Literary Undergraduate Research

LURe

Editor-in-Chief

Katie Moss

Assistant Editor

Eden Harris

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Leah Haught

Staff Editors

Justin Beasley

Bryce Calain

Dominic Grimaldi

Melissa King

Amari Morrison

Abigial Norton

Suzy Royal

Eric Scarantino

KC Thomas

Abigail Timbol

LURe is a peer-edited journal devoted to publishing rigorous works of

undergraduate scholarship on any literary text, lm, literary theory, or

cultural study.

By publishing academic papers from undergraduates, LURe opens up

a forum for dialogue and discussion within the academic community,

provides a medium for reocognition of exceptional work, and encour-

ages students to view themselves as vital members of the intellectual

community they inhabit.

LURe would like to thank Sonora Lanham-Henderson for her invaluable

guidance to the editorial board; Savonne Dennis, Desirae Hanson, Eden

Harris, and Abigail Norton for their time spent as interns for our publi-

cation; Dr. Pauline Gagnon, Dean of the UWG College of Arts, Culture,

and Scientic Inquiry, Robert Kilpatrick, Chair of the UWG English,

Film, Languages and Performing Arts Department, and Shelly Elman,

former chair of the same department, for their support; the faculty of the

English Program for their promotion of, contributions to, and support

for the journal and its staff; Eden Harris for her assistance in formatting

this volume; and the faculty advisors, family, and friends of LURe’s staff

and authors, without whom the work published in this issue would not

be possible.

Cover art: Keri Jones and Leah Mirabella.

LURe:

Literary Undergraduate Research

VOLUME 13 FALL 2023

Japanese Tanka Poetry and the Sublimity of the Mundane

Eleanor Brown, Ohio State University

The Metamorphic Horror of Protoplasmic Evolution in Weird

Fiction

Christina Kevorkov, University of California, Irvine

“Don’t You Know it’s Hot Out Here in the Sun?”: The (Down)

Fall of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as it Relates to Adam’s

Fall From Grace

Cryslin Ledbetter, University of West Georgia

Nature versus Norms: Eugenics and Social Constructs in “The

Shadow Over Innsmouth”

Kyra McKaufey, Rice University

A-Blair-OOOOOOOO!: Examining the Rhetorical Differences

in American and British Soccer Commentary Through the

Elocutionist Lens

Alec Matulka, Pepperdine University

Muslim Punk Feminism in We Are Lady Parts: A Radical

Engagement with Difference

Pireh Moosa, Institute of Business Administration

Milton’s Making of a Monster” Viewing Stranger Things

Through the Lens of Paradise Lost

Matt Nickerson, College of the Holy Cross

Black Monsters

Heroes as Victims to the Revenge of the

Normative in The Night of the Living Dead and The Shining

Sarah Rand, University of West Georgia

Women After the World: Analyzing the Representation

of Female Characters in Modern, Mainstream, and Post-

Apocalyptic Films

Ahmed Wael Ghuneim, The American University in Cairo

104

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023 5

Japanese Tanka Poetry and the Sublimity

of the Mundane

Eleanor Brown, Ohio State University

s humans we desire contact with the overwhelming, the overpow-

ering, and the transcendent. Perennial attempts to dissect sublime

experiences in literature approach from different angles, yet converge

on certain surprisingly similar principles. In his rst century treatise

On the Sublime, Longinus portrays sublime literature as best language

applied to best thoughts, which together produce a transformative il-

lumination of sudden insight in the reader—an experience akin to ego

transcendence. He believes writers may intentionally craft such an ef-

fect, and explains both stylistic strategies for success and mistakes to

beware of, including specic examples from ancient Greek and Latin

texts. The principles Longinus draws from his own culture’s literature

manifest in the genres and styles of other times and places.

Though Longinus’s conception of the sublime is not connected his-

torically or geographically to Japanese tanka poetry, they reect similar

priorities, suggesting that these ideas apply to more than the writing of

a single culture. Several tanka techniques are especially well suited to

produce sublimity, though perhaps not in a way Longinus could have

imagined. Tanka uses a heavily ritualized form containing 31 syllables

spread over ve lines. This seemingly stiing form is instead liberating,

guiding the poet towards simultaneous goals of authentic self-expres-

sion and readerly insight. Such guiding structure can be conceived pos-

itively as scaffolding or negatively as guardrails, depending on whether

the tanka writer is focused primarily on what to put into her work or

what to cut out. As scaffolding, she must consider—through specif-

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Eleanor Brown

ic, tactile imagery—season, occasion, and historical/cultural context.

Such considerations draw out universal experience, promote commu-

nal meaning-making, and focus on grand themes. With the form of the

poem as guardrails, she must keep her images tight and her language

brief. Well-chosen words with many meanings make the most of syl-

labic constraint; uncluttered silence allows images to resonate.

This paper will explore several of Longinus’s conditions for sublime

literature in the context of Japanese tanka poetry, and demonstrate how

both pursue ashes of emotive insight. Towards this goal, it offers ex-

amples of poetic craft from the Sarashina Diary, a rst-person memoir

blending imagistic narrative with tanka poetry as only a court lady in

Heian Japan can. Throughout, we will also seek clarity about poetry and

the sublime more generally: does poetry create access to the sublime by

shifting our focus away from the mundane, or does poetry pay such close

attention to the mundane that we recognize it (the mundane) as sublime?

Longinus’s examples of the literary sublime incline away from ordi-

nary moments, to celebrate epic action in war, politics, and philosophy.

Tanka poetry instead embraces tiny breaths of stillness between actions,

intentionally attending to the ordinary in order to locate the sublime in

every instant. In the universal human pursuit of ecstatic self-transcen-

dence, the formal constraints of tanka poetry act as both scaffolding and

guardrails for the tanka artist to provide new rhetorical tools for others,

including traditionally Western descendants of Longinus.

I. Introduction to Longinus’s Theory of the Sublime

Longinus is possibly the rst Western writer to substantively discuss

the sublime. He argues that the sublime, or at least our experience of it,

is brilliant language applied to grand thoughts. In his view, we cannot

be convinced to sublimity as we can to rationality, and instead we must

experience it as a sudden emotional response: “A lofty passage does not

convince the reason of the reader, but takes him out of himself . . . a

sublime thought, if happily timed, illumines an entire subject with the

vividness of a lightning-ash” (I. 3–4). The “lightning-ash” of illumi-

nation does not appear as a careful building up of context or organizing

principles spread skillfully through a body of work, but as an instant,

vivid epiphany. Without the reader’s will or intention, it reorients their

perspective beyond the self and transforms their understanding at an

emotional level. In their introduction to Translations of the Sublime: The

Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous

in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, Van Eck, et al.,

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Eleanor Brown

explain Longinus’s experiences with the sublime as “one which sweeps

readers or viewers along, robs them of rational control over their feelings,

and opens hitherto unknown vistas of the innite, the horrendous, or the

incomprehensible . . . experiences [that have been labeled as] wonder and

amazement, as mystical experiences of rapture, as horror or fear” (2–3).

This illuminating effect stands in contrast to the slow road of reason-

ing, in which examples and conclusions are painstakingly connected into

causal thought-chains. The longer way of rationality may be essential in

reaching deeper understanding once illumination has inspired the mind.

But it cannot be called sublime.

This is not to say that content plays no role in crafting sublime

literature. In fact, Longinus insists sublime content “dispose [the read-

er’s] mind to lofty ideas” and be “pregnant in suggestion” (VII. 3–4).

If a sudden ash of insight does not lead to continuing contemplation

or yield further and richer insights as time goes on, such emotional

response is “merely a specious sublimity” (VII. 1) and most emphati-

cally not the real deal. Content must generate new thoughts and lasting

productivity to be considered truly sublime. This litmus test is helpful,

since Longinus admits that the true and false sublime can be tricky to

distinguish, requiring a lifetime of taste cultivation (VI.).

Another test of authentic sublimity is a work’s involvement with

universal experience. Longinus tells us that the sublime gives pleasure

consistently to every reader, whatever their background: “For when the

same book always produces the same impression on all who read it,

whatever be the difference in their pursuits, their manner of life, their

aspirations, their ages, or their language, such a harmony of opposites

gives irresistible authority to their favourable verdict” (VII. 4). When

we notice many people of varying types and tastes drawn in the same

way to a piece of literature, we can be condent that we are tracking

the sublime. This principle plays out in our own time through ideas of

“the canon,” “the classics,” or “the great books.” These are fraught,

changing, and politically complicated lists, often telling us more about

the people who compile them than about the books themselves. But

the core concept holds: these are works in which many people from

diverse times and places nd the same special something. They are a

good place to start the hunt for the sublime.

In sublime literature, best language is as essential as best thought.

Style must be equal to thought, and only the best of both will do. To

help writers avoid especially common mistakes in crafting their ef-

fect, Longinus identies four stylistic corruptions: bombast, puerility,

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Eleanor Brown

false-sentiment, and absurdity. Bombast he describes as “grandilo-

quence” and “conceits which are high-own,” noting that it is “one of

the hardest things to avoid in writing” (III. 2–3). Bombast’s opposite,

puerility, he explains as a sort of paltry longwindedness, calling it “a pe-

dantic habit of mind, which by over-elaboration ends in frigidity” (III.

5). He insists sublime literature walk a path between the two: frothy on

one side, frigid on the other. The next mistake, false sentiment, shows

as “an ill-timed and empty display of emotion . . . or of tedious displays

of mere personal feeling which have no connection with the subject”

(III. 5). Finally, the mistake of absurdity is caused by a continual pur-

suit of novelty. Longinus complains of such a writer, “in his eagerness

to be always striking out new thoughts he frequently falls into the most

childish absurdities” (IV. 2). Such faults make work unt to reveal or

nurture the sublime.

In short, Longinus teaches that sublime writing highlights univer-

sal experience through specicity, transforms its reader in a ash of

transcendent insight, and is rich with grand ideas. Its language must

be neither overwrought nor pedantic, avoiding absurdities of novelty,

affectation, and shallow emotionality. It treats passion vigorously. It

balances artful gures of speech. Its expressions are dignied and its

word structures majestic.

II. Introduction to Tanka and its Capacity for Vivid Illu-

mination

From its inception, Japanese lyric poetry is rooted in spontaneous

outbursts celebrating natural beauty, love, longing, and loyalty. Ac-

cording to Yoel Hoffman in an introduction to his translated collection,

Japanese Death Poems, Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the

Verge of Death, Japanese poetry began as a largely democratic art. Its

lyricism was simple and direct. During the Heian period (794–1185

CE), when the Sarashina Diary was written (1009–59), poetry became

more popular at court, and competing schools formed: “Artice, wit,

and subtle plays on words often overshadow strong emotions . . . The

poems here are more sophisticated, trenchant, and wittier . . . poetic

ability often being a means of advancement to positions of power and

prestige . . . it thus became the pastime only of those with the leisure

to pursue it, the nobles” (Hoffman 13–14). This artistic space nurtured

formal agreement through its organization, and tanka poetry emerged

as a form uniquely well suited for creating those ashes of illumination

that Longinus values as sublime.

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Eleanor Brown

Deceptively simple, tanka consists of ve syllabically measured

lines: the rst is ve syllables, the second seven, the third ve again,

and the last two are a couplet of seven each. As Earl Roy Miner ex-

plains in his article, “The Technique of Japanese Poetry,” Japanese is

much less stressed than English, so there are few metrical conventions.

However, it can include more complex assonance and alliteration than

would work in English, and ancient techniques of Japanese brush writ-

ing allowed poets to double or triple meanings in a very short space,

as well as to overlap various sonics, images, and ideas that are sim-

ply impossible within the clear delineation of English writing systems

(Miner 352–53, 357). While these linguistic differences make adequate

translation difcult, the form succeeds brilliantly as poetry in its native

language, conveying distilled points of sensation with vibrant intimacy.

One such example can be found in the Sarashina Diary, a prose

journal interspersed with poetry that describes the rst-person memoir

of a court lady in Heian Japan. An image-rich unity of both prose and

poetry emerges, weaving descriptions of the rich outer landscape of

Japan with the inner, emotional landscape until the reader is unsure

of which most informs the other. It is the nature of tanka poetry to

create such a weaving, and it is unsurprising that a continual practice

of this literary form in the court culture of ancient Japan habituates the

writer’s mind as much as their writing. Although the author intends a

prose journal, her experiences within tanka poetry have so shaped her

writing, thinking, and conversing that the boundaries between prose

and poetry blur.

The writer’s personal and cultural formation within tanka conven-

tions explains Sarashina’s emotive intimacy with its reader. Nearly any

passage from the Diary illustrates how the form of tanka poetry channels

its content into brief epiphanies. For example (and please note that trans-

lation often breaks the syllabic line form), she writes in her second poem:

“For this night only/The autumn moon at Kurodo beach shall shine for

me,/For this night only!—I cannot sleep” (6). From the context of her

journal we know this is a very young woman (perhaps even a girl) on a

journey at the outset of life. We see her still body lit in moonlight on a

beach worn by lapping water. Since the moon frequently represents au-

tumnal themes in tanka, the translator likely added “autumn” to cue En-

glish readers to its dissonance with youth. It is a wistful nod to mortali-

ty, an admission that all things, especially youth and beauty, disappear.

Moonlight wakes the girl all at once to an alertness of interbeing with

moon, beach, water—and the heartbreaking ephemerality of this aware-

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Eleanor Brown

ness. The reader is likewise startled to inner wakefulness and brought

out of themselves by the girl in moonlight, their ego transcended by her

intimate, sensual perceptions beyond rational expression. The repeated

lines “for this night only” fracture this moment from the typical ow of

time and make it a nearly physical object to be held. The girl’s longing

to hold onto this moment extends to the reader, overwhelming them

with the impossibility of keeping anything at all.

This poem demonstrates the power of extreme brevity for transmit-

ting the sublime. Lengthy descriptions can hinder the sudden rushes of

insight that characterize the sublime. Here, the emotional immanence

of tanka imagery and its use of standard motifs (for example, the moon

as a signier for autumn) bypass the reader’s cognitive processes to de-

liver a sense of sublime helplessness in the face of impermanence, and

introduces us to the most important of Longinus’ principles: the brief,

lightning-ash of sublime illumination.

III. Tanka’s Scaffolding: Crafting the Sublime

A. Universal Experience

Tanka poetic form and its traditional nature imagery produce effects

of instantaneous revelation, epiphany, or emotional understanding. Its

intimacy, often to the point of confession, is particularly startling in light

of its traditionally restrictive themes and categories. English-language

poetry may (and is often encouraged to) develop subjects personal to

the writer’s individual experience, but Japanese poetry is considered

occasional (Miner 361–64); that is, written for or on specic culturally

recognized occasions or in conventional situations. An occasion could

include a New Year’s Day event, pilgrimage to famous or beautiful

places, a broken tryst, reection on loneliness and longing, or grief at

the loss of youth, activity, or beauty. These occasions mainly require

that the poet communicate personal emotions in traditional expressions

for public interpretation (364).

The unusual constraint of Japanese poetry makes tanka espe-

cially helpful at universalising individual experiences, an important

feature of Longinus’s denition of sublime writing. Tanka’s tradi-

tional focus on natural and seasonal imagery is important because

such imagery generalizes individual experiences, which can then

be applied to the individual case (Miner 362, 366). The assumption

that the speaker and the poet are the same person makes room for

confessionality as another recurring theme.

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Eleanor Brown

It might seem to a Westerner that the occasional nature of tanka

would stie a poet’s personal expression, but what actually happens

is far more interesting. An English poet must establish their context

anew for each poem to situate their reader, but a Japanese audience

understands a poem’s context immediately through a single word or

phrase (e.g., “the rst wild goose,” “the middle of this world,” etc.)

and the poet can spend the rest of their words commenting on that con-

text. According to Earl Miner in his article, The Technique of Japanese

Poetry, tanka achieves freedom “by its very limitation” (362). Certain

forms and conventions connect a poem to dozens of other poems. The

poet builds off such reader associations to communicate new ideas by

merely tweaking an expression or suggesting a surprising juxtaposition

of established images. Within such a tradition of association, poets con-

verse across time and space, building and commenting on each other’s

work through a kind of code which is invisible to Western sensibility.

It becomes a literature that “always produces the same [pleasurable]

impression on all who [can] read it” (Longinus VII. 4), maintaining

connection to universal experience among writers and readers alike.

B. Communal Meaning-Making

The conversational aspect of tanka is illustrated by a game that devel-

oped during the 14th century from a variation of poetic form called renga,

or “linked poem.” For some time, tanka poets frequently divided the nal

7-7 couplets from the earlier 5-7-5 portions of their pieces, giving each a

different poetic image. Two or more poets would build renga by linking

with each other’s 5-7-5 images through the 7-7 couplets to create long,

complicated poetry chains, changing poetry “from an art with social func-

tions to a genuinely social pastime” (Hoffman 16). Renga is historically

important because it facilitated the development of haiku as a dominant

poetry form in Japan, but for our purposes it is important in making the

formerly implicit cultural poetry conversation explicit.

Human beings engage in individual conversations, whether spoken or

written, to create shared meaning. Wide conversation, often through art and

writing, can be conducted across history and through generations, forming a

whole culture through massively scaled communal meaning-making. This is

the role tanka poetry played in Heian Japan, steeping each participant in con-

versational metaphor so that universal experience within its culture formed

around the conation of natural imagery and human emotion. Such contin-

ually practiced poetic conventions habituate the speech and thinking of each

conversant to mold even the sounds and shapes of the language itself.

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Eleanor Brown

The Sarashina Diary is full of actual conversations in poetry, which

mimic the larger national conversation on a smaller, personal scale. The

author writes thank-you notes and reminder letters through it, receives

cheeky answers from friends, and even irts through it. Poetry becomes

the perfect medium for communicating indirect emotions and desires with-

out commitment. For example, in one section Sarashina is awaiting her

stepmother’s return. The stepmother had given hope that she would re-

turn within the year, but never did, breaking Sarashina’s heart. Even after

Sarashina confronts her with the sorrow she has inicted, the stepmoth-

er evades responsibility, continuing to circle vague possibilities without

promise. In this way, the stepmother keeps the relationship feeling positive:

I became very anxious [and at last] broke a branch and sent it

to her [of course with a poem]:

You gave me words of hope, are they not long delayed?

The plum tree is remembered by the Spring,

Though it seemed dead with frost.

She wrote back affectionate words with a poem:

Wait on, never forsake your hope,

For when the plum-tree is in ower

Even the unpromised, the unexpected, will come to you. (17)

Here is a young woman who believed her hope dead, yet discovers that

it and all the accompanying hurt, fear, and sense of betrayal live in her

again. Spring brings new life; hope remembers the young woman and

overpowers her by waking up everything she had pushed away, but it

isn’t hope she wants to be remembered by. This poem is about the bit-

terness of resurrection. Even knowing this bitterness, the writer cannot

help hoping enough to send one last letter begging for her stepmother’s

return. Of course the mother’s answer is a mere manipulation, a way to

say sorry-not-sorry without ever committing herself to action. Read-

ers are taken out of themselves to hate the stepmother on the writer’s

behalf, in all the ways the writer cannot allow herself to put on pa-

per. Such overlapping pathos in the hope and bitterness of half-hidden

agendas, delivered in the brevity of two heartbeats through a single im-

age of new-blossoming plums, is a swift transcendent encounter with

the sublime complexity known only by mothers and daughters.

This conversational mode isn’t unique to the Sarashina Diary. In

the Diary of Murasaki Shikibu (1007–10), we again see tanka’s power to

evade direct emotions. Shikibu describes a surprise encounter with the

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Eleanor Brown

Prime Minister that turns into a mashup of conversation, competition,

skill test, and undetermined trespass or irtation. These contexts teeter

politely in balance through a poetry exchange, so that neither party re-

quires confrontation or clarity:

The air is misty, the dew is still on the leaves. The Lord Prime

Minister is walking there; he orders his men to clear the brook.

He breaks off a stalk of omenaishi [ower maiden] which is in

full bloom . . . He peeps in over my screen! His noble appear-

ance embarrasses us, and I am ashamed of my morning [not yet

painted and powdered] face. He says, “Your poem on this! If

you delay so much the fun is gone!” and I seize the chance to

run away to the writing-box, hiding my face—

Flower-maiden in bloom—

Even more beautiful for the bright dew,

Which is partial, and never favors me.

“So prompt!” said he, smiling, and ordered a writing-box be

brought [for himself].

His answer:

The silver dew is never partial.

From her heart

The ower-maiden’s beauty. (Shikibu 73)

These poems are only pretty irts: I’m embarrassed by looking ugly

in the morning without my makeup.—No, you look great because your

beauty comes from inside, not from makeup. Neither character means

what they say: their words merely diffuse a difcult situation. But

it works gracefully because of the way natural imagery universaliz-

es their experience, infusing an awkward moment with precognitive

clarity: morning dew and morning makeup; owers and women. It

also hints at the uncertain dance of tenderness and aggression in sex-

ual encounters, playing with a sublime tension between the beautiful

and the overpowering.

It is clear in these journal entries that conversations through po-

etry were an expected part of daily relationships among court people.

The journals are written by extremely different women. Sarashina

is seriously devout, prone to weeping, earnest, and given to self-re-

ection. Even her fantasies are deeply sincere. Shikibu, on the other

hand, is much more playful and narratively bent. Poetry conversa-

tions in her hands turn into games. However, both use the convention

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Eleanor Brown

to come at the heart of an overwhelming matter without using direct

language that could be construed as offensive for a noble Japanese

woman. In doing so, they highlight and cultivate the sublime within

their most mundane moments.

Such unied conversational practice engages the entire Japanese

culture, whatever the difference in people’s “pursuits, their manner

of life, their aspirations, [or] their ages” (Longinus VII. 4), in experi-

encing the sublime as a form of communal meaning-making. Through

this process, tanka poems become “pregnant in suggestion . . . impos-

sible to distract the attention from . . . and . . . take strong and lasting

hold on the memory” (Longinus VII. 4), swiftly passing Longinus’s

litmus test for the authentic sublime.

C. Grand Themes

As Longinus himself mainly quotes heroic epics, politically mo-

mentous speeches, and sweeping philosophical enquiries, it is uncertain

whether he would consider as sublime the small sensory instants which

tanka specializes in. Yet these are the stuff of human life. The reection

we nd in these poems of our own vanity, longing, faithlessness, or

nobility are fruitful glimpses into the I/Thou, through which human be-

ings nd meaning and connection. Tanka is good at this particular type

of “grandeur” precisely because it has no pretense to grandeur, avoid-

ing Longinus’s dreaded “airs” without even trying—by being simply

itself and nothing else. Death, impermanence, loneliness, and longing

are themes which continually overlap and separate throughout tanka

poetry, pointing to the sublime in everyday experience.

1. Death and Impermanence

Death is among the grandest, most mysterious concepts that hu-

mans must cope with. It is the universal sticking point where we must

face the absolute unknown. Longinus mentions poetry about Spartan

warriors facing death in hopeless, glorious last stands, and these are

indeed grand. But other examples of death are no less grand because

they are quiet. In fact, tanka’s predilection for stillness is part of how it

avoids what Longinus reviles as “bombast,” an overblown frothiness of

language which undercuts our access to the sublime.

