Through the Eyes of Monsters

When a despicable character is brought up in literature, the conversation always includes Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Humbert Humbert from Lolita. These are the typical people whose perspectives we see through in those books. These two books are commonly brought up in the context of controversy, but that is something I won't be addressing. What I will be addressing is the importance of the POV narrative in regards to these types of characters. 

The last three novels I read were Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby and Crushing Snails by Emma E. Murray. Each one puts the reader in the perspective of a psychopath. In Zombie we are Quentin P___. Crushing Snails slips us into the skin of Winnie Campbell. Violent Faculties allows us to inhabit the mind of an unnamed philosophy professor who was recently fired due to 'budget cuts'. 

The character of Quentin in Zombie is based on Jeffrey Dahmer, known for murdering, dismembering seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. In the book, Quentin is hellbent on creating the perfect zombie. Someone who will never leave him. A trait shared by Dahmer. When looking up an interview with Emma Murray (who I'll speak on next), an add for a Master Class with Joyce Carol Oates came up in which see says "The most powerful writing comes from confronting taboos." As if graced by the gods this little nugget of information, Zombie is exactly that. A confrontation of some of the darkest qualities of humanity. 

In Emma Murray's Crushing Snails, we follow Winnie Campbell. Starting at age 11 and skipping to age 16, where violent parental abuse scars her psyche internally as much as her external body. Her emotions are conveyed succintly, one of them being the ability to 'deaden' herself so she is able to go through a task noramlly seen as abhorent to the average person. I found myself empathizing with Winnie up to a point but condemning her actions. After a horrible event would happen, I'd have to put the book down just to process it all. All of the characters in the books are different gradients of bad or obnoxious or just dismissive to the traumatic event going on in front of their eyes. This isn't a defect of the book, it's a feature. No person is not all good or bad and Murray's writing stays true to this. 

Author Emma Murray has a fascination with abnormal psychology and serial killers. Her dad and sister are both therapists. Cracking the head open of a serial killer, someone who inhabits a liminal space in society, is what Crushing Snails is about. There's a dime a dozen books on serial killers. But I can't recall the creation of one done with such precise insight into their psyche. 

The philosophy professor in Violent Faculties applies her teachings to students. For example, in the chapter 'The Lips, the Teeth, the Tips of the Tongue' (which linguistically sounds like the opening sentence of Lolita) is based around the question of 'what is a soul?' and proceeds with the experiment of cutting girls open and hiring boys to ejaculate into their manufactured orifices to keep them alive. On paper this is an abhorrent idea. What Elsby succeeds in doing is binding the philosophical text with the horror story to such a degree where one informs the other. What makes it so compelling is the question what does it feel like to inhabit the mind of a professor exploring the philosophical implications of being a human through trial and error?

The author Charlene Elsby took her life experience as a philosophy professor and applied it to her writing. All the references to Socrates, Descartes, etc. are materials she used in teaching her class. 

In Elle Nash's substack, she poses the question: should the main character be relatable through empathy all the time. My answer is, just as hers is, no. 

What there does need to be to continue reading a book are conflict, tension and an interesting mind to inhabit. Even if a character's desires and motivations aren't clear to the character, it is important for us to experience the inner conflict up close. The obstacles that lay before them. In these particular transgressive pieces of fiction, they rely on stepping into the shoes of monsters. 

A criticism of modern literature I have would be how toothless it is. There is an asterisk after the despicable character is presented. The author takes you right up to the abyss but stops at the edge and voices a disclaimer. This isn't to say the book doesn't go hard. Extreme splatter punk is something I've read and found is just not for me. What I'm looking for is commitment. To be submerged, as Kelby Losack on his Agitator podcast interview with Charlene Elsby would say.

None of the books mentioned in this essay have this problem. They pull no punches. They are not revenge narratives. They push into the darkest corners of society and force us to confront our own disgust. In her book Powers of Horror, Julie Kristeva defines the abject as "the human reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other." She provides the example of experiencing the intense reaction of her lips touching the skin of the surface of milk her parents brought for her. The skin of the milk exists in an in between state, a liminal space. The milk is suppose to be nourishing but now there is this skin covering it. By rejecting the milk she is separating herself from her parents who want her to drink it. It's not the lack of cleanliness or freshness that causes abjection, but rather her horror and disgust disrupt what the milk means to her. The milk exists between nourishment and decay. By rejecting the milk her parents give to her, she is creating her own identity. 

Kristeva goes on to say "Abjection is immoral, sinister, scheming and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs you." Instead of rejecting these traits or subject matter outright, we should be asking ourselves why we recoil at something on the page. The philosophy professor who takes extreme measures by applying the things she teaches to her victims vs. the professir whose class you just skipped. Another boring lecture on Descartes. The abused 16 year old who, by a combination of nature and nurture, acts on her violent impulses toward another human being vs. the abused 16 year old who cries out for help. Or maybe it's the guy who wants to turn his victims into mindless zombies. 

We need these stories. We need these perspectives. They allow us to slip into the skin of monsters and report back from the darkness. Living with contradictions and impulses and strife is a universal experience and the reason why characters can fall flat are because we are not mining these complexities.