicorns and other races were nearly unthought of. We knew they existed somewhere. Somewhere being on Hawaii Five-0.

I read this story and didn't think it was scary at all. Predictable. Lame. But then I didn't understand who the monster is. I didn't understand that I live in Vondervotteimittiss. Nearly thirty years have passed and now I find it terrifying.