As Buddhism strengthened in Japan during the ninth century, poets

lled their work with new ideas about impermanence and death. Yoel

Hoffman tells us that at this time in Japanese thought, “Fleetingness

characterized not only the outward forms of nature, but also inward

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Eleanor Brown

nature; nothing is xed, nothing stable” (37). These preoccupations in

poetry could easily devolve into maddening abstraction, but Japanese

poets found expression through tangible touch, sight, smell, and sound

instead. “Transience . . . is conveyed through images of the changing

seasons . . . Buddha’s nature dwell[s] everywhere—in mountains, riv-

ers, grass, and trees” (37–38). Such sensory rootedness lls their poetry

with a sense of transcendence discovered in tiny or mundane details.

Life’s impermanence and death’s inevitability are twin sides of the

most sublime terror humans face. Whether met in battle or looked for in

sleep, death renders us helpless, and artists write about it in every age and

circumstance. The tanka tradition of expressing impermanence through nat-

ural imagery does not blunt the terror of death, instead providing the writer

with a vehicle for sudden, precognitive terror. Her audience is moved by the

same ash of desperate clarity that Longinus nds in Western death epics.

2. Death and Loneliness

Death is one of the most important occasions in a person’s life, and

it was expected of tanka artists that as they felt death’s onset, they should

compose a meditation on mortality and briey sum up their whole life.

These death poems include some of the most sublime art of this genre. It

is surprising that Sarashina does not conclude with one. Instead, Sarash-

ina ends with a message from a friend in the form of a poem-letter that

suggests Sarashina should detach from the world as a nun like herself:

I was tired of meditation and sent a poem to one who had not

called on me for a long time.

Weeds grow before my gate

And my sleeves are wet with dew,

No one calls on me,

My tears are solitary—alas!

She was a nun and she sent an answer:

The weeds before a dwelling house

May remind you of me!

Bushes bury the hut

Where lives the world-deserted one. (68)

It is impossible to know whether Sarashina intended this to be her

conclusion, but it does provide a tting, if tragic, substitute for

her death poem. Judging from her diary, Sarashina’s life was full

of loneliness, of longing for fulllment in another, and of grief in

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Eleanor Brown

abandonment. She continually felt the pull of monasticism but nev-

er fully embraced its vocation. This pair of letters—one reaching

out and one rebufng, correcting—is a thoughtful summation of her

life’s themes.

Similar to death, loneliness consumes us as we order our lives

against it. Sarashina presents the reality of such loneliness through

brief images of weeds vs bushes: weeds only grow before gates if

there are no visitors to trample them. As morning and evening are the

times for both dew and visitors, wet sleeves reveal that Sarashina is

waiting daily among tall weeds at her gate, hoping for a friend in vain.

The nun replies that weeds may indeed remind Sarashina of her, as she

has no intention of visiting at all. The friend has no weeds, because

she has no visitor’s gate. Instead she grows bushes over her house

to insulate her from the world. Dew-wet sleeves come to represent

Sarashina’s sense of loneliness and rejection. A disciple of Longinus

might communicate overwhelming loneliness through a description

of one warrior left standing in a eld among dead armies. The tanka

verses instead reveal how this sublime experience is present in the

quiet heartbeats of our day. We need only attend.

3. Longing and Seasonality

Tanka is not always about death or loneliness. Other themes cele-

brated by tanka poets, such as unfullled longing or life’s seasonality,

may be a world away from Longinus’s heroic epics, but they do not

lack grandeur. The Sarashina writer copies an apt example from an

older friend into her diary:

Scarce had my mind received with wonder,

The thought of newly fallen snow—

Seeing the ground lie white—

When the scent of Tachibana owers

Arose from fallen blossoms. (21)

Tachibana is a wild mandarin plant with tiny white citrus-scented

blossoms that bloom in late spring or early summer. The fruit comes

in late autumn or early winter, but is too sour to eat. The tension

of this poem emerges in these facts. In early summer, a woman is

startled with wonder to step outside into new snow—the impression

is precognitive. She smells sweet citrus and realizes these are fallen

blossoms instead of snow, but her confusion is tied up in more than

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Eleanor Brown

white uff on the garden path. Blossoms predict the coming fruit; the

citrus blossom-scent of spring mixes up with the citrus fruit of early

winter when the snow really does rst fall. However, this sweet smell

promises more than delivers, since the winter fruit, anticipated since

summer, is sour when it nally arrives.

Complications of seasonal intersectionality, deferred dreams,

dashed or sudden hopes, and a blurring between reality and illu-

sion–all inherent in our everyday sense perceptions as they map onto

our belief structures—are illuminated in one brief lightning-ash of

language in this poem. The sublime emerges in the sheer volume of

ideas that bypass rational processes to overwhelm the reader through

a transformed, self-distanced perspective.

IV. Tanka’s Guardrails: Avoiding Corruptions of the Sublime

A. Bombast and Puerility

Tanka’s form guards against two of Longinus’s pet horrors: bom-

bast and puerility. On one hand, it prevents overblown eloquence by

its extreme brevity and commitment to syllabic constraint, and on

the other, its imagistic emphasis maintains an imminent emotional

resonance, so that its lack of “froth” does not slide sideways into “fri-

gidity.” Even at its most owery or obvious, tanka is still saved from

either fault. It must always say less than it means, relying mainly on

the negative space left by its silences to move its audience. It can get

neither carried away nor silly. Even in her least interesting poems, the

Sarashina writer simply does not have room to take it too far due to

the constraints inherent to the form of tanka poetry:

Flowers are falling, yet I may see them again

when Spring returns.

But, oh, my longing for the dear person

who has departed from us forever! (18)

The theme here is mourning, but only in the vaguest and most general

way. There’s little point of engagement given to its reader, and its

natural image is unsurprising. But neither is it given room to become

egregiously sentimental, frothy, or frigid, which it might have in an-

other form. A tanka may not grip its reader, but neither will it assault

them with bombast or puerility.

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Eleanor Brown

B. False Sentiment and Absurdity

The occasional nature of tanka poetry creates context for com-

munal meaning-making and highlights universal experience, and also

addresses Longinus’s concerns with false sentiment and absurdity.

False-sentiment has little place in the brief, public conversations of tan-

ka verse. Since each of a tanka’s sections may contain an image, only

two images are available to evoke an emotion, which must also be con-

nected to a culturally recognized event. These restrictions do not give

poets space to wax on about disconnected idiosyncrasies or embellish

with extraneous feelings. Absurdity, on the other hand, follows from a

continual pursuit of novelty. Tanka addresses this concern at its root.

Novelty, while secondarily valuable in keeping occasional poetry fresh,

is not a core value. Communal conversation and universally interesting

perspectives on traditional themes are the goal.

V. Conclusion

Longinus and the architects of tanka share a vision of sublimity.

What Longinus explains in direct language, tanka poets illustrate in

their art. While we nd that form and tradition alone do not create a

sublime piece of literature, they function as guardrails and as scaffold-

ing to direct them in the pursuit of artistic perfection. For the tanka

poet, sublimity is not merely serendipitous, but guided by the form of

the poetry itself (and a touch of genius).

Even through the difculties involved in faithfully translating tanka,

people of all languages and cultures can appreciate its distinctive success

with the sublime. Many works among these poems easily satisfy Longi-

nus’s criteria. When we read one, our attention and memory is captured.

Its depth of subject and turn of perspective inspire a ash of sudden in-

sight, even if we cannot read Japanese and so must miss out on some of

the unique aspects of its composition.

Longinus’s examples of the sublime do tend away from the

mundane. Turning our mind from the daily grind of weed pulling,

laundry folding, and diaper changing to the grandness of heroic bat-

tle-sacrice is often a welcome relief. Examining our philosophical

assumptions underlying why we bake bread for our family is im-

portant if we don’t want to burn out. Listening to moving political

speeches really matters as we weigh big-picture questions of civic re-

sponsibility. But all these excitements are mediated by un-fanfared,

average moments: encrypted wartime texts about silly shenanigans

from a son on Ukraine’s border; the smell of yeast on doughy ngers

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Eleanor Brown

while considering bread’s virtue as a mean between extremes; a child

munching popcorn in her father’s lap while he parses the presidential

debates of two broken parties.

In the West, our attitude toward the usual, the routine, and the small

is often a learned disdain or a desire of escape. Aesthetic balance re-

quires we attend to the whole experience of life: the loud as well as the

quiet; action as well as stillness. In their Short Guide to the Theory of

the Sublime, Holmquist and Pluciennik tell us to be unastounded by

the number of different terms and categories applied to the sublime

because “it must be, as the beautiful is, ubiquitous” (Holmquist and

Pluciennik 721). The sublime is available at every level of human ex-

perience—it is ours to nd. By paying close attention to the grounding

of life’s “big” events in small sensory details, then universalizing them

through natural imagery and contextualizing them within traditional

occasions, tanka poetry teaches us to savor the sublime in the mundane.

ELEANOR BROWN majored in Creative Writing at The Ohio State

University. She wrote this paper for a class on History and Theories of

Rhetoric, which was interested in exploring artistic approaches to the

sublime across cultures. She now works as a middle school intervention

specialist and runs a student writing lab.

WORKS CITED

Hoffman, Yoel. Japanese Death Poems, Written by Zen Monks and

Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. Tuttle Publishing, 1986.

Holmquist, Kenneth and Pluciennick, Jaroslaw. “A Short Guide to the

Theory of the Sublime.” Style, vol.36, no.4, 2002, pp.718–36.

Longinus. On the Sublime. Havell, HL, translator. Project Gutenberg

EBook #17957, 2006.

Miner, Earl Roy. “The Technique of Japanese Poetry.” The Hudson

Review, vol.8, no.3, 1955, pp.350–66.

Omori, Annie Shepley and Doi, Kochi, translators. Diaries of Court

Ladies of Old Japan, by Anonymous (Sarashina) and Shikibu,

Murasaki. Houghton Mifin Company, 1920.

Van Eck, Caroline, et al., editors. Translations of the Sublime: The

Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri

Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the The-

atre. Brill, 2012.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202320

hroughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Charles

Darwin’s theory of evolution and scientic scholarship on pre-DNA

genetics inspired the unsettling portrayals of transformative body horror

in weird ction. As these persistent scientic discoveries impacted social

perspectives regarding stages of human development, they provoked psy-

chological fears about the interconnectedness between prehistoric bestial

organisms and modern human beings. In his horror tale, “The Great God

Pan,” Arthur Machen evokes a disturbing reaction in readers by drawing

on these socially inuenced fears of evolution when depicting a visceral

episode of metamorphic body horror. Machen’s ction illuminates degen-

erative bodily transformations to produce physiological terror toward the

protoplasmic origins of life. Similarly, Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Tale of

Satampra Zeiros” heightens fears toward the chemical elements of pro-

toplasmic transformation, where monstrous physical changes mimic the

obscure cellular processes of pre-human evolution. H.P. Lovecraft’s “The

Shadows Over Innsmouth” materializes the social anxieties of racial mix-

ing and genealogical identity by exposing the repulsive weirdness of inte-

rior psychological transformations. Within these weird tales, the descrip-

tive reveals of rapid transformations and genetic transmutations produce

an embodied, unsettling reaction for readers related to body horror as it

connects to historically uctuating fears towards evolutionary theory; in

these stories, it is specically protoplasmic material or slime which gener-

ates a fearful and repulsive response toward the unknown, whether it is a

mutated monster or a racially impure species.

The Metamorphic Horror of Protoplasmic

Evolution in Weird Fiction

Christina Kevorkov, University of California, Irvine

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Christina Kevorkov

In his tale, “The Great God Pan,” Machen’s detailed reveal of bodi-

ly metamorphosis evokes an unsettling and fearful reaction through its

manipulation of the gradual process of evolutionary change into a se-

ries of rapid, unnatural protoplasmic reversions. As Machen’s trans-

formative body horror illustrates the tangibility of degeneration, the

materiality of protoplasm further enhances the repulsive quality be-

hind these metamorphic mutations as they illuminate a raw degrada-

tion of the modern human form. While the built-up suspense of the

story primarily surrounds the mystery of Helen Vaughan’s true hybrid

identity, her turbulent death serves as a dramatic reveal of horror that

consequently dissolves the fragile boundaries between the urban and

supernatural realms. Machen releases the built-up tension by revealing

the horrifying truths of Helen’s inherited demonic identity through the

scene of her aberrant, bestial death:

Changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man,

from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast . . . di-

viding itself from itself, and then again reunited . . . the princi-

ple of life, which makes organism, always remained, while the

outward form changed. (66)

In this dramatic reveal of Helen’s metamorphosis, Machen develops the

body horror of her rapid protoplasmic degeneration by drawing inspi-

ration from the historically inuenced fears towards Darwin’s theory of

evolution. With the rapidity of Helen’s transitions from “woman to man,

from man to beast,” Machen emphasizes the chaotic instability of her

protoplasmic reversions to create a disconcerting, fearful reaction toward

the ceaseless nature of evolutionary change. Although it was theorized

that evolution is a slow, developmental process that spans generations,

Machen builds the horror of Helen’s degenerative reversal back to the

prehistoric origins of life by portraying the terse rapidity of her bestial

changes. In the scheme of these existential transformations, Machen’s

stylistic mechanism of concretely describing the off-putting tactile re-

versions and the blurring of sexes contributes to an effective reveal of

dread as readers are aggressively rushed through the evolutionary stages

of human life. Not only does the accelerated pace of Helen’s transfor-

mation evoke an alarming effect, but it also forces readers to contem-

plate the violating repercussions of the evolutionary interconnectedness

between modern humans and prehistoric animalistic organisms. In his

article, “A Theme in the Early Work of Arthur Machen: ‘Degenera-

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Christina Kevorkov

tion,’” Adrian Eckersley similarly expresses how Machen’s transforma-

tive body horror in Helen’s chaotic reversions produces a fear towards

evolution for readers as they engage with the grotesque “backward-run

down the evolutionary tree towards protoplasm” (283). As Eckersley’s

analysis relates to how Machen builds the atrocious reveal of Helen’s

savage transformation by quickly guiding readers through the stages of

evolution, it consequently activates readers to become repulsed by their

evolutionary relationship to protoplasmic organisms.

Within the tangible qualities of Helen’s bestial metamorphosis into

the primal matter of life, Machen’s depiction of protoplasmic reversion

furthermore produces a repulsive effect for readers as they experience the

chemical dissolution of the modern human body. As he was inuenced by

historically shaped fears of evolution, Machen’s metamorphic body horror

draws inspiration from Thomas Henry Huxley’s scientic theories on how

protoplasm is the fundamental, universal matter of life. In his essay, “On

the Physical Basis of Life,” Huxley’s conceptualization of protoplasm as

the primordial matter of all life that is “always dying, and, strange as the

paradox may sound, could not live unless it died” heavily parallels how

Machen portrays Helen’s protoplasmic reversions as a perpetual, rapid

progression of imbalanced growth and decay (19). As Huxley emphasizes

how the chemical dissolution of the protoplasm constantly endures a trans-

formative death, Machen’s depiction of Helen’s slimy decomposition pro-

duces a repulsive, anxiety-driven reaction because Machen draws inspira-

tion from the cellular mechanisms of the protoplasm’s repetitive death and

resurrection. The physicality of Helen’s mechanical process of “changing”

furthermore mimics an abnormal chemical reaction because the “melting”

process scientically concerns a physical change in matter. Additionally,

Machen emphasizes that Helen’s embodied deterioration surpasses phys-

ical change as her gender identity is chemically modied too. This stylis-

tic choice consequently heightens the horrifying evolutionary aspects of

Helen’s protoplasmic breakdown. With these shifts in the states of matter,

Machen demonstrates how the protoplasmic aspects of Helen’s metamor-

phosis are permanently chemically intact regardless of the physical chang-

es in her appearance. Through the complexity of Helen’s protoplasmic

metamorphosis, Machen’s body horror illuminates the fear of evolution,

specically the fear that the prehistoric stages of human development are

chemically encoded in all modern human existence.

Building on Machen’s fascination with the chemistry behind cor-

poreal degradation, Smith’s “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” progres-

sively ignites a fear of the chemically revolting aspects of the proto-

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Christina Kevorkov

plasmic evolution of a grotesque tentacled monster. In the body horror

of the monster’s transformative protoplasmic growth, Smith’s dis-

turbing reveal of the formless ooze rapidly converting into a tentacled

monster evokes an embodied, unsettling reaction towards the chemical

changes that arise with evolutionary change. In Satampra Zeiros’s de-

scription of the protoplasmic beast, he emphasizes how “it was inde-

scribably viscid and slimy and cold, it was loathsomely soft like the

foul mire of a bog and mordantly sharp as an edged metal” (Smith 15).

The visceral description of the tangible features of the tentacled mon-

ster creates a disconcerting effect on the reader because the “slimy”

and “viscid” chemical qualities mimic the protoplasmic components

of prehistoric species. In his essay, “The Physiology of the Carbohy-

drates: Their Application as Food and Relation to Diabetes,” Frederick

William Pavy’s description of the chemical malleability of protoplasm

informs Smith’s portrayal of the gross monster as this in-between crea-

ture that can simultaneously change from liquid to solid form. With

its inherently exible chemical properties, Pavy mentions how living

protoplasm “in a previously liquid or amorphous condition . . . under-

goes changes of a chemical nature” (24). With this duality of feeling

both “soft like the foul mire of a bog” while also “sharp as an edged

metal,” Smith generates the uncanniness of this ambiguous monster’s

chemical composition by drawing inspiration from the organic mate-

riality of protoplasm. The language used in describing the moist tenta-

cled monster as a mushy yet solidly composed product of protoplasmic

nature further enhances the creature’s ambiguity, causing readers to

be repulsed by its contradictory chemical qualities. As his weird c-

tion generates a terrorizing fear towards the chemical components of

evolutionary development, Smith’s transformative reveal of horror is

similar to how Machen employs breathless terseness to enhance the

unsettling effect of protoplasmic reversions.

These unsettling effects are even embodied within the forms of the

creatures themselves. As Smith’s tale concludes with a rapid reveal of

the stagnant puddle transforming into a solid tentacled monster, Sata-

mpra Zeiros terrifyingly emphasizes how tense the accelerating move-

ment of the monster was as “it slithered toward [them] with an unbe-

lievable speed and celerity of motion” (Smith 11). With this reference

to physics, the rapidity of the beast dangerously “slithering” essentially

creates the horror of the scene. This rapidity matches how Machen il-

lustrates the gruesome protoplasmic reversal of Helen to heighten the

reader’s anxiety toward the unnatural mechanisms of her metamorphic

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Christina Kevorkov

death. With this emphasis on speed within the nal transformative re-

veals of the slimy monstrous creatures, both Machen and Smith effec-

tively create a sense of impending doom that alarms readers while forc-

ing them to confront the disturbing repercussions within the inevitable

aftermath of evolutionary change, which occurs at a faster pace than

one may have initially anticipated.

While Machen and Smith’s body horror engages a fear of the

degenerative characteristics of protoplasmic evolution, Lovecraft’s

weird tale “The Shadows Over Innsmouth” illuminates a fear of genet-

ic transmutations that occur psychologically instead of physically. As

Lovecraft provides subtle glimpses of Robert Olmstead’s transforma-

tion throughout the story, the shocking nature of his acceptance of his

genealogical identity generates a repulsive, fearful reaction in readers

as they contemplate the interior depths of their unknown inherited

genetic lineage. As Machen and Smith emphasize the contemporary

fears of protoplasmic evolution in their ction, Lovecraft similarly

crafts the repulsive aspects of his transformative horror by drawing

inspiration from historically inuenced anxieties towards pre-DNA

genetics. Within the rst glimpse of his interior psychic transforma-

tion, the duality of Olmstead’s simultaneous curiosity and repulsion is

depicted when he feels “a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed

superadded to the grim repulsion; and oddly enough, [he] found this

overtone more disturbing than the primary impression” (Lovecraft

282). In his growing “sense of beckoning” towards the antiquarian

cultural landscape of Innsmouth, the subtle nature of Olmstead’s psy-

chological transformation strengthens the repulsive aspects of his

gradual shift into a hybrid creature because readers experience the

eeriness of his intangible genetic transmutations. As Lovecraft was in-

uenced by the historical scientic contributions regarding the human

genome, the lack of extensive knowledge about DNA or mutations

contributes to the weirdness of Olmstead’s invisible transformation

into a racially or genetically ambiguous life form.

Due to the deciency of scholarship on genetics, Lovecraft uti-

lized ambiguity to describe these unorthodox transformations. In

his scholarly article, “The Renement of ‘Crude Allegory’: Eugenic

Themes and Genotypic Horror in the Weird Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft,”

Mitch Frye emphasizes how “the gene was certainly more of a mys-

tery to Lovecraft and his contemporaries,” which demonstrates how

the limitations in knowledge about the gene signicantly impacted

how Lovecraft crafted the ambiguous weirdness of genetic transmis-

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Christina Kevorkov

sion within his weird tale (238). As Machen and Smith concretely de-

scribe the tangibility of the stickiness behind protoplasmic reversions,

Lovecraft’s approach is different because he cannot draw inspiration

from the processes of genetic hybridization or allelic mutations be-

cause they have not been historically at his disposal. Although Love-

craft discusses genetic hybridity in his weird ction, Frye asserts how

“the double helix model of DNA demysties genetic information by

allowing it to be visualized” (238). With modern scientic knowledge

about DNA and genetic transmission, there is much more clarity and

transparency regarding how these generational processes work, which

makes it easier to conceptualize. Since Lovecraft did not have access

to this scientic knowledge, his ction refrains from concretely depict-

ing the vivid imagery of tangible genetic change. Although Lovecraft

avoids portraying the materiality of protoplasm within his repulsive

genetic transformations, the slimy quality of the unknown parameters

of genetic ancestry can also manifest as an effective mechanism for

weirdness when describing transformative body horror. Therefore, it is

likely that Lovecraft’s repulsive portrayal of Olmstead’s genetic trans-

formation into a shy humanoid stems from the historically uctuating

perspectives towards the unknown, whether it is about the racial other

or the uncertain process of genetic change.

While Lovecraft’s weird tale generates a fear of genetic inheri-

tance and racial mixing, the ultimate reveal of Olmstead’s genealogi-

cal metamorphosis from human to antiquarian is arguably the most re-

pulsive because he suddenly accepts the acquisition of the “Innsmouth

look” and then consequently embraces the fate of his bestial genetic

heritage. In the terrifying aftermath of Olmstead’s lengthy episodic

metamorphosis, the epiphanic moment of his realization about his ge-

netic identity arrives when he states how “[he] had acquired the Inns-

mouth look” while also planning to leave in solidarity with his cousin

into the “lair of the Deep Ones” (Lovecraft 334). As readers are a

step ahead of Olmstead throughout his psychological transformations,

Lovecraft concludes the story with the shocking reveal of Olmstead’s

acceptance of his family’s alien ancestry. Although Olmstead initially

mentions how “the ‘Innsmouth look’ [is] a disease rather than a blood

strain,” the twisted reveal of his transformation and acceptance of his

heritage is repulsively shocking to readers (Lovecraft 290). With his

shift from feeling disgusted by the people of Innsmouth, Olmstead’s

shocking appreciation of his authentic genetic identity augments the

unsettling, fearful effect for readers because they are still left with

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Christina Kevorkov

a lingering repulsion towards his genetic transmutation. While his

chilling interior changes have transformed his bodily appearance,

they have also altered his perspective toward his previously unknown

non-human ancestral heritage. As Olmstead initially labels the physi-

cal appearance of the Innsmouth people in a derogatory way, the neg-

ative connotation of “disease” reveals the repulsive treatment of racial

otherness, which correlates to Lovecraft’s fears of racial hybridity. As

Lovecraft “believed that [immigrants] sought to pollute [cities] with

their own contributions,” the ideas of racial impurity within Olm-

stead’s initial repulsion draw from Lovecraft’s own eugenic and racist

ideologies (Frye 250). With this historical context of prejudice against

genetic transmission and racial mixing, Lovecraft manifests these so-

cial anxieties to produce the foreboding sensation of repulsiveness

for readers as they individually grapple with their endless fears of

unknowingly inheriting the ancestry of the racial other.

