Trick or Treat?

It's Halloween! For some strange reason we people types seem to have some fascination with scaring the bejeezus out of our selves. When I was a nerdy twelve year old I used to hoard horror novels and read them before I went to bed and then be too frightened to sleep. And still to this day I will insist on watching The Shining. Alone. In the dark. The scene with the twin girls gives me shivers just thinking about it, not to mention when the kid starts chanting 'redrum' (murder backwards) in some sort of crazed, psychic trance. In terms of modern horror there's definitely some renaissance we're experiencing with vampires and zombies. In print we've got all that Twilight garbage (yeah, that's right, garbage) of teen vampires and in film the living dead keeps coming back to life in various forms on the silver screen every year. I think the most notable foundations in fiction we have of these two phantoms are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Zombies v Vampires. Hotly debated in nerd circles worldwide. I've always maintained that people either love one and hate the other when it comes to these two classic Gothic novels. I clarified this theory with a girl who was sitting next to me on the tube reading Dracula and asked her what she thought. She was very much enjoying Stoker's offering and didn't much appreciate it's zombie counterpart and carried on to tell me that her boyfriend had the opposite opinion. Well, I'm with the boyfriend on this one. I was so desperately bored by Dracula that I got 9 pages away from finishing it and just couldn't be bothered with the rest. Sure, Stoker was all modern with using different narrative styles but crikey did he lather on all the Victorian schmuk! All this my lady Lucy, oh I will come to your rescue, never fear you poor young woman, blah, blah, bullshit. Utterly tiring. I'll admit, the first 4 chapters are good. These are Jonathan Harker's diary entries and where we get the chilling sense that the Count is not who he seems:

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature, is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me. I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me. I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of.

These are Jonathan's thoughts when he witnesses the Count creeping down the steep, exterior walls of the castle face down and on all fours. But then the book descends into my dear this, my dear that, and turns into Victoriana hell.

Frankenstein is by far, in my books, the superior. Even the way in which Shelley conceived the plot has elements of horror. Whether true or not (it's much disputed but I'm given to hoping it's true) it was a dark, stormy night in the Swiss mountains where Shelley, husband Percy, and good friend Lord Byron were holidaying. Confined to their log fire and own imaginations they had a competition to see who could come up with the scariest story. Shelley came up with Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. The dead brought to life by a bolt of lightening. The creator shunning and despising his creation. Revenge, rejection, remorse! The book is made timeless because it delves into human nature - our judgments of others, our differences, kindness, rage, deceit, death, consciousness, happiness, existence, loneliness, justice, fragility, knowledge - Shelley crams all the vices, virtues and truths of man into this novel while still being true to the Gothic narrative style. I find it all the more convincing and frightening because man exists.

"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.

Mwahahahahahahahaaaa. Hahahahaha. Hahaha ha. Ha. 

- P.  

The best thing to have come from Dracula.