Within the genre of the weird tale, one of the most fundamental

aspects of a reveal of horror stems from how it makes the reader feel

an unexplainable sense of dread towards a rapidly changing monster

or simply the eeriness of an unknown identity. In these tales, the

transformative body horror behind these powerful reveals illumi-

nates the reader’s agitated response because it makes them question

their relationship to these evolutionary and genetic components that

are uncontrollably within them. As Machen and Smith allude to the

disastrous aftermaths of metamorphosis, their respective reveals

of horror highlight the swiftness of evolutionary change and the

uncanny tangibility of the protoplasm that is universal to all life.

While Lovecraft’s ction exposes the hidden horrors of psycholog-

ical transformation, he mediates a fear of genetic heritage that may

be unknowingly racially ambiguous, making readers contemplate

their own ancestral unknown. While these authors may depict their

metamorphic reveals differently, they produce weirdness in their

ctional worlds by drawing inspiration from the historically shaped

social anxieties towards pivotal scientic discoveries about the pro-

toplasmic origins of life and genetic inheritance. In other words,

strange transformations in weird tales surpass the mere category of

entertaining horror because these weird tales stem from consistent

historical engagement with Darwinian and protoplasmic theories.

The understanding of chemical or genetic transformation as a wide-

spread historical trend augment how historical scientic advance-

ments informed the horror behind these memorable tales.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Christina Kevorkov

CHRISTINA KEVORKOV is a rst-generation college graduate

who majored in English at the University of California, Irvine. She

wrote this research paper for an upper-division writing course on

Weird Tales. Her favorite novel is

Beloved

by Toni Morrison. She

is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Digital Social

Media at the University of Southern California, Annenberg School

for Communication and Journalism. She aspires to work in the digital

marketing industry in the future.

WORKS CITED

Eckersley, Adrian. “A Theme in the Early Work of Arthur Machen:

‘Degeneration.’” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920,

vol. 35 no. 3, 1992, pp. 277–87. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/

article/373323. Accessed 21 August 2023.

Frye, Mitch. “The Renement of ‘Crude Allegory’: Eugenic Themes

and Genotypic Horror in the Weird Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.”

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 17, no. 3 (67), 2006, pp.

237–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26390171. Accessed 21

August 2023.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. On the Physical Basis of Life. New Haven,

Yale College Courant, 1871.

Lovecraft, H.P. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Edited

by S. T. Joshi, Penguin Books, 2016.

Machen, Arthur. “The Great God Pan.” The Great God Pan and Other

Horror Stories, edited by Aaron Worth, Oxford University Press,

2019.

Pavy, Frederick William. The Physiology of the Carbohydrates: Their

Application as Food and Relation to Diabetes. London, J. & A.

Churchill, 1894.

Smith, Clark Ashton. The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. Edited

by S. T. Joshi, Penguin Books, 2014.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202328

“Don’t You Know It’s Hot Out Here In The

Sun?”: The (Down)Fall of Ralph Ellison’s

Invisible Man as It Relates to Adam’s Fall

from Grace

Cryslin Ledbetter, University of West Georgia

I. Prologue

“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt

thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (King

James Version, Exodus 3.14).

Since the novel’s publication in 1952, scholars have situated and

criticized Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man through various literary lenses.

Through scrutinizing elements from Ellison’s existence as an African

American writer to the simplest nuances of his works, one similarity

remains true: scholars cannot debate the Invisible Man’s signicance

to the literary world. By following an African American narrator who

begins the novel with the line “I am an invisible man,” Ellison makes

clear that his character exists as an empowered man who steals gura-

tive power from the dehumanizing “I” slave narrative and literal power

from an electric company to enlighten himself (3). As a result, the nar-

rator begins the novel in a dark place, but the question remains: how

did the Invisible Man get here? Starting at the end, the narrator inhabits

an underground manhole where he moves through his new world as an

“ectoplasm” never to be seen by his peers; however, the narrator’s in-

visibility is not solely represented by the perception of his peers. Rather,

the Invisible Man himself encounters a series of situations in which he

is blind to the white patriarchy who rule his life and actions (Ellison 3).

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Cryslin Ledbetter

On many occasions, the Invisible Man’s narrative presents a metacog-

nitive circumstance in that while the Invisible Man is, in fact, invisible,

the narrator’s blindness eventually creates his own invisibility. In the

novel, the Invisible Man’s vision blurs during his frequent walks, in turn

blurring his future as he traverses his new surroundings. With an im-

pending sense of doom and wonder as to how the Invisible Man ends up

underground, the reader slowly observes the narrator’s fall into an abyss

of lies, sins, and betrayal against the white patriarchy that he worships

as he walks with a veil over his eyes, unaware of his own downfall. Ac-

cording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the denition of “downfall”

almost always relates to the origin story of the rst man and woman.

Adam’s fall from grace begins after the devil, disguised as a serpent, de-

ceives the rst woman and tempts her to sin by consuming fruit from the

Tree of Knowledge. Once realizing her nakedness, Eve tempts Adam to

eat from the tree, completing their fall from God’s Grace. The Invisible

Man’s transition from visible to invisible follows a similar pattern as

the downfall of Adam; however, the Invisible Man’s God exists not as

a deity but as the white patriarchal society that he inherently wishes to

please for power. Although scholars such as Claudia May and Joanna

Piciotto have created connections between the Biblical Eden and other

inuential novels by delving into literary aspects that relate to the Bible,

no one has connected the Invisible Man’s underground evolution and

Adam’s fall from grace. I utilize James Weldon Johnson’s writings and

the epic poetry of John Milton to view Invisible Man as a metaphorical

retelling of the Garden of Eden. Comparing the Invisible Man’s evolu-

tion to aspects of the Biblical Fall of Man creates theoretical implica-

tions to analyze previously unexamined connections between Biblical

contexts and modern-day literature, thus retooling the Invisible Man as

Adam and the white patriarchy as God.

II. A State of Innocent Obedience

“ For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore

on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good,

and simple concerning evil” (Romans 16.19).

After the Invisible Man’s brutal beating at the battle royal, a night

of entertainment for the white members of society, this society awards

him a scholarship to a prestigious university founded by an African

American man. He receives an education that has yet to be made avail-

able to his family members and spends the next three years in academia.

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During this time, the Invisible Man begins to view his surroundings as

a heavenly arena, wherein the college fullls his dreams of becoming

an educated Black man. In his narration, he begins incorporating dic-

tion with seraphic and pure connotations, such as, “roads gracefully

winding” and “white magnolias” “in the bee-humming air,” establish-

ing the Invisible Man’s perspective of the college as an Edenic location

(Ellison 34). Despite this, Claudia May argues that while the college

may be a place of respite, she ultimately cannot connect the college

to the Garden of Eden, as “the promise of Eden as a region untouched

by disharmony is never fully ‘gained’” (422). Because the college that

the Invisible Man attends still contains many instances of racism and

racial segregation, it cannot be related to the biblical Garden of Eden, in

which the inhabitants are “devoid of conict” (May 422). However, the

college as an Edenesque space still exists, though only from the Invis-

ible Man’s viewpoint. Like his perception of white patriarchal society,

his Eden exists outside of true reality as an idealized and intangible

mindset. For instance, though the Invisible Man lives in a time of racial

animosity, his perception of his experience at college is not impacted

by it. He believes that the college’s surroundings sustain his education

and will establish his future endeavors, and in this innocent and some-

what naive perception, the Invisible Man creates a mindset in which he

has found a perfect heaven on Earth.

In this space which the narrator views as heaven, Dr. Bledsoe, the

president of the college, acts as a God-like gure whom the Invisible

Man devotes himself to worshiping. Joanna Picciotto, in her analysis

of Milton’s Paradise Lost, surmises an idea which can be applied to the

Invisible Man’s devotion to Dr. Bledsoe: “For created humanity, divine

worship was indistinguishable from satisfying the cognitive appetite”

(25). The narrator believes that Dr. Bledsoe, as the college’s president,

has his best interests in mind, and thus innocently obeys the commands

given to him and devours the education that fullls his “cognitive ap-

petite” (Picciotto 225). For example, after Dr. Bledsoe admonishes the

narrator for taking Norton to the college’s more shameful sights, the

narrator intrinsically feels as if Dr. Bledsoe’s allegiance to the white

patriarchy is unsettling; however, the narrator still pledges allegiance to

said patriarchy and Bledsoe as he convinces himself to “submit to pun-

ishment” due to having “violated the code” (Ellison 147). This mindset

continues throughout the novel even as the narrator moves from one

landscape to another, infallibly worshiping the white patriarchs of soci-

ety whom he should despise.

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Unfortunately for the Invisible Man, he mimics the college’s

Founder by placing a veil over his mind’s eye in the same way the

bronze statue of the Founder places a veil over his literal eyes. The stat-

ue placed in the middle of the college campus reminds the students of

what their ancestors endured to place them here. As the Invisible Man

thinks back on the statue, he remembers “his [the Founder’s] hands

stretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil,” and he is “puz-

zled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered

more rmly in place” (Ellison 29). Just like the Founder, the Invisible

Man has a veil that covers his mind’s eye. The veil skews his percep-

tion, and he believes that the college balks against powerful white men

in society who ultimately aim to hurt educated Black men, instead of

the reality that the college enables this cycle. This belief allows him to

believe in the power that Bledsoe bestows upon students and the hope

he gives them that they could be like him one day. Most importantly,

he continues to believe that he is safe in the Eden that he calls home,

innocently oblivious to the obscurity of sin that the college promotes

to its students; furthermore, a biblical veil symbolizes the power of

submission as the veil visually proclaims an outside force’s power over

one’s body. In the Invisible Man’s case, since his veil does not extrinsi-

cally present itself to viewers or the Invisible Man himself, the power

of this veil stays hidden over his mind’s eye, portraying an invisible

submission to the white men of his society.

III. Exodus

“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of

Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20.2).

Exodus, deriving from the second book of the Bible, refers to the

departure of Israelites from Egypt and deliverance from slavery; how-

ever, the word “exodus,” in a new construction of the word, means “a

mass departure of people” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). American

writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson presents an argu-

ment for a remedy to African Americans’ state of chaos after the Great

Depression. In his book Negro Americans, What Now?, Johnson argues

that a mass exodus of African Americans is one solution to solving the

problem of prejudice in the United States, but in order for this solu-

tion to be complete, they must have a state or territory for themselves.

Throughout the novel, the Invisible Man embodies several identities

to t the situation that arises. For example, he begins his journey at

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college as a naive Black boy, unaware of the pressures of society. He

then embraces the identity of the Brotherhood after Bledsoe’s betrayal.

In each facet of identity, the Invisible Man feels as if he has moved

from one idyllic “Eden” into another. The Invisible Man’s various fac-

ets of identity present themselves as “a mass departure of people” as

he leaves one Eden and enters another. The narrator fullls Johnson’s

argument by claiming his new surroundings as territory through every

identity, even as he attempts to ignore the inuence of prejudice by

holding the metaphorical veil rmly over his face (Johnson 213).

The Invisible Man mimics the book of Exodus after his exile from

the college by traveling, as he travels north in search of a job with Bled-

soe’s colleagues. Instead of Eden, he nds new authority gures to de-

vote himself to: the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood represents the same

white patriarchy seen in the battle royal. The Brotherhood, as described

in the novel, exists as an authoritarian group that focuses heavily on the

survival of the group as a whole instead of the individuals that create

the group: “they usually think in terms of ‘we’” (Ellison 316). These

white men do not have a clear vision of their true motives, as embodied

by Brother Jack, who both runs the Brotherhood and embodies their

lack of vision for their motives. Like the white men at the battle royal,

the Invisible Man devoutly worships both groups as his only escape

from the patriarchy. Once again, a group of powerful men blind the

Invisible Man as he learns to adhere to a collective thought and purpose

instead of his individual identity.

Before meeting the Brotherhood, however, the Invisible Man traverses

the North alone and attempts to establish his foundation as a Black man in a

white man’s world. For instance, the Invisible Man leaves the college with

seven letters of recommendation from Bledsoe to deliver to his colleagues

to ostensibly help the Invisible Man nd work in the North. The Invisible

Man puts devout trust in Bledsoe to deliver him to a newer and life-chang-

ing beginning, so he does not open the letters of recommendation; however,

the Invisible Man discovers that Bledsoe’s letters only mock him for failing

to entertain the “delicate relationships” with wealthy white men on which

the college depends (Ellison 191). The narrator’s blind devotion to Bled-

soe showcases the fallibility of the narrator’s thoughts. What he believes

becomes his reality, rendering his surroundings an Edenesque landscape

(though they are anything but). The metaphorical veil blinds both the Invis-

ible Man’s literal eyes and his mind’s eye to the possibility of escape from

the white patriarchy, and ultimately leads to his downfall through misplaced

trust in the same white patriarchy that enslaved his ancestors.

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IV. Meeting with the Snake

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5.20).

The Invisible Man’s new mental Eden exists within his presence in

the Brotherhood. Within the group, the Invisible Man accrues a false

sense of respect and power as delegated by Brother Jack, who leads

the Brotherhood. Specic parts of the Brotherhood appeal to his sense

of self-assurance, from orating paramount speeches to rile support for

the Brotherhood to meeting new peers who support him. After deliv-

ering his rst speech for the association, the Invisible Man once again

becomes blinded: “Blurred gures bumped about me. I stumbled as in

a game of blindman’s bluff” (Ellison 347). In this sense, the Brother-

hood relates to the same white patriarchal society controlling the battle

royal who aims to blind the Invisible Man, and the Invisible Man’s

new Eden is the same as his previous Eden at college, just in a different

physical landscape. Neither of these Edens allow the Invisible Man to

hold power and autonomy as a Black man, but both provide him a false

sense of self-condence. Although the Brotherhood portrays a sense of

unity, the Invisible Man becomes a gurative synecdoche in the novel

as he believes that his motivations are the same motivations that drive

the group, and by orating for the Brotherhood, he is one in the same as

the group; however, he remains solely a mouthpiece for the Brother-

hood and creates an idyllic version of his involvement.

Importantly, though the narrator believes he is acting toward a

greater purpose, his blind trust in the Brotherhood leads him down-

wards in his fall. His fall is foreshadowed in his rst meeting with the

organization, as the Invisible Man notes that he “could see the word

Chthonian on the storm awning stretched above the walk” (299); the

word “Chthonian” embodies an unholy connotation as it means “con-

cerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld” (Merriam-Webster

Dictionary). The hellish implications of this word create the sense that

the Invisible Man has entered the depths of Hell with the Brotherhood,

whom he mistakenly believes imparts good upon the world; further-

more, Brother Jack’s deceitful nature presents itself as similar to the

serpent in the Garden of Eden. Ellison introduces Brother Jack in the

novel as the one who recruits the Invisible Man into the Brotherhood.

Brother Jack tempts the narrator with money and opportunities to speak

for the Black injustice as he “sweeps” the Invisible Man away and “in-

troduces [him] by a new name” (Ellison 311). As the novel progresses,

however, Brother Jack’s deceit becomes visible when he abandons the

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local problems in Harlem to instead focus on national and international

issues, further proving that Jack does not share the same values as the

Invisible Man and instead works for his own prot.

In Book IV of Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton, Milton

describes Satan’s pain and envy as he looks down upon Adam and

Eve, which connects to Brother Jack’s deceitful nature through his

inability to view the Invisible Man as an individual; instead, Jack

asks the Invisible Man to renounce his past as Satan asks Adam and

Eve to renounce the wishes of God. Once an angel in heaven, Satan

is envious of the happiness and joy the couple feels in Eden, and he

wishes to wreak havoc upon their joy in order to spite God: “Your

change approaches, when all these delights / will vanish, and deliver

ye to woe — / More woe, the more your taste is now of joy” (Milton

367

–

69). In the same way that Satan looks down upon Adam and

Eve, Brother Jack looks down upon the Invisible Man as they de-

scend into the Chthonian. Unaware of the evilness that lies beneath

the organization, the Invisible Man confuses whom he views as his

God with a gure of deceit and evil; in this moment, he exhibits

the same blindness he shares at the battle royal while descending in

the elevator to the boxing arena. During his rst meeting with the

Brotherhood, the narrator unknowingly begins his nal Fall from his

God’s Grace through his ambition to better society for himself.

V. The Consumption of the Apple

“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be

opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3.5).

After many more meetings with the Brotherhood and several

speeches made on behalf of the Brotherhood, the Invisible Man’s iden-

tity within the Brotherhood and the power it confers blind him to the

organization’s true motives; furthermore, he has not yet lifted the veil

from his mind’s eye. Tod Clifton, a member of the Brotherhood, serves

as Harlem’s Youth Leader. After leaving his position, the Invisible

Man witnesses Clifton’s murder. Clifton and the Invisible Man share

the same hope for Black liberation from a white patriarchy. While the

Invisible Man is still somewhat under the impression that the Brother-

hood lives up to their ideals, Brother Clifton’s death reveals the Broth-

erhood’s real motives, and it is Brother Clifton’s death that drives the

Invisible Man to give a speech he knows that Brother Jack

—

his meta-

phorical God in the Brotherhood

—

will not approve of.

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At Brother Clifton’s funeral, the Invisible Man stands be-

fore an audience who feels the same betrayal and anger against

the white patriarchal police officers that the Invisible Man is be-

ginning to feel against the Brotherhood for its failure to protect

Clifton or prevent his murder. As a result, the Invisible Man now

must declare a eulogy describing Clifton’s life. However, instead

of promoting the organization during Clifton’s eulogy, the Invis-

ible Man describes Clifton’s life as it relates to the other Black

members of the community, beginning with the anaphoric clause

“His name was Clifton . . . ” (Ellison 352). The Invisible Man hu-

manizes his murdered friend to the audience, a friend that has been

dehumanized in society due to his race, and through his oration,

comes to understand that the Brotherhood does not care about the

Black youth as they claim, showcasing Clifton’s death as an exam-

ple of this betrayal. The Brotherhood diminishes the real issues in

the community (issues that Clifton’s death at the hands of the po-

lice have only inflamed) by focusing more on their reputation than

their actions, and the Invisible Man’s resentment over the death of

his friend presents itself through his speech.

During the Invisible Man’s eulogy for Clifton, as the tension and

anger grows in the sweltering heat, he questions the audience, “Don’t

you know it’s hot out here in the sun?” (Ellison 352). The sun at Clif-

ton’s funeral directly correlates to a description of Eden in Milton’s

Paradise Lost. Satan, similar to the Invisible Man’s proclamation

that he is hot in the heat, speaks to the sun: “O sun, to tell thee how

I hate thy beams, / That brings to my remembrance from what state /

I fell . . . ” (Milton 37, 38). In this case, however, Satan admonishes

the sun for reminding him of heaven as it shines upon Adam and Eve

in the Garden of Eden. Similarly, the sun shines upon the Invisible

Man as his Edenesque view of his surroundings slowly fades. He

consumes an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and he nally lifts

his veil. The Invisible Man, post-consumption, describes the Broth-

erhood as a “mere glimmer of light, but behind the polished and hu-

mane facade of Jack’s eye, I’d found an amorphous form and a harsh

red rawness” (Ellison 392–93). Once he lifts this veil, the Invisible

Man sees Jack in his “raw” nakedness and, consequently, realizes

the true motives of the corrupt organization (Ellison 393). While the

Invisible Man had viewed Jack through an idealistic veil, the action

of oration becomes the consumption of the apple that unobscures his

vision and deconstructs his Edenesque fallacy.

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VI. The Invisible Man’s (Down)Fall

“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when

I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me” (Micah 7.8).

The Invisible Man and the Oxford English Dictionary embody the

metaphorical denition of “falling” as it relates to Adam’s Fall from

Grace. The OED traces the word “fall” starting from 1175 AD as “To

descend from a state of moral rectitude, virtue, or grace” (OED “fall”).

The many references to the word come from sources such as the 1879

Life and Work of St. Paul by F.W. Farrar: “The sense of sin oppressed

him . . . He was ever falling and falling, and no hand was held out to

help him,” and the 1992 Black Women Abolitionists by S.J. Yee: “If

they lost their virginity before marriage, they would fall from virtue.”

In the context of biblical connotations, Falling is therefore followed by

From Grace. In said context, to thoroughly understand the transitional

state from pre-fall to post-fall, an action must occur for someone to fall

from God’s virtue. The reader can trace the Invisible Man’s Fall from

Grace as he transitions from a state of innocent obedience to guilty

disobedience of the Brotherhood by tracing the usage of the word fall

as it appears in the novel. Using this method, the reader can pinpoint

six instances that contributed to the Invisible Man’s fall; furthermore,

each instance of the word “fall” in the novel accompanies a new transi-

tion for the narrator in his search for identity, which suggests that each

“fall” alters the Invisible Man’s identity.

The rst use of fall appears in the novel during the battle royal:

“The room went near red as I fell. It was a dream fall, my body lan-

guid and fastidious as to where to land, until the oor became impa-

tient and smashed up to meet me” (Ellison 21). Despite coming to

the battle royal to deliver a speech, the prominent white members of

society force the Invisible Man to ght other Black children for their

pure entertainment. The battle royal remains key in understanding the

Invisible Man’s mindset as he enters the collegiate world. By both

falling to the ground and falling into the wishes of the white men, the

narrator creates a cyclical process in which he continuously places

white men in a position of power over him as his God.

The second use of fall appears as Dr. Bledsoe summons the In-

visible Man to entertain one of the university’s wealthy white donors,

Mr. Norton, by driving him around the campus to places he pleases.

Unfortunately for the narrator, Mr. Norton requests to visit one of the

town’s patrons, a man named Trueblood, who is infamous for raping

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his daughter and his wife in his sleep. Though the Invisible Man does

not realize, the reader understands that Mr. Norton had sexual fantasies

as well about his late daughter. Upon realizing that Trueblood raped

his daughter and received no repercussions from his community, Mr.

Norton becomes ill and requests that the narrator drive him to get a

“stimulant” or “a little whiskey” (Ellison 69). This series of unfortunate

events for the narrator only seem to worsen as the only bar available for

Mr. Norton is a rowdy Black veteran’s bar, which shocks Mr. Norton

and shakes the hope he held for the civilization of Black people. After

returning to campus with the thoroughly shocked man, the Invisible

Man visits Mr. Norton’s room to try to explain to Dr. Bledsoe what

happened; as he explains, he notes that above the replace is a portrait

of the Founder that “looked down at me remotely, benign, sad, and in

that hot instant, profoundly disillusioned. Then a veil seemed to fall”

(Ellison 81). Once again, the Invisible Man innocently obeys the white

members of society, just as the narrator obeyed Mr. Norton’s requests

to see different places in town. The Invisible Man’s blind obedience in

this instance relates back to the veil over the Founder’s eyes. By obey-

ing Mr. Norton’s request to visit Jim Trueblood, however, the Invisible

Man falls from Dr. Bledsoe’s Grace in the same way the veil falls from

the portrait of the Founder. Even through the Invisible Man’s own ban-

ishment and move to the North, the veil remains over his mind’s eye.

The third use of the word “fall” occurs in Dr. Bledsoe’s letter to

his colleagues in the North. After meeting with Bledsoe, the Invisible

Man is expelled from the college until autumn (or so he thinks). Dr.

Bledsoe writes seven letters of recommendation for the Invisible Man

to deliver to some of his colleagues in the North, all of which are se-

curely sealed and which the narrator does not view beforehand. After

several letter deliveries and no calls for work, the Invisible Man visits

the last colleague in the hopes of nding a job. However, instead of

meeting with Mr. Emerson, the Invisible Man is met by Mr. Emer-

son’s son, who irts with and takes pity on the Invisible Man’s current

predicament with the college. As a result of this pity, Mr. Emerson’s

son, Emerson Jr., reveals the actual contents of the letter from Dr.

Bledsoe, which the Invisible Man believed was for the benet of his

education: “This represents, my dear Emerson, one of the rare, deli-

cate instances in which one for whom we held great expectations has

gone grievously astray, and who in his fall threatens to upset certain

delicate relationships between certain interested individuals and the

school” (Ellison 148). By using the word “fall,” Dr. Bledsoe directly

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relates the Invisible Man’s fall from Grace to his position as a student

at the college. Since the Invisible Man worships the college and its

patrons, president, and Founder (all either powerful white men or run

by powerful white men), Bledsoe describes the narrator as no longer

succumbing to the Grace of the college or its patrons since he threat-

ens their interpersonal relationships. The Invisible Man transitions

from one Eden to another through every fall as he leaves behind his

worship of the white patriarchy, as well as his idolization of Dr. Bled-

soe, Brother Jack, and the Brotherhood as a whole.

The fourth usage of the word “fall” is during the Invisible

Man’s stint at the Optic White paint factory and represents both

the impossibility of concealing the sins of the white patriarchy

and the necessity of Black populations to make white society

shine. The Invisible Man seeks out this job at the behest of Em-

erson Jr., where he meets his supervisor, a man named Kimbro.

Kimbro gives the Invisible Man strict orders while mixing paint:

“There’s got to be dope in every single sonofabitching bucket”

(Ellison 154). Kimbro’s poor instructions cause the Invisible

Man to mess up the white paint, and he is consequently moved to

the basement to work with Brockway. Brockway is a veteran at

the paint factory and the only other Black man who works there

because his experience with the factory has made him irreplace-

able. After the Invisible Man has a run-in with some union mem-

bers at the factory, Brockway’s paranoia of losing his job leads

him to give the Invisible Man incorrect directions that ultimately

cause a deadly explosion: “It was a fall into space that seemed

not a fall but a suspension. Then a great weight landed upon me

and I seemed to sprawl in an interval beneath a pile of broken ma-

chinery . . . ” (78). The Invisible Man’s fall while working in the

Optic White paint factory proves his inability to ignore the sins of

the white patriarchy and the legal system that enables its abuses.

The white paint represents the white society, while the drop of

black represents the Black population. The black dope is vital for

creating the perfect shade of white, just as the Black population

is vital for the white society to shine, similar to how Brockway

is a Black man running the machines that create white paint. The

Invisible Man’s fall is a pyrrhic fall in that, while he remains the

victor from leaving one state of submission, he transitions from

the existing workforce into the Brotherhood, where, like Brock-

way, he conceals the sins of white society.

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The fth use of the word fall occurs when the Invisible Man leaves

the hospital after the incident with Brockway at Optic White. The

Invisible Man loses his identity following a series of electric shock

treatments, which leads the narrator to leave the hospital feeling more

confused about who he is than when he rst started his journey in the

North. The Invisible Man, while walking, has several semi-conscious

experiences in which he realizes that he is “no longer afraid” of the in-

uential white men to whom he previously was subordinate; however,

even though he may state that his fear is gone, he continues to remain

subordinate to the same type of people (Ellison 194). The Invisible

Man feels light-headed and thinks, “It was day’s end now and on top

of every building the ags were uttering and diving down, collapsing.

And I felt that I would fall, had fallen, moved now as against a current

sweeping swiftly against me” (Ellison 194). As the narrator stumbles

along the subway platform, he connects himself and his mental state

of confusion to the “uttering ags” on the tops of the buildings (Elli-

son 249). By connecting himself to the ags, the Invisible Man posi-

tions himself as falling from the top of the world. The question left to

the readers, however, is from what is he falling? To the Invisible Man,

this train of thought is signicant in his transition from a worshiper of

whiteness to someone working against the white patriarchy. Again, the

reader would benet from remembering that while the Invisible Man

believes he has completed his transition, he is still falling.

The last use of fall occurs just as the Invisible Man plunges un-

derground to what becomes his new territory. Chased underground by

a mob of white men after helping to burn part of the city, the narrator

staggers through the street and nds refuge inside of an uncovered

manhole. The Invisible Man’s fall into the uncovered manhole results

in him “lay[ing] in the black dark upon the black coal no longer run-

ning . . . ” (Ellison 438). Soon after lighting a match to see his new sur-

roundings, “the match went out and I heard something fall softly upon

the coal nearby. They were talking above” (Ellison 434). The situating

of white men above him puts them in a literal position of power over

him. By falling into an underground manhole, the Invisible Man has -

nally reached physically and mentally the lowest point possible, and to

complete his Fall from the Grace of white men, he has left the Broth-

erhood and created a landscape of his own–one that, importantly, he

does not view as an Eden. The Invisible Man has abandoned all hope

of his God and expelled himself from Eden, and seeks the redemption

only he can give himself.

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VII. Epilogue: Falling into the Abyss of Nietzsche

“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be

opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3.5).

The nal chapter places the Invisible Man underground in his man-

hole, which mirrors the reader’s introduction to the Invisible Man in the

prologue. The manhole is void of light and the truth the Invisible Man

thought he knew; instead, immense darkness surrounds him. The Invis-

ible Man must therefore create his own light guratively and literally

by repossessing his faith in his previous God and becoming his own

faith. To begin his transformation into a state of guilty disobedience

from God (guilty meaning that he feels guilt for his previous devotion),

the Invisible Man burns past relics that held signicance to him: “I

started with my high school diploma, applying one precious match with

a feeling of remote irony, even smiling as I saw the swift but feeble

light push back the gloom” (Ellison 440). He then moves on to burn

Clifton’s Sambo doll, the “anonymous letter” that Jack wrote, and a

piece of paper with his Brotherhood name. In this sense, the Invisible

Man has unobscured the thin line between what he views as good and

evil, distinguishing between his past experiences with white patriarchy

and his future as an African American man beneath the world.

In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche, a widely known

German philosopher, wrote of similar experiences in his book Beyond

Good and Evil. He states that by looking into all possible modes of

thought beyond good and evil, a person, without realizing it, has opened

his eyes to the opposite idea of religion. A man who has learned not

only to compromise and realize what was but “wishes to have it again

as it was and is, for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo . . . to the

whole piece and play” requires to make himself anew and necessary to

the world (Nietzsche 45). In this sense, the Invisible Man’s descent into

the underground world to reect on his previous experiences falls into

Nietzsche’s argument that reecting upon what has created his current

state, then reecting again from the beginning, will ultimately renew

him from the identity he has become. Overall, the Invisible Man’s Fall

from Grace was necessary for his evolution into a Black man who can

effectively “Live with [his] head in the lion’s mouth” and “overcome

‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and de-

struction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” be-

cause, without his fall, the Invisible Man would not be able to rise

from the ashes of his past (Ellison 16). The Invisible Man’s opposite

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Cryslin Ledbetter

idea of religion focuses instead on relinquishing worship to Bledsoe,

Mr. Norton, Brother Jack, and the likeness of patriarchal white men to

thoroughly establish a religion based upon himself and his experiences

to nalize unapologetic disobedience against these men.

CRYSLIN LEDBETTER is an aspiring writer and recent graduate of

the BA English program at the University of West Georgia. Her literary

role models are writers Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and Oscar Wilde.

She plans to continue her education at the University of West Geor-

gia with a Masters degree in English. While rst reading The Invisible

Man, she noticed a utility in connecting the Invisible Man’s evolution

to aspects of the Biblical Fall of Man, as such observation creates theo-

retical implications for readers to analyze previously unexamined con-

nections between Biblical contexts and modern-day literature.

WORKS CITED

“Chthonic Denition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Web-

ster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chthonic.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Random House, 1989.

“Exodus Denition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Web-

ster,https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exodus.

“fall, v.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2021,

www.oed.com/view/Entry/67829. Accessed 29 November 2021.

Holy Bible. King James Version, Holy Bible Publishers, 2019.

Johnson, James Weldon. Negro Americans, What Now? Viking Press, 1935.

May, Claudia. “The Genesis of Eden: Scriptural (Re)Translations and

the (Un)Making of an Academic Eden in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible

Man.” Literature and Theology, vol. 23, no. 4, Oxford University

Press, 2009, pp. 421–41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23927069.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, Wilder Publications, 2008.

Picciotto, Joanna. “Reforming the Garden: The Experimentalist Eden

and ‘Paradise Lost.’” ELH, vol. 72, no. 1, Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity Press, 2005, pp. 23–78, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029962.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202342

I. Introduction

H.P. Lovecraft’s reputation as one of the most well-known and in-

uential writers of American horror ction only somewhat precedes

his infamy for racism and xenophobia. His novella “The Shadow over

Innsmouth,” written in 1931, undoubtedly reects the prevalent beliefs

of his historical moment, in which the American eugenics movement

rose to prominence (Joshi 2: 791). This story follows narrator Robert

Olmstead on a genealogy-tracing trip to New England in 1927 (Joshi

2: 791). Intrigued by the rumors he hears from New Englanders, he

detours to the isolated port town of Innsmouth. The Innsmouthians’

strange appearances disturb him, and his disgust intensies when he

learns from Innsmouth resident Zadok Allen that the Innsmouthians’

physical features are the product of crossbreeding with shlike crea-

tures known as the Deep Ones. After eeing Innsmouth, Olmstead con-

tinues his genealogical quest and eventually discovers that he too has

Deep One ancestry. This revelation causes him to contemplate suicide,

but he ultimately decides to live out the transformation into a Deep One

and join his ancestors in the sea.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” has traditionally been read as support-

ing the racist, xenophobic, and eugenicist beliefs of its historical moment.

However, I argue that this story instead exposes the unnecessary, harmful

consequences and irrationality of these beliefs. More specically, this sto-

ry condemns racial prejudice, the association of mental illness with non-

Nature versus Norms: Eugenics and

Social Constructs in “The Shadow over

Innsmouth”

Kyra McKaufey, Rice University

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Kyra McKaufey

white, non-Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and the concept of genetic determinism.

The novella presents all of these ideas as social constructs, a contrast to the

eugenics movement’s attempts to present them as objective and scientif-

ic. Consequently, this text illustrates, through its protagonist Robert Olm-

stead, how individuals can free themselves from these constructs in order

to live a life of acceptance, individual agency, and pride in their ancestry,

even amid rampant xenophobia and the popularity of eugenics.

II. The Context of Eugenics

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” emerged in an era when eugenics

was “as roaring a part of American culture as appers and the Model

T” (Miller 131). The eugenics movement gained prominence in the

United States from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, by which

time about “two-thirds of the . . . states” had passed eugenic steriliza-

tion laws (Dowbiggin x, Luty 52). Several of these sterilization laws

listed “the mentally ill” as “a specic target group” for sterilization

(Dowbiggin 77–78). The eugenics movement also supported genet-

ic determinism through the beliefs that genes control “all or at least

most human characteristics” and that, as the gene itself is “a unit that

w[ill] not change,” people cannot escape their genetic fate (Garver

and Garver 1110). Consequently, mental illnesses were seen as genet-

ic and therefore incurable, so psychiatrists used eugenics to explain

their own “pronounced difculties trying to cure their institutional

patients” (Dowbiggin x). Thus, the American eugenics movement

presented genetic traits like mental illness as destiny: once inherited,

those traits decided a person’s inevitable fate.

Additionally, concerns about immigration contributed to the eu-

genics movement’s rise to prominence in the United States. Increases

in immigration prompted the spread of racist fears about the supposed-

ly genetically superior Anglo-Saxon population declining in the United

States (Garver and Garver 1110). “[R]estrictionist” opinions towards

immigration increased (Dowbiggin 192). The eugenics movement, with

its inaccurate claims about immigrants being “biologically inferior,”

provided justication for these opinions, as well as for “xenophobic”

laws that severely limited immigration (Garver and Garver 1110–11,

Dowbiggin 192). One such belief of some American psychiatrists was

that immigrant populations exhibited a higher concentration of men-

tal illness (Dowbiggin 191). Another belief associated alcoholism with

immigrants (Dowbiggin 224). Thus, the eugenics movement character-

ized immigrants as threats to the Anglo-Saxon population who would

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bring unfavorable genes into the United States (Garver and Garver

1110). The Deep Ones in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” display these

supposedly genetic traits that the eugenics movement associated with

immigrant populations, which illustrates them as the embodiment of

the eugenics era’s racist fears.

First, the novella directly relates Deep One ancestry to foreign

descent, which illustrates the story as an allegory for the xenophobic

climate in the United States. A ticket agent from New England who

warns Olmstead about Innsmouth claims that many New Englanders

dislike the Innsmouth residents because of “race prejudice” (Love-

craft 360). This racism stems from the Innsmouthians’ strange ap-

pearances and their potential relation to the “queer kinds of people”

brought to Innsmouth by trading ships that traveled to “queer ports in

Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else” (Lovecraft 360).

This suggests that the New Englanders believe that the Innsmouthians’

ancestry derives from immigrants, and, furthermore, their description

of foreign people and places as “queer” demonstrates their intoler-

ance toward the potential cultural differences of other peoples. How-

ever, because the Innsmouthians’ ancestry instead derives from the

Deep Ones—who originate from the waters around the South Pacic

islands—this prejudice illustrates how white New Englanders hold

similar contempt for both immigrants and the Deep Ones. Thus, the

story re-creates the prejudiced cultural climate of the United States,

with the Deep Ones representing immigrants and the New Englanders

representing individuals who hold xenophobic beliefs. This is fur-

ther proven through the characterization of the Deep Ones, which

reects xenophobic fears about immigrants. When guessing how the

Innsmouthians spend their time, another New Englander suggests that

“[p]erhaps—judging from the quantities of bootleg liquor they con-

sum[e]—they lay for most of the daylight hours in an alcoholic stu-

por,” which echoes the xenophobic fear of immigrants being alcohol-

ics (Lovecraft 372). Additionally, the Innsmouthians’ “quasi-pagan”

religion, the Esoteric Order of the Dagon, was “imported from the

East” and replaced Christianity in Innsmouth, which poses another

derogatory comparison between the Deep Ones and Pacic Islanders

(Lovecraft 365). The fear of another religion replacing Christiani-

ty represents the fear of other cultures replacing or interfering with

Western culture in the United States. These elements present the Deep

Ones as ctional surrogates for immigrants who enact the xenophobic

fears of the early twentieth century.

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“The Shadow over Innsmouth” draws on another xenophobic fear

by associating non-English languages—and by extension, non-An-

glo-Saxon heritage—with mental illness. Characters slip into an un-

familiar language to demonstrate madness. The novella establishes

this technique when Zadok Allen begins speaking in a strange lan-

guage—“Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh

wgah-nagl fhtagn”—immediately before Olmstead describes him as

“fast lapsing into stark raving” (Lovecraft 386). Olmstead himself

later speaks this same language when he decides to embrace his an-

cestry and join the Deep Ones: “Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

No, I shall not shoot myself—I cannot be made to shoot myself!”

(Lovecraft 412). Olmstead embracing this new language represents

his acceptance of his ancestry. The fact that he begins speaking it

immediately before declaring that he will not commit suicide—his

only option to avoid transforming into a Deep One—emphasizes this

acceptance. However, Olmstead slipping into this language also in-

dicates that he too, in the perspective of others and society, may be

“fast lapsing into stark raving.” His language change presents his

newfound wonder at the acceptance of his ancestry as the product of

madness. The association of madness specically with non-English

languages in the story represents the eugenics movement’s belief that

immigrant populations were more prone to mental illness.

Clearly, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” responds to the prevalence

of xenophobic and eugenicist ideas within its historical moment. The

fact that the Deep Ones embody the fears and negative impressions

that white, Anglo-Saxon Americans had about immigrants indicates

that “The Shadow over Innsmouth” supports eugenics and xenopho-

bia. However, one crucial moment in the story calls this interpretation

into question: “Olmstead’s spectacular conversion at the end,” during

which he accepts his Deep One heritage and resolves to rejoin his Deep

One relatives undersea (Joshi 2: 797). Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi

acknowledges that this moment could “transform the Deep Ones from

objects of horror to objects of sympathy or identication,” but he ul-

timately rejects this interpretation and instead argues that “Olmstead’s

change of heart [is] an augmentation of the horror” that the Deep Ones

evoke (2: 797). Moreover, Joshi claims that this moment achieves its

frightening effect through its illustration of both Olmstead’s “physical

body” and “mind” as “ineluctably corrupted” (2: 797). When Joshi’s

claim about Olmstead succumbing to madness is considered in con-

junction with the allegory about eugenics in “The Shadow over Inns-

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Kyra McKaufey

mouth,” the story seems to support eugenicist and xenophobic beliefs

and present the Deep Ones—and, by proxy, immigrants—in a deeply

negative light. Olmstead’s insanity not only reinforces the association

between foreign ancestry and mental illness, but also implies that he

needs to be mentally ill in order to be proud of his non-white, non-An-

glo-Saxon heritage. Additionally, Joshi argues that the novella serves as

a warning against interracial or intercultural relationships, suggesting

that these bonds will induce the degeneration of the human species (2:

793–4). Degeneration was a eugenicist belief concerned with a geneti-

cally determined hierarchy of life forms, in which moral failings induce

physical changes in an organism that demote it on the hierarchy (Miller

25–7, 49, 128). Joshi’s argument suggests that “The Shadow over Inns-

mouth” presents interracial and intercultural relationships as a moral

failing that will cause “the denigration of human importance” within

this hierarchy (2: 794). However, I disagree with Joshi’s interpretation

of the ending of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” as an intensication

of the fear surrounding the Deep Ones. Rather than exemplifying a

descent into madness, Olmstead’s decision to join the Deep Ones in-

dicates his rationality. Consequently, the story presents an argument

against eugenics, exposing the illogical thought processes that underlie

its condonement of bigotry and genetic determinism.

III. The Irrationality of Prejudice

Olmstead only appears to succumb to madness when he chang-

es his opinion about the Deep Ones because, through this action, he

dees the xenophobic social norms established throughout the story.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” illustrates prejudice against the Deep

Ones as normal and prevalent in society, a parallel to the rampant rac-

ism and xenophobia of the eugenics-era United States. However, when

the characters in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” express prejudice, the

novella highlights the lack of logic and objective evidence behind their

sentiments, which presents xenophobia as similarly illogical.

Olmstead’s descriptions of the Deep Ones are ltered through

his prejudiced perspective in a narrative style which focuses on Ol-

mstead’s own feelings and impressions rather than the actual stimuli

that evoke them. This narration ultimately criticizes prejudice as a con-

struct which has no rational basis in objective reality and is, instead,

based on individual biases. For instance, Olmstead describes the Inns-

mouthians as having “certain peculiarities of face and motions which

[he] instinctively disliked without being able to dene or comprehend

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Kyra McKaufey

them” (Lovecraft 369). However, he never details these specic traits,

nor can he identify which ones produce his distaste. In fact, Olmstead’s

physical observations do not always inform these impressions: “even

before [he] notice[s] any details” about the Innsmouthian bus driver’s

appearance, “there spread[s] over [him] a wave of spontaneous aversion

which c[an] be neither checked nor explained” (Lovecraft 365–6). His

reaction precedes his perception, indicating that his revulsion toward

the Innsmouthians originates from his own visceral feelings rather than

any specic details about the Innsmouthians themselves. Consequently,

Olmstead’s descriptions highlight the fundamentally illogical nature of

prejudice, which is not grounded in the truths of objective reality and is

instead reliant on subjective biases.

This truth, however, does not prevent other characters from sharing

Olmstead’s prejudice against the Deep Ones. Their bias saturates the

information that they provide about Innsmouth. Taken at face value,

their rumors support the interpretation that Olmstead’s madness causes

him to decide to join the Deep Ones. However, exposing their preju-

dices and considering alternate interpretations dilutes the derogatory

impact of their statements and uncovers the ill-founded nature of the

stigma against the Deep Ones and the xenophobia it represents.

For instance, a New England ticket agent supplies the rst neg-

ative depiction of the Innsmouthians in the novella. He describes

Innsmouth as a town of strange, isolated people, shrouded in sinis-

ter rumors and with a mysterious history involving riots and a dis-

ease epidemic. However, he also admits that “the real thing behind

the way folks feel is simply race prejudice” (Lovecraft 360). The

ticket agent thus presents prejudice as a concept which discounts

the reasons behind New Englanders’ hatred of the Innsmouthians.

Rather than rumors or history evoking their disgust, their revulsion

originates “simply” from their illogical, emotional preconceptions

about the Innsmouthians based on their appearance and ancestry.

Furthermore, even after the ticket agent confesses that baseless prej-

udice underlies New Englanders’ dislike for the Innsmouthians, he

says, “I don’t say I’m blaming those that hold [race prejudice]. I

hate those Innsmouth folks myself” (Lovecraft 360). Even though he

acknowledges the lack of rationality behind his own contempt, the

ticket agent still resents the Innsmouthians, revealing the incongruity

of his prejudice. His own admission undermines his negative charac-

terization of the Innsmouthians, as it reveals that his bias inuences

his beliefs. Nonetheless, this rst impression of the Innsmouthians

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Kyra McKaufey

that Olmstead receives sticks in his mind, despite its questionable

credibility. When Olmstead stays at the Gilman House hotel in Inns-

mouth, for example, he struggles “not [to] dwell on” the rumor he

heard from “the Newburyport ticket-agent about the Gilman House”

(Lovecraft 391). The emotional salience of the ticket agent’s infor-

mation overpowers its lack of credibility, demonstrating how preju-

dice endures despite its lack of a logical foundation.

Furthermore, much of Olmstead’s information about the history

of Innsmouth comes from Zadok Allen, whose intense bias against

the Innsmouthians who breed with the Deep Ones creates doubt con-

cerning the credibility of his story. Zadok openly expresses his disgust

toward mating with the Deep Ones. First, he labels Obed Marsh, the

sailor who brought the practice of reproducing with the Deep Ones

to Innsmouth, as “[f]ar gone” mentally (Lovecraft 386). Additionally,

Zadok later professes that “[he]’d a died ruther’n take” the third Oath

of Dagon, a pledge to breed with the Deep Ones (Lovecraft 387).

However, Zadok’s disgust disregards the fact that the Innsmouthians

cannot avoid breeding with the Deep Ones, as the Deep Ones threaten

to “ris[e] an’ wip[e] aout humankind” if the Innsmouthians do not

comply (Lovecraft 386). This perspective, which neither Zadok nor

Olmstead consider, illustrates the Innsmouthians breeding with the

Deep Ones as a seless act to save humanity. Zadok’s bias against

crossbreeding with the Deep Ones blinds him to the nobility of the

Innsmouthians’ compliance, demonstrating how prejudicial beliefs

are maintained by ignoring contradictory evidence.

Clearly, Zadok’s individual prejudices render his claims question-

able, especially claims which reinforce xenophobic stereotypes and

which are not substantiated by the truths of Olmstead’s genealogical

research. Olmstead’s research provides him with evidence to support

Zadok’s statements that the Deep Ones mated with humans and that

Obed’s daughter—later revealed to be Olmstead’s great-grandmother—

“was eddicated in Europe” and married “an Arkham feller” (Lovecraft

387). However, no proof or even corroboration arises for one of Za-

dok’s wildest claims: the Deep Ones’ demand for human sacrice. Za-

dok describes both the Pacic Islanders and their religious practices,

including sacrices to the Deep Ones, as “heathen,” displaying his bias

against the cultures of Pacic Islanders (Lovecraft 379, 380). His claim

that they made human sacrices to the Deep Ones—and that the Deep

Ones then demanded these sacrices from the Innsmouthians—is likely

inuenced by stereotypes about non-Christian religions. Thus, Zadok’s

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claims about human sacrice may provide more information about Za-

dok’s xenophobic beliefs than they do about the truth of what happened

in Innsmouth, illustrating how prejudice can promote the acceptance

of unfounded beliefs about reality, as long as they are consistent with

one’s preconceived biases.

Furthermore, Zadok’s claim that human sacrices occur in Inns-

mouth relies on his questionable memory. His belief originates from

“see[ing] somethin’ heavy heaved offen Obed’s dory beyond the reef”

from his house’s cupola when he was a teenager, “an’ then larn[ing]

nex’ day a young feller was missin’ from home” (Lovecraft 384). A

correlational, not causal, relationship links the strange, vague image

Zadok sees to the missing person. Moreover, when Zadok discusses

these events that occurred in Innsmouth during his teenage years, he

mentions not only that people went “missin’,” but also that some peo-

ple “kilt theirselves” (Lovecraft 386). Therefore, suicide, rather than

sacrice, could explain the person’s disappearance. Additionally, Za-

dok’s memory is characterized as unreliable. A grocery store worker

in Innsmouth describes Zadok as “ninety-six years old and somewhat

touched in the head, besides being the town drunkard,” and Zadok is,

in fact, drunk when he tells Olmstead about Innsmouth’s history (Love-

craft 373). Thus, alcohol and mental illness could potentially inuence

his story. Also, these memories occurred during Zadok’s childhood and

teenage years, so some of the details in his memory may have faded

or changed with time. All of this combined causes Zadok’s description

of the Deep Ones and the Innsmouthians to lack credibility. However,

Zadok’s stories still contain enough negativity to enhance prejudice.

Even though Olmstead initially nds Zadok’s story “[p]uerile,” it still

“communicate[s] to [him] a mounting unrest which join[s] with [his]

earlier sense of loathing for the town and its blight of intangible shad-

ow” (Lovecraft 389). The fact that a story which Olmstead does not

even believe intensies his hatred of the Innsmouthians further demon-

strates the irrationality of prejudice.

However, when Olmstead nally hears a different perspective that

presents the Deep Ones in a positive light, his opinion of them changes,

which illustrates how his previous prejudice relied on an incomplete

and wholly negative view of the Deep Ones. He communicates with his

Deep One grandmother and great-great-grandmother through dreams.

They initially frighten him, but later these “certain dreams dete[r]

[him]” from committing suicide (Lovecraft 412). Thus, they provide

him with a comfort that makes him feel more accepting of his impend-

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ing transformation into a Deep One. Through these dreams, Olmstead

learns more about the Deep Ones. As he becomes more familiar with

them and their world, “[t]he tense extremes of horror [lessen], and [he]

feel[s] queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing

them” (Lovecraft 412). When he takes time to actually learn about the

Deep Ones and their lives from the Deep Ones themselves, rather than

just hearing negative rumors about them, his fear of them decreases. He

begins to take an interest in them and feels “drawn” to learn more about

their lives. Olmstead’s dreams highlight the inuence of perspective on

prejudice: once he hears a positive perspective of the Deep Ones and

thus escapes the echo chamber of negativity he encounters in human

society, his fear and prejudice disappear, and he decides to accept his

heritage and join his Deep One family.

Moreover, Olmstead’s ultimate decision to join the Deep Ones is,

unlike his initial prejudice, grounded in logic. This choice benets him,

as his recollection of one of his dreams reveals:

One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grand-

mother under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace

of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and

grotesque brachiate eforescences, and welcomed me with a

warmth that may have been sardonic. She had changed—as

those who take to the water change—and told me she had never

died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had learned

about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders—destined for

him as well—he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was

to be my realm, too—I could not escape it. I would never die,

but would live with those who had lived since before man ever

walked the earth. (Lovecraft 411)

Olmstead has not yet overcome all of his fear and prejudice—he

describes the dream as “frightful,” the flowers as “grotesque,” and

his grandmother’s “warmth” as possibly “sardonic.” Still, even

with these reservations, this dream presents a positive image of be-

coming a Deep One. Olmstead also describes the undersea world

in terms that imply royalty and beauty, like “palace,” “terraces,”

“realm,” and “wonders.” His word choice indicates that, despite

his fears, his fascination and awe about his heritage is growing.

In addition to this beautiful new home, Olmstead’s grandmother

mentions another benefit of becoming a Deep One: immortality.

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Both she and he will “never die,” so not only will he live forever,

but he will live forever surrounded by his family. The decision to

join the Deep Ones, thus, has benefits for Olmstead, which pro-

vides him with rational reasons for overcoming the illogic of prej-

udice and making this choice.

IV. Social Norms and Mental Illness

Despite the rationality of Olmstead’s ultimate decision to embrace

his Deep One heritage, the social expectations of prejudice towards the

Deep Ones cause other characters in the story to view him—as well as

his cousin Lawrence, who is also transforming into a Deep One—as

mentally ill for his acceptance of the Deep Ones. This presents the label

of madness as a social construct applied to those who deviate from so-

cial norms rather than an objective quality of psychosis or irrationality.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” initially hints at the social construction

of madness through Olmstead’s reactions to his dreams. Olmstead con-

fesses that his dreams would “stamp [him] as a madman or a genius if

ever [he] dare[s] write [them] down,” illustrating madness as subjective

and socially determined (Lovecraft 411). The word “stamp” presents this

characterization as an externally applied label rather than an internal or

innate quality; depending on how society reacts to the same, unchang-

ing stimulus of Olmstead’s dreams, it will either “stamp” him with the

positive label of “genius” or the negative label of “madman.” Thus, the

novella criticizes the eugenics movement’s presentation of mental illness

as genetic, instead suggesting that it is merely a social construct.

The social construction of mental illness is ultimately used against

Olmstead and Lawrence because their choice to embrace their Deep One

heritage dees the socially accepted view of the majority. Unlike Olm-

stead and Lawrence’s eventual acceptance of their ancestry, disgust to-

wards the Deep Ones and the Innsmouthians with Deep One heritage per-

sists for everyone else in the story. For instance, the ticket agent claims

that “[n]obody around [Newburyport] or in Arkham or Ipswich will

have anything to do with” the Innsmouthians, which presents prejudice

against the Innsmouthians as a widespread attitude across several New

England towns (Lovecraft 361). Members of Olmstead and Lawrence’s

family also express disgust towards their transforming family members,

which further highlights how revulsion towards Deep One features is

normative. For instance, Olmstead’s uncle Douglas “shot himself after a

trip to New England”—during which he learned about his Deep One her-

itage—in order to avoid the transformation (Lovecraft 409). Additional-

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Kyra McKaufey

ly, Lawrence’s father describes his transforming son’s “state, both mental

and physical” as “very bad,” and Olmstead’s father “look[s] at [Olm-

stead] curiously and almost affrightedly” when he begins to transform

(Lovecraft 409, 411). Olmstead and Lawrence thus defy social norms by

living out their transformations into Deep Ones, and consequently, they

are viewed as mentally ill. Lawrence’s father locks his son in a “mad-

house,” and Olmstead fears that his father will also “shut [him] up in a

sanitarium as [his] poor little cousin [Lawrence] is shut up” (Lovecraft

412). Olmstead, extrapolating from Lawrence’s experience, believes that

his choice to deviate from social norms is grounds for his family to lock

him up in a mental hospital. The fear of institutionalization looming over

Olmstead illustrates how society can weaponize the social construction

of mental illness against people who hold non-normative views.

In addition, Olmstead’s acceptance of his heritage further deviates

from social expectations because, given the connections between Deep

One and foreign ancestry, Olmstead’s actions represent an acceptance and

celebration of non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Olmstead’s decision

deviates from the social norms of a place and time in which eugenics,

racism, and xenophobia were widespread. In the early twentieth centu-

ry, white supremacy and eugenicist ideas of degeneration and a biologi-

cal racial hierarchy were “prevalent,” especially in New England (Joshi

1: 112–13). Furthermore, after the United States entered World War I in

1917, xenophobia and racism increased throughout the country through

“Americanization,” a “mounting conformist pressure to prove patriotism

and loyalty to the country’s values, symbols, and institutions” (Dowbiggin

225–26). By accepting his foreign-coded heritage, Olmstead dees this

“conformist pressure”; consequently, society labels him as mentally ill.

Olmstead’s decision to join the Deep Ones initially seems like the prod-

uct of madness because he contradicts the expectations and beliefs about the

Deep Ones that arise throughout the story. However, the pervasive disgust

towards the Deep Ones represents the popularity and normativity of preju-

dice in the early-twentieth-century United States. Olmstead’s choice at the

end of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” does not perpetuate the beliefs of

eugenics. Rather, it condemns them. Not only does it expose the irratio-

nality of prejudice and xenophobia, but it presents madness—which the

eugenics movement considered to be an inherited trait more concentrated in

immigrant populations—as a social construct rather than an innate, geneti-

cally transmissible quality. Thus, the novella reveals how eugenicist beliefs

that sought to slander immigrants perpetuated xenophobia through baseless

prejudice and a socially constructed, subjective conception of madness.

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V. Criticizing Genetic Determinism

In addition to attacking the racist and xenophobic prejudices of the

eugenics movement, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” also condemns eu-

genicist beliefs about genetic determinism. The novella demonstrates

how genetic determinism renders individuals powerless over their fates—

but only as long as they believe in their genes’ omnipotence. Once they

comprehend the agency they retain over their destiny, this powerlessness

fades, enabling them to take action to realize the future they desire. Thus,

socially perpetuating the inescapable power of genes over human fate—

as the eugenics movement did—creates a self-fullling prophecy that

induces signicant, unnecessary distress in individuals.

Olmstead’s stress about his genes’ absolute power over fate under-

lies his hatred toward the Innsmouthians. He especially despises one

of the Innsmouthians’ characteristics that reminds him of members of

his own family: their eyes. He refers to the Innsmouthians’ distinctive

appearance as “the staring ‘Innsmouth look,’” which references no oth-

er specic trait except for their eyes (Lovecraft 377–8). Furthermore,

when recalling a conversation with the grocery store worker in Inns-

mouth, Olmstead’s memory emphasizes the clerk’s mention of “staring,

unwinking eyes which one never saw shut” as “especially . . . shock-

ing” (Lovecraft 372). Olmstead also highlights the eyes of his relatives

with Deep One ancestry when he describes why he disliked them: “[s]

omething about the staring, unwinking expression of both [his uncle

and grandmother] had given [him] a vague, unaccountable uneasiness”

(Lovecraft 409). The part of the Innsmouthians that bothers Olmstead

most implies a connection between them and himself. Olmstead does

not acknowledge this connection; doing so would also acknowledge its

ramications for his own future. The eugenics movement’s belief in ge-

netic determinism would imply that Olmstead would be unable to avoid

his inherited fate: becoming a Deep One. Thus, the social prevalence of

genetic determinism affects how Olmstead copes with the possibility

of his relation to the Deep Ones. He denies rather than interrogates

his recognition of his family’s features in the Innsmouthians; he notes

only that the Innsmouthians’ appearance looks familiar, but that “this

pseudo-recollection passed very quickly” (Lovecraft 369). He does not

attempt to place this memory and even discounts the impression of déjà

vu as false. His dismissal suggests that he knows, subconsciously, that

he does not want to acknowledge his relation to the Innsmouthians and

its consequent implications for his fate. Thus, he suppresses his recog-

nition with denial, displacing his déjà vu with disgust.

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However, as Olmstead researches his family history and his genetic

fate catches up with him, his attempts to protect himself through denial

fail. He admits that he makes “a horrible sort of comparison” between

his uncle’s and grandmother’s faces and “something which would bring

stark panic if too openly thought of” (Lovecraft 409; emphasis in orig-

inal). Olmstead directly acknowledges his reasons for attempting deni-

al: to relieve himself of the stress that accompanies acknowledging his

fate. However, his attempts to suppress the Innsmouthians’ similarities

to his family ultimately fail. The mere suggestion induces in him “a

kind of terror of [his] own ancestry” (Lovecraft 409). When Olmstead

nally sees evidence of his family’s connection to Innsmouth, a tiara

made of the Deep Ones’ gold in his family vault, he faints. He cannot

consciously cope with the revelation. Afterward, he undergoes a mental

health crisis: “[f]rom that day on [his] life [is] a nightmare of brooding

and apprehension, nor do[es] [he] know how much is hideous truth and

how much madness” (Lovecraft 410). Olmstead questions his sanity in

a last-resort attempt at denial. The truth terries and disgusts Olmstead

so much that he prefers psychosis over being related to the Deep Ones.

However, his admission of “apprehension” demonstrates his fear for

the future. Now that he acknowledges his genetic ties to the Deep Ones,

he dreads its implications for his fate. His description of this “appre-

hension” as a “nightmare” that consumes his life illustrates how trapped

he feels because of genetic determinism, and how this loss of control

envelops him in immense stress. This anxiety is so intense, it causes

Olmstead to contemplate suicide. He “b[uys] an automatic and almost

t[akes] the step,” but ultimately grows to accept and appreciate his des-

tiny (Lovecraft 412). However, Olmstead’s uncle Douglas, who does

commit suicide to avoid his genetic fate, exemplies how not everyone

comes to terms with genetic determinism’s attribution of omnipotence

to genes. Olmstead and Douglas demonstrate the damaging power of

society’s widespread acceptance of genetic determinism; when people

believe they lack control over their future, they experience immense

distress that can, in some cases, culminate in suicide.

However, suicide also provides a method of regaining control over

genetic determinism. Michel Foucault describes suicide as a “possibili-

ty of resistance” in an unbalanced power dynamic (292). Thus, no side

in a power dynamic can assert “‘total power’ over the other,” as “power

can be exercised over the other only insofar as the other still has the

option of killing himself” (Foucault 292). Through suicide, Douglas

resists the absolute power that his genes assert over him, as he averts

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the fate his genes determine. However, other options aside from suicide

offer the opportunity to assert power over genetic fate. For instance,

Olmstead reclaims power over his destiny by contemplating suicide

and consciously deciding to live out the transformation he inherited.

Although his powerlessness initially generates denial and stress, he ex-

ercises agency over his life through his choice to continue living. He

further demonstrates his agency through his decisions to actively pro-

duce the future he wants, such as deciding to leave for the water early

to avoid institutionalization and “plan[ning] [his] cousin’s escape from

[the] Canton madhouse” (Lovecraft 412). In making such active deci-

sions, Olmstead enacts his belief that his own behavior inuences the

outcome of the future, rather than the central determining factor being

his genes. While the eugenics movement viewed genes as determinis-

tic, Douglas and Olmstead contradict the idea of genetic determinism

to instead reveal that people are not completely powerless in the face of

their genetic fate: they possess the power to act and affect their future.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” highlights how genetic determinism

derives its power from its status as a socially accepted belief rather than

from the actual inuence of genes. It falsely presents people as complete-

ly powerless over their fates, which produces stress and hopelessness.

However, even in situations where genetics powerfully inuence peo-

ple’s futures, people can still exert some level of control. They may even

feel empowered to act in order to change pieces of their destiny that their

genes do not affect. Douglas and Olmstead asserting agency over their

lives condemns genetic determinism as an unnecessary stressor; both

characters demonstrate how acting in deance of genetic determinism

allows them to reclaim power over their future. Thus, “The Shadow over

Innsmouth” argues that genes can only assert absolute control over a per-

son’s life if that person believes in their genes’ omnipotence and does not

attempt to assert their personal agency.

VI. Conclusion

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” is clearly a product of the Ameri-

can era of eugenics. However, rather than supporting eugenicist ideas

and prejudices, this novella illuminates the irrationality and disastrous

consequences of these beliefs. Although eugenics is no longer as wide-

spread and socially accepted as it was in the early twentieth century, it

remains a threat. According to Ian Robert Dowbiggin, “breakthroughs

in genetic and reproductive technologies” have sparked fear of “a re-

turn of the eugenics movement” (vii). Dowbiggin also theorizes that, if

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Kyra McKaufey

this eugenics revival occurs in the United States, its cause will be “the

critical inability of the American public” to recognize the similarities be-

tween modern discussions about genetics amid technological advances

and conversations from the eugenics era (239–40). Thus, “The Shadow

over Innsmouth” and its illumination of the irrationality of the eugen-

ics movement’s beliefs remain relevant today and can help prevent the

United States from returning to this dangerous path. By examining one’s

beliefs for a logical basis in evidence, listening to a variety of perspec-

tives—even those that deviate from social norms—and empowering hu-

man agency over the omnipotence of genes, one can be like Olmstead

and escape the powerful hold of illogical eugenicist beliefs.

KYRA MCKAUFFLEY is a junior at Rice University majoring in

English. She wrote this paper as a part of a research project—funded

by the Rice University Humanities Research Center and the Fondren

Fellows program—about how genetics, inheritance, and mental illness

are portrayed in American horror ction. Her literary interests include

horror, satire, Gothicism, modernism, and postmodernism. In her free

time, she enjoys participating in student theater productions and work-

ing with her college’s literary magazine, R2: The Rice Review.

NOTES

1. I would like to clarify that I am making no argument regarding Love-

craft’s intentions in writing “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Instead,

I adopt the analytical framework promoted in Roland Barthes’s essay

“The Death of the Author” and allow the “language itself” of the novella

to “spea[k]” and form the basis of my analysis rather than attempting to

search for Lovecraft’s intended meaning based on his personal beliefs

(143, 146). Regardless of whether Lovecraft intended for “The Shadow

over Innsmouth” to support or criticize the bigotry inherent to the eugen-

ics era, the novella’s portrayal of this era’s beliefs, the thought processes

that maintained them, and how Olmstead eventually overcomes them ul-

timately illuminates the logical fallacies of the eugenics movement.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Kyra McKaufey

WORKS CITED

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image Music Text, trans-

lated by Stephen Heath, Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 142–48.

Dowbiggin, Ian Robert. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and

Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940. Cornell

University Press, 1997.

Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice

of Freedom.” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by Paul Rab-

inow, The New Press, 1997, pp. 281–301.

Garver, Kenneth L., and Bettylee Garver. “Eugenics: Past, Present,

and the Future.” American Journal of Human Genetics, vol.

49, no. 5, 1991, pp. 1109–18. PubMed, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

pubmed/1928094.

Joshi, S. T. I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft.

Hippocampus Press, 2013. 2 vols.

Lovecraft, H. P. “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Cthulhu Mythos

Tales, Canterbury Classics, 2017, pp. 357–412.

Luty, Jason. “Psychiatry and the Dark Side: Eugenics, Nazi and Soviet

Psychiatry.” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, vol. 20, no. 1,

2014, pp. 52–60, https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.bp.112.010330.

Miller, Lulu. Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the

Hidden Order of Life. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2020.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202358

A-Blair-OOOOOOOO!: Examining the

Rhetorical Differences in American and

British Soccer Commentary Through the

Elocutionist Lens

Alec Matulka, Pepperdine University

occer—football—is the world’s game. The global TV audience of

the 2018 FIFA World Cup was 3.5 billion people (Harris). The -

nal between France and Croatia on July 15, 2018, was watched by 1.1

billion (Harris). Eighty broadcasters in 212 territories around the globe

carry the English Premier League (Curley). However, the United States

has always been an exception to this. When the United States Men’s

National Team played the England National Football Team in the 2022

FIFA World Cup on November 25, only around four percent of the

United States population—15.3 million people—tuned in to watch

(Harris). By comparison, twenty-two percent of Brits—15.1 million

people—tuned in for the highly-anticipated group stage match (Harris).

The question as to why soccer has yet to rmly take hold of the

American zeitgeist has been posited from numerous sources over the

past several decades. A plethora of answers have been given. The US is

too busy watching football and basketball. The US doesn’t understand

soccer. The US sucks at soccer and therefore hates it. The list goes on.

This paper does not stake a particular claim on this question; rather, this

research contends that the 15.3 million Americans who watched the

U.S.-England match on November 25, 2022, consumed a drastically

different product than their 15.1 million British counterparts, reveal-

ing a potential cause for the disconnect between American viewers and

soccer. The main difference between these products is that a majority

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of American viewers watched the Fox Sports coverage of the match,

while a majority of British viewers watched the BBC coverage. Aar-

on Timms, writing for The Guardian, has memorably described Fox

Sports’ coverage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup as an “unmissable abom-

ination” (Timms). No such main-stream complaints have been lobbed

at the BBC coverage. There is a general sense in the international

soccer community that American announcers are far inferior to their

British counterparts; however, this claim has yet to be exhaustively, or

even adequately, examined. This paper provides a rhetorical compari-

son between American and British soccer commentators through the

lens of the Elocutionist Movement in the hopes of distinguishing some

of their core differences. In so doing, this paper argues that American

announcers produce a tonally inconsistent product—they use improper

intonation, say too much at the wrong times, and employ far too literal

language to effectively encapsulate the beautiful game of soccer.

As a brief digression, it’s important to discuss one particularly con-

tentious term: because this paper is written by an American student at

an American university largely for American audiences, the term “soc-

cer” will be used to refer to the game played by two teams of eleven

players with a round ball. It may seem an odd choice to use “soccer,”

given the cross-cultural level of analysis this paper seeks to incorporate

and the fact “football” and its various spellings is the widely accepted

term for this sport anywhere outside the United States, Canada, and

Australia (Cunningham), but due to the author’s own cultural back-

ground, use of the term “football” would be disingenuous. Therefore,

“soccer” will be the term herein employed.

The fashion-versus-function, delivery-versus-substance discus-

sion has raged for centuries within the study of rhetoric. Classically,

the ve canons of rhetoric are as follows: invention, arrangement,

style, memory, and delivery. Generally, rhetoricians saw delivery as a

less important virtue of speech; theorists as far back as Plato argued

that the content of what one says is more important than how one

says it. However, delivery is impossible to erase from a complete

understanding of rhetorical theory. As early as the rst century, Quin-

tillian argued rhetoric is dened as a “good man [sic] speaking well”

(360). Over time, the group of rhetorical theorists who advocated for

delivery became known as the Elocutionists. The British Elocution

movement was particularly prominent in this regard and varied some-

what from its American counterparts. British elocutionists “made

rhetoric appear to be the art of declaiming a speech by rote, without

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regard to whether the thought [sic] uttered were trivial or false or dan-

gerous” (Spoel 49). Elocutionists claimed the components of deliv-

ery—including but not limited to the aspects of cadence, intonation,

body language, and pronunciation—were as, if not more, important

as the content of a speech. A prominent member of the Elocutionist

Movement was eighteenth-century Irish stage actor Thomas Sheri-

dan. Sheridan, as Philippa Spoel puts it, repeatedly advocated for the

“scholarly and educational credibility of elocution as a new eld of

study within the context of late eighteenth-century British culture”

(49). While Sheridan and his elocutionist disciples knew nothing of

the futures of television broadcasting and sports commentary, his les-

sons of appealing to audience emotion through delivery still reso-

nate in contemporary rhetorical discourse. Applying the cornerstones

of the elocutionist teachings of Sheridan and others provides an in-

sightful and necessary understanding of the technical differences in

cross-cultural soccer commentary.

To be clear, this paper deals more with the delivery of the language

of play-by-play commentary than purely the content of the speech.

Certainly, an issue with American commentators at lower levels is a

lack of understanding of soccer’s rules and intricacies and an untrained

viewing eye. However, in most instances American commentators get

the factual information correct, particularly at the higher-budget end

of the spectrum. Even when their content is factually accurate, they

are faced with scorn for producing an inferior product. John Strong,

the lead play-by-play commentator for Major League Soccer—Amer-

ica’s primary soccer league—on Fox Sports, is an archetypal example

of this phenomenon. In an MLS match between the Seattle Sounders

and Minnesota United in 2021, Strong provided a piece of commentary

that embodies his rhetorical limitations: “There’s contact there. Ruidiaz

gets ahead of Boxall. It’s not a foul! And Ruidiaz scores! Quick ball

over the top, contact in front of it, Ismail Elfath says nothing, Raul

Ruidiaz scores again, and all of a sudden the game is tied!” (ESPN FC

00:34–00:47). Strong gives the viewer a perfectly adequate account of

the facts of the play–a Seattle Sounders player pushed over a Minne-

sota United defender in order to reach an overly ambitious pass before

dispatching a nish past the befuddled goalkeeper—but his delivery

is far from ideal. For one thing, Strong places an inordinate amount of

emphasis on unimportant phrases; had the previous quote been capital-

ized to match Strong’s intonation, part of it might look something like,

“QUICK ball over the TOP, contact in FRONT of it, ISMAIL ELFATH

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says NOTHING, and all of a SUDDEN the game is TIED!” He also

incorporates far too many details far too quickly and provides little

other than a literal account of events. Due to this, as the comments of

the YouTube video of this moment suggested, Strong’s call is hardly

memorable; clearly soccer fans want more from their commentary than

sheer factual accuracy. In his academic appraisal of what makes for

excellent commentary, Armani Syed highlights “the joys of Arab and

Latin American soccer commentary” apparent during the 2022 FIFA

World Cup. Syed characterizes Arab and Latin American announcers

as exhibiting an impassioned “narration style,” while claiming “some

on social media said it made English-language commentary feel a lit-

tle lackluster by comparison” (Syed). It’s important to note the “En-

glish-language” commentary Syed refers to is that of Fox Sports, not

the BBC. Strong’s speech misses the “impassioned” and properly-in-

toned style Syed and others claim is so important to reputable soccer

commentary. It also typies the American broadcast aesthetic of lling

the airtime, and thus showcases the quirks and pitfalls of soccer com-

mentary in the United States.

The contrast between Strong’s inconsistent and literal rhetorical

style and that of one of the most popular and well-known British an-

nouncers in the world, Peter Drury, is stark, and it is the perfect example

of the differences between the highest levels of American and British

soccer commentary. Drury is currently NBC Sports’ lead main com-

mentator for Premier League Productions. He’s known for a series of

highly romanticized and alliterative calls, including, “Roma have risen

from their ruins! . . . Manolas: the Greek god in Rome! . . . The unthink-

able unfolds before our eyes!” (TD 07:50–08:15). In this call, one of

Drury’s most well-known and most recited commentaries, he describes

a late, game-winning goal from Kostas Manolas, a Greek player on the

Italian club AS Roma FC. To capture the moment, Drury leaves long

spaces between his minimal words, thus allowing the action to partially

speak for itself. It is commentary laced with intentional delivery—note

the pauses and ellipses before each clause that add force to Drury’s

words—and it is one betting of the occasion. Below a video featuring

the commentary, one viewer comments, “My eyes tear up every time!”

(TD). The emotional impact of this call makes the importance of deliv-

ery clear. In a journal article exploring the popularity of English soccer,

James Curley and Oliver Roeder suggest the importance of aesthetic

delivery in broadcast commentary: “In the end, perhaps the answer to

English soccer’s popularity lies beyond the database. Perhaps the key

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Alec Matulka

is in the aesthetics” (81). It’s easy to trace a line between the “aesthet-

ics” of English soccer and its accompanying commentary. The most

memorable, engaging, mystifying moments of English soccer—Wayne

Rooney’s bicycle kick in 2011, Sergio Aguero’s 2012 goal to win the

league, and the list goes on—are all accompanied by buoyant broadcast

commentary. Filled with its well-delivered and lyrical comments, Brit-

ish commentary helps shape the game’s iconic moments, which in turn

create the mystique behind the world’s most-watched soccer league.

While factual and literal commentary is passable, only well-delivered

and literary commentary is memorable.

Since sports commentary is inherently an aural accompaniment

to an already visual product, any comparison of Strong’s and Drury’s

words must contend with their respective auditory qualities. Chief

among these qualities is intonation, the rises and falls of the voice while

speaking. Intonation provides a window into the emotions of the orator;

while a well-delivered line meets an audience with a pleasing preferred

timing and pace, a well-intoned one connects the viewer to the com-

mentator’s emotional range, thus rendering the product more engaging.

Sheridan was critical of speeches delivered with unintentional intona-

tion. As he argued in his A Course of Lectures on Elocution, “he [in

this case, the announcer] makes use of words only, and the signs of

emotions, which it is impossible they can represent; and omits the use

of the true signs of the passions, which are, tones, looks, and gestures”

(Bizzell 884). Because soccer commentators cannot convey informa-

tion through looks or gestures, their tones become hugely important in

conveying the emotion of the game, as spoken words, arbitrary signs in

and of themselves, fail to completely convey the nuances of a human’s

emotional vocabulary. There are several iconic examples of effective

intonation in British soccer commentary, two of the most notable being

from Martin Tyler and Gary Neville. Martin Tyler’s often-referenced

2012 “Agüeroooo!” call stands as one of the most vivid uses of in-

tentional intonation. It is pointless to describe with words the intense

emotion Tyler conveys through the elongation of the “o” sound and the

crackling of his voice, which are doubtlessly among the reasons that

Bleacher Report included this call in their Top 10 Most Iconic Com-

mentator Calls in Football History list (FenasiKerim 00:05–00:15; Bai-

ley). Another example of a British commentator who employs effective

intonation is Gary Neville, whose most well-known call is an elon-

gated “Oooohhhhh! Unbelievable!” from 2012 that has been colloqui-

ally referred to as a “goalgasm” (Chelsea 00:05–00:15). What’s clear

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Alec Matulka

from both of these examples is that the words are subservient to the

tone: Neville conveys meaning not through his cryptic “Oooohhhhh”

but through the simultaneous relief and ecstasy ricocheting across his

vocal chords; Tyler conveys meaning not from simply pronouncing the

player’s last name but through the way that name morphs into raptur-

ous excitement over the span of a few seconds. Sheridan, most likely,

would see the virtue in this form of tonally-centered commentary. As

he further comments:

And tho’ these tones, are usually accompanied with words, in

order that the understanding may at the same time perceive the

cause of these emotions, by communication of the particular

ideas which excite them; yet that the whole energy, or power of

exciting analogous emotions in others, lies in the tones them-

selves, may be known from this. (884)

The superiority of British commentary, then, lies in its understanding,

most likely unintentionally, of Sheridian tonal control. This is why You-

Tube commenters regularly maintain that Neville’s commentary “gives

them tingles” (FenasiKerim), while very few, if any at all, say the same

of Strong’s. If Strong continues to randomly spike his voice during the

recounting of insignicant or unrelated details—like in the aforemen-

tioned “Ismail Elfath” example—his commentary will remain inferior.

In all of the aforementioned iconic British calls, fewer words

are used to express action and the resulting emotional response, sug-

gesting that ideal soccer commentary lets the action speak for itself,

supplementing it with insight or emotion. American announcers, ob-

sessed with “lling the airtime,” often resort to an overabundance of

words (Szymanski). This tendency, as Sheridan warns, is rhetorically

misguided. Sheridan argues that “words are in their own nature, no

essential part of language, and are only considered so thro’ custom”

(Bizzell 883). Sheridan’s point, while extreme, indicates how speak-

ing too much can actually detract from or confuse what is being said.

Taylor Twellman, a prominent American commentator and former

player, is guilty of this rhetorical blunder. An example of Twellman’s

rhetorical overindulgence comes from the 2019 MLS Cup Western

Conference Final match between the Seattle Sounders and Los Ange-

les Football Club. After Seattle forward Raul Ruidiaz nearly misses a

shot, Twellman goes on a long, cascading description of the player’s

wardrobe: “From the moment he got off the plane in Seattle, every-

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Alec Matulka

one told me he looked like a stone-cold killer. He had black shades

on, black tea shirt, studded earrings, a huge watch!” (Seattle 02:07–

02:15). Twellman makes a choice to accompany replays of Ruidiaz’s

dramatic, long-range effort with an elaborate description of rst-day

training outt, and the result is somewhat jarring. Twellman’s words,

rather than complimenting the moment within the game, actively di-

vides the viewer’s attention. Twellman is by no means the only Amer-

ican commentator to commit this error, and it points to a grander error

in American sports commentary: too many words, regardless of what

they are, often detract instead of add.

Beyond better tonal control and an appreciation for concision, Brit-

ish commentators also exhibit more poetic language and thereby make

their commentary more engaging for viewers. Whereas substituting

tones for words is a more traditionally Elocutionist line of rhetorical

understanding, there are also Elocutionists who concentrated on sty-

listic language, such as prominent Elocutionist Hugh Blair, who dis-

cussed the effect of this kind of language in his lecture Origin and

Nature of Figurative Language:

[Figures of speech] always imply some departure from sim-

plicity of expression; the idea which we intend to convey, not

only enunciated to others, but enunciated in a particular man-

ner, and with some circumstance added, which is designed to

render the impression more strong and vivid. (962)

Blair’s insight illustrates the blurred lines between the canons of in-

vention, style, and delivery. The orator creates a concept in their mind,

designs it to be properly expressed, and thus enunciates it. This process

takes place more intentionally in British soccer commentary than in

its American counterpart. Returning to Drury’s call of Manolas as a

“Greek god,” the British pundit employs a complex blend of hyperbole,

metaphor, and proverbial diction to describe the scene more as a myth-

ological tapestry than a soccer game. Meanwhile, J.P. Dellacamera, an

American play-by-play commentator with over four decades of experi-

ence in broadcasting and a member of the Fox Sports team at the 2022

FIFA World Cup, is famous for steering clear of owery language. Del-

lacamera was part of FOX Sports’ coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s

World Cup, during which he commentated the nal between the Unit-

ed States and Japan. As American central midelder Carli Lloyd ma-

rauded forward with the ball into a vulnerable Japanese defense, Del-

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Alec Matulka

lacamera provided the call, “Lloyd with Morgan streaking [forward],

she’s chipping the goalkeeper! Off the post and in! Hatrick for Lloyd!”

(Matt 03:30–03:40). Lloyd’s third goal that day was one of the great-

est strikes in World Cup nal history, yet nothing about Dellacamera’s

dry, professional description would suggest this. Dellacamera’s lack

of gurative language, coupled with his reserved intonation, creates

a subdued product. Dellacemera’s rhetoric does nothing to render his

image “more strong and vivid” like Blair suggests. This does not mean

he has failed as a broadcaster, but it does create a noticeable contrast

to British commentators. For instance, when Manchester City’s captain

and central defender Vincent Kompany scored a beautiful, thirty-yard

screamer against Leicester City on May 6, 2019, Drury was there to

provide memorable commentary, “Had a look; had a hit. OOH! Captain

Fantastic! A wild celebration for a goal from his wildest dreams! A fan-

tasy goal for City’s fantasy footballer!” (TD 02:42–03:03). Drury heeps

layers of literary devices onto this commentary: antonomasia, repeti-

tion, alliteration. In so doing, he differentiates his commentary from the

products of others and renders the image vivid. Dellacamera’s image is

dull by comparison, causing viewers to lack any sense of engagement

with the commentary—and possibly mute the broadcast.

Although content will always be important, the Elocutionist Move-

ment—particularly the works of Thomas Sheridan and Hugh Blair—in-

dicate that style and delivery are vital canons of rhetoric. Sheridan’s and

Blair’s theories shed light on why American and British announcers are so

respectively maligned and revered. Putting aside the issue of insightfulness

and factual accuracy, American announcers struggle with the packaging

of their content. Their off-putting delivery draws unattering attention to

American broadcasting, as in this critique from The Guardian: “Whereas

the USMT is now a cosmopolitan ensemble of feather-ne talents, the Fox

team is the equivalent of a farmer’s league XI that hoofs it long and hopes

for the best” (Timms). Due to a lack of tonal intentionality, a dependency

on an overabundance of words to ll airtime, and a reliance on the literal

more than the gurative, American soccer commentary falls at in com-

parison to the products of their British colleagues. Drury, Tyler, Neville,

and others lace their well-delivered, passionately-intoned commentary

with lyrical language that attracts the audience instead of annoying them.

Soccer, known around the world as “the beautiful game,” deserves to be

packaged and delivered in a manner that bets its beauty. As the conditions

of soccer in the United States continuously improve, it is time viewers ex-

pected the same from their commentators.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Alec Matulka

ALEC MATULKA graduated from Pepperdine University in April

2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing & Rhetoric and a dou-

ble minor in Digital Humanities and Great Books. He wrote this essay

for his Rhetoric for Writers class, which connected the history of rhe-

torical theory to the modern world. He draws inspiration from writers

like Kurt Vonnegut and Jeff Kinney, and he plans to take a gap year

before pursuing a graduate degree.

WORKS CITED

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in Football History.” Bleacher Report, Bleacher Report, 1 Oct.

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be/iw_H2M3q03E. Accessed 1 June 2023.

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Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, 2nd ed., 2001, pp. 879–88.

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Thomas Sheridan’s A Course of Lectures on Elocution and John

Walker’s Elements of Elocution.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the His-

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doi.org/10.1525/rh.2001.19.1.49. Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.

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Give Us SHIVERS (No Music). YouTube, TD Football, 10 Dec.

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ble Abomination.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 5

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fox-sports-us-world-cup-coverage-tv-soccer.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202368

Muslim Punk Feminism in We Are Lady

Parts: A Radical Engagement

with Difference

Pireh Moosa, Institute of Business Administration

Introduction

Contemporary media discourse has cast countless perspectives

aside to a space that academia has come to know as “the margins.”

One compelling quality ever-present in such a space is that of “differ-

ence”—a key term in feminist thought that has intrigued prominent

theorists, including Audre Lorde and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Dif-

ference demands the critical exploration of various marginalized per-

spectives, which is where the genre of punk holds great relevance with

its empowering of the politics and voice of the subaltern. Considering

these observations, I want to rst examine “punk” implications in fem-

inist theory. Secondly, I want to draw attention to Nida Manzoor’s tele-

vision sitcom, We Are Lady Parts, as a signicant “punk” media text,

spotlighting ve diasporic Muslim women in the UK who form a punk

band in response to their individual and shared frustrations with society.

Through a close reading of punk ideology and representation within the

music, cinematography, and characterization in We Are Lady Parts, I

argue that a distinct “Muslim punk feminist” movement emerges: one

that offers complex expressions of difference informed by both punk

anger—a driving sentiment within the movement—and punk refram-

ings of “success,” aligning with notions of resistance from the margins.

This proposed movement is valuable for three key reasons. Firstly,

it draws attention to certain marginalized voices—namely, diasporic

Muslim women—as well as to creators from such communities that

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Pireh Moosa

are often excluded from mainstream literary and lmic discourses.

Secondly, the movement recognizes an alternative praxis within me-

dia and literary representation that resists the common academic urge

to identify, label, and homogenize. Within “Muslim punk feminism,”

stereotypical oppositions—such as Islam and feminism, Muslim and

queer, woman and punk, among various others—coexist in different

complex forms, acting subversively against binary, oversimplied

understandings of Muslim women, which are rooted in patriarchal

and colonial values as well as in reductive postfeminist discourses.

Thirdly, this movement, while acknowledging the damage and inu-

ence of oppressive dominant ideologies, highlights mobilized resis-

tance at the margins. It emphasizes shared anger as well as catharsis

amongst Muslim women and other marginalized communities who

come together to celebrate their differences, rather than portraying

the Muslim woman subaltern as “always oppressed” or unliberated

without a white savior. Overall, “Muslim punk feminism” advocates

for practices of nuanced representational plurality at the margins,

within which I locate revolutionary possibility.

Tracing the roots of punk feminism

There is already an electrifying line of academic discourse on the

intersections of punk and feminism with numerous points of interest for

my argument. The notion of punk performance holds immense signif-

icance in feminist praxis and media. As a pioneering writer on perfor-

mance theory, Judith Butler claims, “From a feminist point of view, one

might try to reconceive the gendered body as the legacy of sedimented

acts rather than a predetermined or foreclosed structure, essence or fact,

whether natural, cultural, or linguistic” (523). Punk feminism works

beyond categories of gender and genre as a movement based in acts—

an active resistance. The term “resistance” here requires characteriza-

tion, particularly through its connection with “difference”—a key pres-

ence across punk feminist movements. Audre Lorde’s discussion on

the need to acknowledge difference in feminist resistance is pertinent

to punk feminism: “Only within that interdependency of difference

strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways

of being in the world generate” (25). The role of difference is crucial in

dening punk performance, as a lead singer in the punk band, Bags, as

well as a Chicana, Alice Bag describes her experience as an “outcast”:

“We were different, proudly different, and wanted to express our cre-

ativity through our art, our music, our fashion, our way of life” (236).

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Pireh Moosa

Here, the celebration of difference as well as the active rejection of

patriarchal and colonial narratives of homogenization are key dening

features of punk resistance. Mohanty further critiques such narratives,

targeting the tendency in West-centric feminist scholarship to collec-

tivize the category of “women” or “we” as a powerless group: “The

discursively consensual homogeneity of ‘women’ as a group is mis-

taken for the historically specic material reality of groups of women”

(338). Within the context of punk movements, Katherina Wiedlack also

targets this homogeneity, beginning with the following argument con-

cerning the Russian punk band, Pussy Riot: “Most public media as well

as cultural representations and analysis within the global West impose

the values of queer feminist punk on the group without consideration of

their specic cultural location” (411). She then proposes that the band

“took up these discourses and products of the Western gaze and used

them for their own purposes” by taking inspiration from Western punk

movements and pursuing their own political goals, such as critiquing

the Russian regime and battling homophobia (411).

Here, punk women occupy autonomous narratives of empower-

ment outside of the Western gaze that challenge homogeneity as well as

assumptions of powerlessness within the broad categories of “women”

and, more specically, non-Western women.

Ugliness, disruption, and “angered resistance”

After setting the stage for punk intersections with feminist theo-

ry, Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts becomes an apt media text to ex-

plore the subject matter, offering ample material on feminism and

“punk performance” while enriching such perspectives through its

alternative portrayal of the often-misrepresented context of diasporic

Muslim women. Rosalind Gill discusses postfeminist media repre-

sentations of feminist concerns, outlining the image of the “hot fem-

inist”: “It is a feminism that is actually encumbered by its desire not

to be angry, not to be ‘difcult’, not to be ‘humorless’: it is positioned

against the gure of the ‘feminist killjoy’” (618). Alternatively, in

its approach towards feminist concerns, punk feminism does not shy

away from anger, “ugliness,” and disruption, as displayed in We Are

Lady Parts. The Muslim women in Manzoor’s sitcom are vastly dif-

ferent not only from West-centric punk portrayals but also amongst

themselves. However, they are all wronged by oversimplication and

stereotyping practices within dominant patriarchal and colonial ide-

ologies—and they are angry.

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Pireh Moosa

The injustice they face warrants a retaliation, expressed through

their punk performance of angry feminist musical anthems, combined

with general aggression and frustration towards the patriarchy. Bag

writes, “Early punk participants, disenfranchised by the status quo,

grew tired of knocking politely at the doors of the establishment and

decided to simply kick them down” (238). While interacting with el-

ements of hopefulness and celebration, punk performance appears to

be heavily characterized by the anger of the “other.” Saira, the lead

singer and leader of Lady Parts in the show, exhibits typical punk ag-

gression by expressing her frustration openly, often yelling and kicking

and punching things with aggression but never abuse. We learn soon

that she left her family’s home and works at a butcher’s shop to support

herself, confronted regularly by the condition of being an outcast both

to her family and as a Muslim woman in Britain.

The band’s drummer, Ayesha, is confronted with a similar feat

in different ways. As an Uber driver, we see her deal with racist

microaggressions from the rst episode, and later we know her to

be a queer Muslim woman—an identity often coded as a contradic-

tion in itself, with layered forms of marginalization. Such varying

dissonances in both characters’ lives set the stage for their asso-

ciation with “Otherness” on multiple fronts, and their consequent

frustration. Ayesha is also openly aggressive in her behavior, such as

when her band members hold her back as she attempts to physically

ght Amina after she suggests an amendment in the lyrics for the

song, “Voldemort Under My Headscarf” (“Potential Future Spouse”

04:25

–0

4:27). It should be noted that this particular aggressive re-

action is in response to the suggestion of removing the reference to

“Voldemort”

—

a supervillain—from the song, which in turn, would

remove the aggressive, antinormative stance upheld by punk art.

Bisma’s character is another whose punk performance is relevant

to the punk concept of “angered resistance.” Unlike others, she is a

married woman and mother to a young daughter. Within the category

of “Third World Women,” Mohanty comments on how married women

are “victims of the colonial process” and how Muslim women in fami-

lies are “oppressed” by patriarchal power structures (341; 342). Despite

the tendency of Western media to represent Muslim wives and mothers

through the oversimplied lens of victimhood, Bisma’s character does

not abide by these denitions. Her home is depicted as a feminist space

where the band members often meet for discussions and where even

passing comments that stem from patriarchal values are immediately

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Pireh Moosa

unwelcome. When her husband mentions that Saira will always priori-

tize the band above men in her life, Bisma retorts, unamused, “Daugh-

ter, I think we should depart from this place before we choke on the

fumes of this toxic masculinity” (“Godzilla” 06:13–06:20). Addition-

ally, Bisma designs her own comic titled “The Killing Period” about

women who become murderous when they menstruate, displaying her

punk aggression while also engaging with female bodily processes

that are typically associated with “shame, embarrassment and disgust”

(Duby et al. 72). Bisma’s status as a wife and mother does not suppress

her voice, and instead, uniquely informs her punk performance. Her

dedication to loud Muslim feminist expression underscores that women

who lead a resistance do not abide by a single archetype, and that such

movements only thrive on the ideas and actions of different women.

This sentiment of angered resistance also manifests in punk music

through its shouted vocals, distorted guitar, and overall loud, disrup-

tive sound. Jack Halberstam quotes Jayna Brown’s description of punk

singers: “Their shrill, shrieking, synthesized voices—enact a kind of

anger that challenges the masculinized form of that emotion, as well

as responding to gendered forms of oppression” (129). The music and

instrumentation of Lady Parts comprises Saira’s raging “yell-singing”

style and power chords, Bisma’s punchy basslines and vigorous back-

ing vocals, Ayesha’s emphatic drumming, and Amina’s simple but grip-

ping guitar solos. Together, they offer a powerful punk performance

that demands attention and visibility while furiously reclaiming an an-

ger that has often been associated with masculinity and forbidden from

femininity. The rst song that the band performs, “Ain’t No One Gon-

na Honor Kill My Sister But Me,” is the band’s mockingly vengeful

anthem, engaging with the concerns of specically Muslim feminism.

In adopting an approach reminiscent of—but arguably more sensitive

than—Nirvana’s grunge anti-rape song, “Rape Me,” this song entices

listeners to engage rsthand with the ridiculousness and injustice of

violence against women. The song ragefully calls attention to the jus-

tications for such violence, suggesting that the current social context

warrants a woman to be killed for no real crime at all through lyrics

such as “I’m gonna kill my sister . . . She stole my eyeliner!” (“Play

Something” 02:23–02:38). Furthermore, even in its mocking tone, the

song continues to serve as a warning for men to steer clear of femme

spaces and sisterhood, as in the line, “She’s mine, motherfucker!”

(“Play Something” 03:05–03:07). Here, Muslim punk feminism does

not present a pretty, palatable, packaged “hot feminism,” but instead di-

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Pireh Moosa

rectly addresses disgust, violence, and murder, revealing the “ugliness”

of patriarchal, colonial and capitalist ideologies that perpetuate per-

formed ignorance towards such injustice. Furthermore, the movement

challenges dominant masculinist and “white-privileged” discourses

around the genre of punk, carving a space for Muslim women-led sub-

versive discourses and modes of resistance.

“Success” as a scream-sung punk song

As a feminist text following ve Muslim women in a punk band,

“Lady Parts,” the show’s depictions of success are important in re-

vealing its political alignment with the margins. Angela McRobbie

critiques postfeminist media depictions of “feminist success,” ar-

guing that West-centric, capitalist images of the “successful young

woman” have become a “metaphor for social change,” giving the

example of the “ambitious TV blonde” represented through “glamor-

ous high achievers destined for Oxford or Cambridge” (257). Alter-

natively, We Are Lady Parts presents difference as well as resistance

in its representations of feminist success through its radical embod-

iment of “Otherness.” The fth episode of the sitcom, “Represent,”

shows a montage of the ve band members’ different future aspi-

rations, featuring the song “Success” by Slotface and distinguished

additionally through diverse cinematography. Saira, the band’s lead

singer, appears rst in the montage, standing in the butcher’s shop

she currently works at, which soon transforms into a stage with sev-

eral shots in bold statement punk colors of Saira performing center-

stage for a crowd of thousands. Here, the voice of the subaltern is

both literally and metaphorically centered, and she is nally able to

be heard by a large majority. Bisma appears next, sitting at her comic

stand next to her daughter. Her dream is depicted through psychedel-

ic cartoons which show pieces of her comic and culminate in an ani-

mation of her playing bass onstage, showcasing both her dreams as a

cartoonist and as a musician instead of a single goal. Ayesha appears

after Bisma, shown in her bedroom with her then girlfriend Zarina.

Ayesha’s dream is shown through dark, metallic cinematography,

sensualized by rain, displaying shots of her in grunge eye makeup

bashing the drumkit passionately while Zarina watches, enjoying the

music and rain. This dream resists normativity in its dark, grunge

aesthetic and queer possibility, reecting Elizabeth Stinson’s claim

that “Punk sound, as a radical force, has the potential to open a vital

and alternative space of sexuality and performance” (279). Mom-

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Pireh Moosa

taz, the band’s manager, follows, rst pictured in the undergarments

shop she works at and later, in her dream, inside her ofce at her

own record label. Here, the niqabi woman occupies a position of

power, fame and visibility, critiquing the “repugnance” (Bakht 70)

and ostracism in attitudes surrounding niqabi women. Finally, Ami-

na’s dream in the montage shows her walking through a museum

—

she typically loves doing

—

and seeing a portrait of herself with her

guitar alongside the faces of old white men, depicting a desire for

recognition and belonging in a world that privileges and prioritizes

the white cishet male. These series of dreams as manifestations of

feminist success speak of recognition and representation for different

Muslim women, rather than pedestalling the single, myopic trope of

the “ambitious TV blonde” at prestigious institutions as the standard

for feminist success. Moreover, while demonstrating punk resistance

on varying scales, this montage also pays homage to the differences

that highlight and color these women.

Amina’s journey throughout the show demonstrates alternative no-

tions of success for punk Muslim women. On a personal level, she sets

a goal to overcome her performance anxiety in order to be able to play

with the band. When confronted with stage performances, her imme-

diate reaction is often to throw up or to freeze. In the fourth episode,

with Saira’s help, Amina rst shakily performs improvised spoken

word poetry onstage and, towards the end, is nally able to play guitar

onstage with the rest of the band and make progress in dealing with her

anxiety. Although the band plays for an audience that boos and heckles

them throughout their set, the women deliver a awless performance

and celebrate at the end, cheering while Amina narrates, “I had done

it! I had performed! We were a real band—a proper live band. True,

the crowd weren’t going wild but this was a victory and the only way

was up!” (“Godzilla” 23:40–23:51) The labeling of this moment as a

“victory,” along with the celebratory reactions of the band, associate

this performance with success. While the audience in the show does

not respect their performance, the TV show’s audience, being famil-

iar with the characters and their journeys, is encouraged to appreci-

ate the joy accompanying Amina’s and the band’s achievement. This

“small,” unusual victory, heightened by its placement at the end of the

episode, performs a larger foregrounding of alternative modes of fem-

inist success that reject the narrow-minded portrait of the “ambitious

TV blonde,” honoring instead the versatility of punk resistance—par-

ticularly through collective mobilization.

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Pireh Moosa

Furthermore, the content of the punk song performed in the ending

scene of the fourth episode is itself a critique of capitalist ideology—an

oppressive force that punk performance aims to defy, with its forefront-

ing of those at the margins of class, race and gender. The rst chorus

lines are as follows: “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living.

Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking and no giving. They just use your mind

and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let

it” (“Godzilla” 22:08–22:27). Here, Lady Parts’ punk cover of Dolly

Parton’s anthem aligns with punk ideals of rejecting the system and

identifying the dull, repetitive, and unrecognized strife faced by mem-

bers of the working class as a result of capitalist power dynamics. How-

ever, punk performance is not simply an identication of subalternity. It

exhibits a “hopeful, resistant subjectivity” (Barriere 5), which is shown

through other lyrics in the song, such as, “But you got dreams he’ll

never take away” (“Godzilla” 22:57–23:00) and “The tide’s gonna turn

and it’s all gonna roll your way” (23:07–23:10). Here, it is the subaltern

who sings and dictates the “metaphor for social change,” empowering

bold, unapologetic punk performance over capitalist ideals of success.

Happy, angry endings in a “Muslim punk feminist” world

The ending in the sixth and nal episode of We Are Lady Parts

displays the band successfully performing a gig they have set up

themselves with an audience they have gathered themselves. The last

song they perform together is a punk cover of Queen’s “We Are The

Champions,” which is itself a pop culture anthem of success. For Am-

ina, this success is found in the process of overcoming her anxiety

as well as in the loud expression of her true desires and aspirations,

despite the social taboo-ness of punk within religious and cultural

contexts. For all band members, this success is meaningful in its nod

towards their collective dreams of recognition and in allowing the

voices of punk Muslim women to be heard, while also providing hope

in paving a way for the band’s future. It also must be noted that imag-

es of success are not associated with a shedding or detachment from

their Muslim identity. Although Western ideologies propose that acts

such as removing one’s headscarf constitute “liberation” for the “op-

pressed” (Jamal 204), these women share and celebrate their success

whilst continuing their varied practices and performances as Muslims.

Overall, the Muslim punk feminism in We Are Lady Parts is an-

gry, unsettling, and empowering in its representation. It both demands

and delivers, offering complex, holistic portrayals of its characters

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Pireh Moosa

that place its audience in an uncomfortable position, restricting them

from the tendency to categorize. However, within this discomfort,

Manzoor’s sitcom also provides catharsis through its critical explo-

ration of feminist joy as well as anger. It captures the larger-than-life

contentment in friendship amongst those who acknowledge, cele-

brate, and ght for difference.

PIREH MOOSA recently completed her Bachelor’s degree in ‘Social

Sciences and Liberal Arts’ with a major in Media and Culture from

IBA, Karachi. She is a published author experimenting with various

forms of writing, including essays, short stories, poetry, and screen-

writing. Within academia, she works to contribute to student scholar-

ship on postcolonial ction in various genres and media forms, holding

a particular fondness for all things “punk.” Her paper, “Muslim Punk

Feminism in We Are Lady Parts: A Radical Engagement With Differ-

ence,” was written for one of her favorite courses—“Feminism, Media,

Technology.” She has far too many books, lms, TV shows, and songs

she adores, but her latest obsession is probably The Bear. Her future

goals are currently under construction–but for now, she hopes to record

and release her indie music album soon!

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no. 2–3, 2012, pp. 233–38. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/074077

0X.2012.721079.

Barriere, Louise. “Underground Pedagogy of Hope?: German

Punk-Feminist Festivals as Education in Feminist Theories and

Actions.” Open Gender Journal, 2021, pp. 1–19. doi: http://dx.

doi.org/10.25595/2146.

Beaman, Lori G., and Natasha Bakht. “Veiled Objections: Facing

Public Opposition to the Niqab.” Reasonable Accommodation

Managing Religious Diversity, UBC Press, Vancouver, 2014, pp.

70–108. URL: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1476029.

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Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay

in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol.

40, no. 4, 1988. URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/

edit/10.4324/9781003001201-42/performative-acts-gender-consti-

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al shame amongst women using a vaginal ring in Sub Saharan

Africa.” Women & health vol. 60, no. 1, 2020, pp. 72–86. doi:

10.1080/03630242.2019.1607803.

Gill, Rosalind. “Post-postfeminism? New feminist visibilities in post-

feminist times.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2016, pp.

610–30. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1193293.

Halberstam, Jack. “Go Gaga: Anarchy, Chaos, and the Wild.” So-

cial Text, vol. 31, no. 3, 2013, pp. 123–34. doi: https://doi.

org/10.1215/01642472-2152873.

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the

Master’s House.” Feminist Postcolonial Theory, 2003, pp.

25–28. URL: https://books.google.com.pk/books?hl=en&l-

r=&id=a9BMB-d0T5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA25&dq=audre+lor-

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McRobbie, Angela. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist

Media Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, 2004, pp. 255–64. doi: https://doi.org

/10.1080/1468077042000309937.

Mohanty, Chandra. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and

Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review, vol. 30, no. 1, Nov. 1988,

pp. 61–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/302821.

Stinson, Elizabeth. “Means of Detection: A Critical Archiving of

Black Feminism and Punk Performance.” Women & Perfor-

mance: a Journal of Feminist Theory, vol. 22, no. 2–3, 2012, pp.

275–311. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2012.720827.

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sion, 2021.

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Solidarity and the Production of Similarity and Difference.”

Popular Music and Society, vol. 39, no. 4, 2015, pp. 410–22. doi:

https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1088281.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 202378

Milton’s Making of a Monster: Viewing

Stranger Things Through the Lens of

Paradise Lost

Matthew Nickerson, College of the Holy Cross

s the young characters of Netix’s hit science ction-horror series,

Stranger Things, have matured, the show’s tone and themes have

done so as well. Picking up months after the events of July 1985, the

characters are still handling the resulting trauma at the beginning of

season four. Eleven, the protagonist, is struggling with the presumed

death of her adoptive father, the loss of her psychic abilities, and the

bullying from her new classmates. Max Mayeld is no longer speak-

ing with her friends in her grief over the death of her brother Billy at

the hands of the Mind Flayer, a 700-foot tall monster from an alter-

nate dimension known as the “Upside Down.” These themes of trauma

and depression are exemplied by season four’s new villain, Vecna, a

monstrous creature from the Upside Down who telepathically murders

teenagers after forcing them to relive their most traumatic moments.

Over the course of the season, the characters learn that Vecna was orig-

inally a human named Henry Creel, who, prior to the beginning of the

series, was banished to the Upside Down by Eleven. There, his body

became mutilated into a monstrous form, and in the season nale the

ultimate twist is revealed: Vecna controls the previous antagonist, the

Mind Flayer, and its hive mind, meaning that he is the true main antag-

onist of Stranger Things. Moreover, Vecna’s backstory and motivations

call to mind another famed literary villain: Satan in John Milton’s 1667

epic poem Paradise Lost. Because of the two character’s similarities,

I argue that Vecna closely follows the Satanic archetype set forward

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Matthew Nickerson

by Milton in a fresh and original manner by explicitly tying Stranger

Things’ version of the fallen devil’s actions and motivations into this

season’s themes of depression and trauma.

The Method: Establishing Genres and Archetypes

Before making any direct comparisons between the two gures,

it is essential to consider the genres of Paradise Lost and Stranger

Things and any possible intersection between them, in order to see the

manner in which genre tropes may inuence each character and their

similarities. Unlike Stranger Things, Paradise Lost is not explicitly a

tale of horror, although the vivid imagery associated with the person-

ications of Sin and Death can be associated with the, at times, vis-

ceral elements of the genre. Instead, scholars note that Paradise Lost

interacts with and even inuences other genres that Stranger Things

engages with. In her article “Milton in Science Fiction and Fantasy,”

Katherine Calloway Sueda discusses prominent examples of Miltonic

imagery and ideas that are used both consciously and unconsciously

within works of science ction and fantasy. Sueda denes two major

elements drawn from Milton’s work that can often be found with-

in these two genres: the narrative process of worldbuilding, and the

notion of good versus evil. She writes that Milton engages in world-

building by thoroughly describing the physical makeup and behaviors

of angels and demons. This set a precedent for science ction authors

to substantively describe the creatures of their own works (Sueda

144–5). Worldbuilding has been a large part of Stranger Things since

its inception, with its detailed crafting of the alternate dimension of

the Upside Down and its inhabitants. Notably, the show’s rst two

seasons vividly depict the life cycle, hunting patterns, and reproduc-

tive process of one of its creatures, the Demogorgon.

The notion of good versus evil is imperative to comparing Satan

and Vecna, and it foremost plays a role in how the genres intersect be-

tween the two stories. Sueda writes that authors of science ction and

fantasy must view the genres “ . . . as doing serious intellectual and

ethical work rather than serving as mere escape or distraction” (147).

She argues that Paradise Lost is Milton’s magnum opus because of

the unique decision to depict Satan as the protagonist of the story,

and portray him in a more sympathetic, nuanced manner. Milton uses

language from his earlier works to highlight Satan’s imperfect state:

“his own pride, malice, folly, misery, and lust . . . The Satan in Mil-

ton enables him to draw the character just as the Satan in us enables

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Matthew Nickerson

us to receive it” (Lewis 205). The inner aws and emotional turmoil

Satan experiences in Paradise Lost is familiar territory to the reader,

as he is not irredeemably evil by nature but is simply too prideful to

deviate from the path he has chosen. As such, this more human de-

piction forces the reader to see negative feelings, such as pride, they

share with Satan and judge him therewith. In tandem with this point,

Stranger Things uses the character of Vecna as a physical manifesta-

tion of depression. Consequently, viewers are forced to consider how

they have been affected by the dark feelings Vecna symbolizes—and

in fact have taken further inspiration from the show by choosing ‘sav-

ior songs,’ or songs with great emotional meaning, that would allow

them to escape Vecna (@Stranger_Things). That attached symbolism

to Vecna is reminiscent of Sueda’s description of Satan within the sci-

ence ction model, in which she writes: “Satan is Earth’s rst alien in-

vader, an intelligent creature from outer space with a sinister agenda”

(145). Vecna ts this description as well, with his intention to open

gateways into the ‘alien’ dimension of the Upside Down and summon

an army that will help him take over the real world, truly earning him

Satan’s title of “the enemy of mankind” (Milton IX. 494).

Elements which expand on the notions of good versus evil within

Stranger Things and Paradise Lost are the show’s frequent and overt

references to Satan and Hell, which cast Vecna within the general

Satanic archetype. Before Henry morphed into the monstrous gure

known as Vecna, he was characterized as a skilled, handsome youth

and adult, much in the same way that Satan was described as the most

beautiful angel in all of Heaven. However, both gures’ respective

appearances became disgured after they committed their atrocities

to rebel against their corresponding authorities, and as punishment

they are expelled from a brilliant white space (for Vecna, the Hawkins

Lab; for Satan, Heaven) to a ery, deadly realm (the Upside Down;

Hell). There, they are each able to seize control and command an

army of demons (the monsters endemic to the Upside Down are re-

ferred to with the prex “demo-”: demogorgons, demodogs, and de-

mobats, suggesting a connection to the biblical versions of demons)

with the ultimate goal to return and take revenge upon the world from

which they were banished. Both have a tendency to whisper into the

minds of humans, reminding them of their previous sins and their

dark, negative feelings towards others. The Devil and Vecna even go

by many names (the former by Satan and Lucifer, among others; the

latter by Henry Creel, 001, and Vecna).

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Matthew Nickerson

Yet Stranger Things goes a step beyond other Satanic archetypes by

moving past general similarities and expressly rendering Vecna’s story in

Biblical terms. Reecting on the reactions of his family when he began

haunting them with twisted visions in 1959, Vecna sneers, “My naive fa-

ther believed it was a demon, cursing [the family] for their sins’’ (“Chap-

ter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab’’ 1:26:40). Additionally, when

Vecna speaks of his fall from Earth to the Upside Down, he admits to

Eleven, “At rst, I believed you had sent me to my death. To purgatory”

(“Chapter Nine: The Piggyback’’ 1:24:38). The vast majority of the res-

idents in Hawkins, Indiana, who are unaware of the otherworldly beings

which frequently seep into their town, attribute the murders that Vec-

na commits to Satan himself, and seek the scripture for answers. Their

belief shows a seeming understanding of the principles of the Satanic

archetype, which Patricia Kubis denes as Satan having “remove[d] his

monster mask with the result that he walks incognito, unnoticed in his

favorite form: man” (xvii). Unfortunately, caught up in the Satanic Pan-

ic of the era, the townspeople vilify the main group of protagonists as

Satanic worshippers and choose to hunt them down instead. Within the

narrative itself, the labels of good and evil are not given out delicately

or rationally, but violently. Hence, while there are many commonalities

between Vecna and the Satanic archetype, it is more fruitful to compare

Vecna directly to the version from Paradise Lost, as that is how Vecna

can truly be understood better as a man.

To that end, there are several elements within the show that can be

more directly connected to Miltonic imagery concerning Satan, where

the shared characteristics become more complex. After attacking the

Hawkin Lab in 1979, Vecna shares his worldview with Eleven and seeks

to sway her into joining his side and conquer the world. The scene’s fo-

cus on Vecna tempting a young girl is reminiscent of the plot of Milton’s

Comus, a 1634 masque in which a devilish gure attempts to corrupt a

young Lady with a drink from his magic cup. Additionally, in Paradise

Lost, Satan and his fellow fallen angels are cast out of Heaven due to a

burst of power from the Son of God. Just as the Son and Satan are both

of God, Vecna and Eleven are “siblings,” as both were test subjects of Dr.

Brenner, the head of Hawkins Lab. Just like the Son of God in Paradise

Lost, Eleven is able to transport her “sibling” to another realm. Paradise

Regained, the 1671 sequel to Paradise Lost, further emphasizes that, un-

like Satan, Jesus does not remember condemning him to Hell; Eleven

similarly cannot remember banishing Vecna, having repressed the trau-

ma, until Brenner coaxes it out of her. In addition, Vecna is not immedi-

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Matthew Nickerson

ately sent to the Upside Down: he is depicted as physically falling for a

long period of time, caught between two planes of brimming lightning,

which is suggestive of the voids of Chaos that Satan must pass through

during his journey from Hell to Eden. (The unending lightning storms

and snowlike particles within the Upside Down itself are reminiscent of

Milton’s depiction of Hell’s unnatural weather). During his fall, Vecna is

struck by lightning an innumerable amount of times, scarring his entire

body and burning his skin and hair away—notably causing him to de-

velop cataracts in his eyes and become blind (Sprabary), a trait shared

with Milton at the twilight of his career. In Paradise Lost, a similar scene

is shown where Satan, upon his decision to fully commit to evil, devel-

ops ugly scars on his once-beautiful face to reect his seething hatred:

“Thrice changed with pale, ire, envie, and despair, / Which marred his

borrowed visage . . . ” (Milton IV.115–6). Upon renewing his murder

spree in 1986, Vecna appears to his victims in visions, where he deceives

them by taking the form of family members and friends, just as Satan

does to Eve in Book IV.

The Man: Establishing Self-Delusion

In Paradise Lost, Satan’s professed beliefs and actions suffer from

a sense of internal delusion brought about by his own nature, which

Vecna also demonstrates. In his critical work A Preface to Paradise

Lost, C.S. Lewis writes that while Satan is an impressive literary cre-

ation, Milton crafts him as a character not to be admired. Lewis ac-

knowledges that Satan brings forth some sympathy, but also points out

that “No one had in fact done anything to Satan; he was not hungry,

nor over-tasked, nor removed from his place, nor shunned, nor hated”

(203). Thus Satan’s demeanor towards God can only be described as

impetuous, as he seeks to strike at what he views as God’s new favor-

ites, the innocent Adam and Eve, and drag them down to his level. In

the same way, Vecna chooses to target those who are weak and vulnera-

ble, namely traumatized youth, and before killing them explicitly voic-

es that he is making them join him

—

like Satan, Vecna is dragging his

victims down to his level, quite literally in the form of bringing them

to the Upside Down with him. Furthermore, Lewis deems a number of

Satan’s arguments and actions in Paradise Lost to be awed logically,

and a result of a narrative that contradicts the truth of reality. Satan is

shown denying God as his creator in an outright lie, (Milton V. 853–7)

as well as claiming that he fought directly against God in war, rather

than against the archangel Michael (Milton I. 111–4). Satan is so in-

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Matthew Nickerson

wardly deluded that there is something wrong with his existence that he

naturally starts to believe his own lies. It is an indication of such when

he feels some remorse, but still cannot nd it within himself to fully

accept his faults and turn back to God. Satan, writes Lewis,“now be-

lieves his own propaganda . . . he has become more a Lie than a Liar, a

personied self-contradiction” (203). Similarly, Vecna is deluded about

his own nature in Stranger Things, believing even in childhood that he

is something more than a human being. Previously, the show consis-

tently classied antagonists as being of either the real world or of the

fantastical dimension of the Upside Down. In reality, Vecna blurs this

distinction, but as a consequence of his delusions over his own nature,

he rejects the humanity that connects him to the real world to instead

seize control of the Upside Down.

Another sign of Vecna’s and Satan’s hypocrisies and contradictions

is how they are caught up in deliberately and ercely striking back

against the fathers and creators they believed wronged them, despite

the fact that, in so doing, both Satan and Vecna remain reliant on the in-

uences of these father gures to inform their actions and motivations.

This is a trait that Lewis notes about Milton’s Satan, who is forever tied

to Heaven and, thus, to his father gure, God, no matter how much he

may revolt against that father gure:

Throughout the poem [Satan] is engaged in sawing off the branch

he is sitting on . . . since a creature revolting against a creator is

revolting against the source of his own powers—including even

his power to revolt. Hence the strife is most accurately described

as “Heav’n ruining from Heav’n” (VI, 868), for only in so far

as he also is “Heaven”—diseased, perverted, twisted, but still a

native of Heaven–does Satan exist at all. It is like the scent of a

ower trying to destroy the ower. (203)

While Satan may deny that he is of Heaven, he struggles at several points

when he thinks back on his relationship with God. While it is true that

God’s power is greater than Satan’s ever could be, Satan is also emo-

tionally focused on God in a way that hinders his plans as well. When he

rst arrives at the Garden and spies upon Adam and Eve, invisible, Sa-

tan momentarily feels guilt at trying to hurt his creator: “[H]e deserved

no such return / From me, whom he created what I was / In that bright

eminence, and with his good / Upbraided none” (Milton IV. 42–45).

Thus, Satan’s ght against his creator and father gure is doomed from

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Matthew Nickerson

the start: though Satan is motivated to prove he is beyond the physical

control of God, God’s past inuence means that Satan can never tru-

ly succeed against Him. Vecna is placed in a similar situation with his

father gure, Dr. Martin Brenner, a scientist at the Hawkins Lab who

compels all of the psychic children being raised in the lab, including

Vecna before his defeat, to address him as “Papa.” Vecna and Brenner’s

relationship is interesting in that, unlike God, the latter is an ordinary

man without any supernatural abilities, giving Vecna ample opportunity

to kill his father gure to eliminate any further paternal or authoritarian

inuence as he enacts his plans. However, Vecna never kills Brenner,

despite his newfound ability to telekinetically murder from the Upside

Down. In fact, when Vecna is later told by Eleven that Brenner has

been killed, his displeasure is visible. Although he describes Brenner

as a powerless weakling who took control of psychic children in order

to become special himself (“Chapter Nine: The Piggyback” 1:23:37),

it is clear that Vecna deliberately left him alive, if only to make sure

that Brenner bore witness to the ultimate failure of his life’s work. It is

exceedingly odd to see the horrically burnt, tentacle-covered Vecna

speak of his “Papa,” but that ts with the unnaturalness of how both

Vecna and Satan cannot let their respective “fathers” go. Ultimately,

Satan and Vecna are committed to gain acknowledgement from their

father gures, despite the fact that they believe they are acting for their

own reasons—an idea which is, in itself, illogical.

Even in these moments of weakness, neither Vecna or Satan see t

to do reection and seriously consider changing their ways; rather, they

eventually scorn at any idea of redemption and continue down their cho-

sen path. On a whole, Lewis writes, Satan is a very selsh character who

largely lacks self-awareness: “He has chosen to have no choice. He has

wished to ‘be himself’ . . . and for himself, and his wish has been granted”

(205). While Satan does feel a great sense of remorse and regret in the

Garden of Eden, he does not stay with these emotions for long. Instead he

repeatedly rages against God as ‘the Victor,’ and monologues how he is

going to fully commit himself to evil and turn away from feelings of re-

gret: “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, / Farewell remorse:

all good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my good” (Milton IV. 108–10). For

all of the sympathy Satan evokes, it is with his personal refusal to work to

repent that seals his perpetual failure against God, and renders him rmly

unlike Adam and Eve once they sin but feel regret. Likewise, it is with

Vecna’s lifelong desire to shed himself of his humanity—and to choose to

have no choice—that his role within the season’s themes of trauma comes

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Matthew Nickerson

to light. Although Vecna is human, contradictorily he expresses scorn at

human connection and empathy, having told Eleven that he relies only on

memories of anger and sadness to fuel his powers (“Chapter Seven: The

Massacre at Hawkins Lab” 1:31:27). Yet over and over, other’s choices

to see the good beyond their trauma results in Vecna’s defeat. It is Max’s

emotional connections with her friends that allow her to escape Vecna’s

clutches, and Eleven’s choice to tap into her one happy memory of her

mother that allowed her to recover from Henry’s hold and overpower him

back in 1979. In both cases, relying on humanity and emotion allowed

these characters to come back from the brink and save themselves. The

fallen, traumatized Vecna, however, willingly chooses to keep himself as

such. The third episode, “Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero”

illustrates this well: Eleven has traumatic ashbacks of the lab massacre,

an event she cannot fully remember but fears she may have been respon-

sible for. In an argument with her boyfriend Mike, who calls her a “super-

hero,” Eleven says that she feels that she is instead a “monster.” As Eleven

experiences more painful ashbacks of the massacre, the camera then cuts

to Vecna in the Upside Down: the true perpetrator of the massacre, and

someone who has never felt traumatic ashbacks or questioned whether

he was a monster over the massacre. Visually, the show demonstrates that

it is the self-obsessed, uncaring Vecna who is the “monster,” and that is

precisely another reason why he and Eleven are destined to stand against

each other as bitter enemies. Satan and Vecna remain fallen, but as a result

of their own decisions and lack of true remorse.

This single-minded, narrow focus that Vecna and Satan share

sustains their villainy and contributes to their continued fall even af-

ter their physical descent is long complete. Lewis writes that “Satan

wants to go on being Satan. That is the real meaning of his choice.

‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.’” (Lewis 205). Indeed,

this robustness is shown with Satan and Vecna, when the two are

shown to immediately reconcile their new location with their pre-

viously held ideals, and to move forward in their declared aims of

‘bringing Hell to Heaven.’ In the rst book of Paradise Lost, the fall-

en angels are shown sprawled out on the oor of Hell, dazed and

defeated, but Satan’s anger is still vivid and he urges his followers to

pick themselves up and not sink into sorrow:

Though changed in outward lustre; that xed mind

And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,

That with the mightiest raised me to contend,

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Matthew Nickerson

And to the erce contention brought along

Innumerable force of spirits armed

That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power opposed

In dubious battle on the plains of heaven,

And shook his throne . . . (Milton I. 97

–

105)

Satan may have been externally changed, his body forcefully thrust

from his home and into the void of Chaos, but inwardly, his resolu-

tion and commitment to doing evil stand rm. Neither does Vecna

fall into despair over his horrically burned body or his arrival into a

new dimension full of monsters that offers no return to Earth. Instead,

he glowingly marvels at his fortune being deposited into “a realm

unspoiled by mankind” (“Chapter Nine: The Piggyback” 1:25:15).

Vecna is then shown wandering for days, searching for a means to

continue his villainous trajectory, until he nds something: the swirl-

ing cloud of particles that will come to be known as the Mind Flayer.

Without hesitation, he raises his hand and uses his mental abilities

to take control and alter the cloud’s form into that of an enormous

spider: “I found the most extraordinary thing of all. Something that

would change everything. I saw a means to realize my potential. To

transcend my human form. To become the predator I was always born

to be” (“Chapter Nine: The Piggyback” 1:25:27

–

1:26:00).

The hypocrisy of Satan and Vecna are reinforced in these new

realms, where their efforts to allegedly continue their revenge instead

violate their stated beliefs. It is in this act of asserting control over the

otherworldly Mind Flayer and forcing it to permanently take a form

he desires that Vecna and Satan share a hypocritical nature. As Lew-

is writes of Satan, “He wants hierarchy and does not want hierarchy”

(203), an idea which also applies to Vecna. Vecna professes to disdain

any form of control and authority and to love the Upside Down’s un-

touched quality, but by the time Eleven activates a new portal in 1983,

the Upside Down has been transformed from a bright orange dimension

with rocky terrain to a dark blue, shadowy replica of Hawkins. On top

of that, by assuming control over the Mind Flayer’s hive mind, Vecna

corrupts the previously docile creatures of the Upside Down (compel-

ling them to become vicious predators), much in the same way that

Satan in Paradise Lost possesses an innocent serpent to tempt Eve.

Vecna has become exactly what he claims to hate and ght against: a

human who imposes his will upon a world and perverts it. In much the

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Matthew Nickerson

same way, Satan vehemently despises God’s throne, and he wages war

to topple his father’s hierarchy, but by the time the fallen angels have

begun conspiring to strike back at God, Satan has already placed him-

self upon a throne and crowned himself the ruler of Hell.

Both Vecna and Satan have turned their new realms into near rep-

licas of the domains they proclaim to despise, and both attempt to give

the pretense of involving others. Satan, for instance, calls together a

council of demons to plan how to move forward in their war on Heav-

en, yet he has already decided to desecrate God’s sinless creations,

Adam and Eve, and gives the idea to Beezlebub to act out a charade of

teamwork. Similarly, Vecna creates the illusion of being merely another

piece of the Upside Down by tethering himself to its hive mind–when

Chief Hopper burns and beheads demogorgons in the real world, Vec-

na howls with pain, demonstrating this connection–but by controlling

the Mind Flayer, he actually has full control over the whole dimen-

sion. Before Vecna’s true power is revealed, the main cast theorizes

that the Mind Flayer is the military commander of the Upside Down,

and that Vecna is his “ve-star general” (“Chapter Seven: The Massa-

cre at Hawkins Lab” 33:08). Vecna and Satan’s simultaneous instinct

is to declare that they are the “foot soldiers,” the lowliest members

of the unjust military hierarchy. In truth, however, they are both the

commanders, and their protests to the contrary are mere deception–to

everyone, including themselves.

The Fall: Establishing Self-Destruction

To fully evaluate the importance of the fall to both characters, it

is insightful to consider the perspective that Vecna acts as an antihe-

ro, rather than simply as the antagonist, within his narrative, which

is similar to Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost. In her es-

say, “The Antihero’s Journey: The Inuence of Milton’s Satan on the

Evolution of the Dark Hero,” Alice Capstick describes the antihero in

terms of how they straddle the boundary between good and evil phys-

ically, psychologically, and morally (3), and how their relationship

with power factors into their subsequent descent. Capstick conceives

a 3-part model to describe the journey of the antihero, an inverse of

Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey. The three stages she

presents are a character’s “rise,” “reign,” and “ruin,” and she writes

how Satan in Paradise Lost falls seamlessly into the three stages and,

as such, is a clear precedent for the modern antihero, which can be

represented through Vecna’s journey.

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Matthew Nickerson

Capstick does not depict the acts of rebellion performed by the

antihero as being borne from a purely evil nature, but out of a distaste

and aversion to rigid authority; in terms of Satan and Vecna, the targets

of their grievances are God’s cosmic hierarchy and the nature of the

human race, respectively. In the “Rise” stage, Capstick notes that the

antihero is “distinguishable from traditional heroic gures because they

are motivated by their ideological rejection of the system of power they

are subject to, on the grounds that it is tyrannical and oppressive,” and

furthermore that their “dissatisfaction [is] not just with a simple sys-

tem of government or hierarchy, but with the order and governance of

the universe on a cosmic scale” (7). Both characters also feel an over-

whelming sense of superiority over others. Such language is evident in

a ashback to 1979, when Vecna, still in human form before his exile

to the Upside Down, speaks of his childhood to Eleven and explains

his dissatisfaction with what sees as the repressive structure of society.

But the human world was disrupting [nature’s] harmony . . .

enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural struc-

ture. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel,

oppressive world dictated by made-up rules . . . [everybody]

performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do

that. I could not close off my mind and join in the madness. I

could not pretend. And I realized I didn’t have to. I could make

my own rules. I could restore balance to a broken world. A

predator . . . but for good. (“Chapter Seven: The Massacre at

Hawkins Lab” 1:23:45

–

1:25:30)

Like Vecna, Satan questions the authority within his narrative, God’s

cosmic hierarchy, and whether that authority is truly a fair one. In a

ashback to the time before the War on Heaven, Satan gathers many

angels and shares his thoughts with them, questioning the laws of

Heaven set up by God. Notably, Satan also refers to a physical object to

symbolize the captivity he views following authority to be:

But what if better counsels might erect

Our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke?

Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend

The supple knee? Ye will not, if I trust

To know ye right, or if ye know your selves

. . .

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Matthew Nickerson

Who can in reason then or right assume

Monarchy over such as live by right

His equals, if in power and splendour less,

In freedom equal? or can introduce

Law and edict on us, who without law

Err not . . . (Milton V.785

–

789, 794

–

799)

In these quotations, Vecna and Satan disparagingly refer to those who

would not agree with their point of view as inferiors. Vecna refers to

all other humans as actors who unquestioningly put on a performance

and go through the same motions their entire lives, while Satan refers

to those who would disagree with them as mindlessly committing to

a similar ritual, slavishly placing their faces fully onto the ground be-

fore God. In their minds, they do not consider themselves part of their

respective species

—

this is in line with Capstick’s work; she notes that

the stage of “Rise” leads to the antiheroes “degrad[ing] their humanity”

(11). She cites Satan’s degradation as someone who initially proclaims

themselves to ght tyrants, yet increasingly uses the language of a dic-

tator himself (11). Even before his transformation into an otherworldly

being, Vecna states that he identies much more with spiders, as they

are predatory animals, than with human beings. When Vecna nally

surrenders his body to the Upside Down, allowing the tendrils and ten-

tacles that cover the entire dimension to fully embrace him, he is able

to physically divorce himself from his humanity.

Capstick denes the second stage, “Reign,” as the antihero’s suc-

cessful second attempt at rebellion, and the subsequent achievement

of power to maintain their rebellion; however, “the antihero continues

to rely on the problematic methods they used in the process of gaining

power despite being aware they are immoral” (12). Satan and Vecna’s

“problematic methods” are evident

—

Satan’s decision to grant himself

a throne and Vecna’s decision to transform the Upside Down in order to

represent his old home are clear hypocrisies. Capstick writes that Satan’s

throne “undermin[es] the belief in the importance of democracy which

he expressed in his earlier speeches” (8) and that it instead symbolizes

tyranny (10). Similarly, Vecna’s action makes him the human who spoils

a world in his own image, specically in the image that he claims to

hate. Capstick is able to emphasize both the presence of self-awareness

in the nature of the antihero, as well as their hypocrisies and aws: in the

best written antiheroes, their inclination to darkness is visible from the

beginning, and their aws, and especially their awed heroism, should

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Matthew Nickerson

be clearly articulated so as to show its gradual rather than sudden nature.

Both Paradise Lost and Stranger Things present ashbacks of their two

characters where it is evident that there is a crack in the way they present

themselves, even though Satan is a prominent angel and Vecna, in his

original form of Henry Creel, is a child. Capstick cites the increasingly

warped forms Satan takes as he changes form as subtle evidence of this

notion (14). Moreover, during the scene where young Henry stands in

front of a clock in his home and uses his abilities to turn the clock hands

backwards, it is a moment of victory for the character, as he views it as

the rst step in being able to repel the natural order. But the audience

views the scene with dread, as any good intentions on Henry’s part are

rendered moot with the knowledge that Henry, as Vecna, plants the image

of the clock as the beginning of the end for his young, traumatized vic-

tims. In these examples, the methods of the two characters come across

as unnatural due to knowledge of their later actions, no matter the good

intentions of the characters at that time.

Lastly, Capstick writes of her third stage, “Ruin,” saying: “When

their façade eventually fails them, the antihero has no choice left to them,

and in this helpless state they usually lose their power and fall with no

hope of redemption or absolution” (15). Having fully abandoned pre-

tenses of good and fully turned to evil, upon his return to Hell, Satan is

punished with being transformed into a snake once again. On this fate,

Capstick writes, “[i]nstead of heroically overthrowing tyranny, Satan’s

moral weakness means that he has become a worse example of tyranni-

cal oppression and despotism than God ever was” (16). Satan is thereby

unwillingly reduced to the form he chose to act against God in. Similar-

ly, Vecna is forced to burn after his gruesome murders in 1979, and the

season nale ends with the teenagers entering the Upside Down in 1986

and bombing him with Molotov cocktails, burning him once again. This

time, as Vecna’s attachment to the Upside Down has rendered him ex-

tremely vulnerable to re and water, he is burned to the point where he no

longer appears humanoid. Again, in his defeat Vecna is cursed with that

which he sought with his campaign: complete separation from his human

appearance and life. Reecting on Vecna’s fall, Autumn Sprabury draws

a denitive line between Henry and Vecna: “After Eleven bans Henry to

the Upside Down, we are able to watch his metaphorical (and physical)

fall from grace . . . we see a badly burned Henry, then a ash of lightning

that reveals him as the King of the Upside Down” (Sprabury). Vecna

may have described his goals with the language of noble intentions, yet

this outlook portrays him as better off if he had been fully disintegrated

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Matthew Nickerson

by Eleven, as opposed to morphing into the vengeful being he resembles

now. Even in the nale, when Eleven pleads for him to seek redemption

after Brenner’s death, Vecna sneeringly refuses to turn back from his

current state. Perhaps Vecna entered the Upside Down intending to con-

tinue his remaking of the world for the better, but now, he will forsake

redemption to purely seek revenge.

In an article published shortly after the release of the nal two epi-

sodes in July 2022, Dani Di Placido writes glowingly of the Duffer broth-

ers’ decision to retcon the series’ main antagonist, the Mind Flayer, and

introduce a new one in Vecna. Di Placido doesn’t argue that the Mind

Flayer as an antagonist had lost its menace after being defeated at the end

of two seasons in a row; rather, that Vecna’s human nature makes him a

much more engaging and visceral threat than the faceless, unknowable,

alien Mind Flayer. Di Placido writes that Vecna’s story mirrors Satan’s,

being “ . . . a fallen angel who nds new power and purpose in Hell;

hence, the twist morphs Stranger Things into an explicit story of good

versus evil, rather than humanity versus the unknown” (Di Placido). It is

rather tting that the series is able to depict Sueda’s theme on the struggle

between good and evil in such a cinematic fashion, given her argument

that Paradise Lost is “the greatest movie never made” (142). Truly, the

fact that Stranger Things was able to use the text’s foundational Satanic

archetype, successfully create a new antagonist from it, and tie him into

more mature, darker themes of trauma and regret, is worthy of consider-

able praise. Doing so excellently services the continued development of

the show’s beloved characters, even four seasons into the show. It goes to

show that John Milton knew that to create a timeless epic, it was essen-

tial to create an antagonist who serves as a direct threat and, moreso, as

a dark foil to the other characters in the story. Nearly four hundred years

later, the Duffer Brothers took note of that.

MATTHEW NICKERSON is a senior English major with a Creative

Writing concentration at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester,

Massachusetts. Matt wrote this essay for his class on John Milton in

Fall 2022. He would like to thank Professors Melissa Schoenberger

and Stephanie Reents for their encouragement to submit this paper;

his mother, his rst (and best) editor; and Alice Capstick, whom he

corresponded with during his semester abroad in Melbourne, Australia.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Matthew Nickerson

WORKS CITED

Capstick, Alice. “The Antihero’s Journey: The Inuence of Milton’s

Satan on the Evolution of the Dark Hero.” A Shadow Within: Evil

in Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Francesca T Barbini,

Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2019, pp. 1–22, repository.

falmouth.ac.uk/3258/1/Evil%20Proof%203-4.pdf#page=9

“Chapter Nine: The Piggyback.” Stranger Things, created by Matt and

Ross Duffer, performance by Jamie Campbell Bower, season 4,

episode 9, Netix, 2022.

“Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab.” Stranger Things,

created by Matt and Ross Duffer, performance by Jamie Campbell

Bower, season 4, episode 7, Netix, 2022.

Di Placido, Dani. “Vecna Changed ‘Stranger Things’ for The Bet-

ter.” Forbes, 5 July 2022, www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplaci-

do/2022/07/03/stranger-things-how-vecna-changed-the-lore-of-

the-upside-down/?sh=74f8ca8e783f.

Kubis, Patrica Lou. The Archetype of the Devil in Twentieth-Century

Literature. University of California, Riverside. ProQuest Disser-

tations Publishing, 1976. 7628070. www.proquest.com/open-

view/9e48af44e60930686e2319b671d7a4d2/1?pq-origsite=g-

scholar&cbl=18750&diss=y.

Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. Poetry Criticism, edited by

Linda Pavlovski, vol. 29, Gale, 2000, pp. 202–5. Gale Literature

Criticism, link.gale.com/apps/doc/AEEEXJ198927931/LCO?u=m-

lin_c_collhc&sid=bookmark-LCO&xid=917c4936. Originally

published in Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Arthur

E. Barker, Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 92–100.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Milton: the Major Works, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, New York, New York, 1991, pp. 355–618.

Sprabary, Autumn. “One potential explanation behind Vecna’s creepy eyes.”

AAV Media, LLC., All About Vision, 12 July 2022, www.allaboutvi-

sion.com/resources/human-interest/stranger-things-vecna-eyes/.

Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things.) “wanna know what songs

would save YOU from vecna? head to your Upside Down Playlist

on @Spotify to nd out. the rst Song on the list = your savior

song.” Twitter, 29 June 2022, 11:00am., twitter.com/Stranger_

Things/status/1542160975545061376?s=20&t=wrhgzIetNUXph-

j70TKhMfQ.

Sueda, Katherine Calloway. “Milton in Science Fiction and Fantasy.”

Milton Studies, vol. 63, no. 1, 2021, pp. 136–53.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023 93

Black Monsters Heroes as Victims to the

Revenge of the Normative in The Night of

the Living Dead & The Shining

Sarah Rand, University of West Georgia

he impact of George Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead

(1968) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) is undeniable;

both lms occupy a complex space in horror lm and racial history

due to the representations of Black male saviors. In The Shining and

The Night of the Living Dead, Black male characters Dick and Ben,

respectively, serve as mentors and eventually heroes to White pro-

tagonists who are made out to be the primary victims of dangerous

environments. These Black men not only fall victim to untimely, and

what seem to be narratively unnecessary, deaths but are also depicted

as extremely brave and compulsorily protective over strangers. These

deaths highlight trends of Black male subjugation in the horror lm

genre. Blaxploitation, the power dynamic of the White victim and the

masculine (borderline monstrous and aggressive) Black hero, and the

signicance of Black death in horror lms contribute to the creation

of relatively undeveloped Black male characters. Thus, both race and

gender identities factor into the narrative curation of the Black man

as the threatening “Other”—or monster—as opposed to othering the

life-threatening true threats that the Black characters seem to parallel.

I argue that in both The Night of the Living Dead and The Shining,

despite the supernatural and catastrophic events that transpire, Black

men remain the “Other” as they are depicted as two-dimensional

characters that exist to be used by White normative characters and

narratives. What I have coined as the “monsterizing” of Black male

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Sarah Rand

characters is especially present in the horror genre and is a result of

the narrational attribution of material and psychological powers to

Black male characters which is reminiscent of cultural systemic sub-

jugation in the world beyond the screen.

Blaxploitation & Context

The trends of fears in lm, as well as what or who is considered

“the repressed,” are constantly evolving due to the cultural context of

lms as a media. Consequently, it is important to note that there were

both breakthroughs and strife concerning civil and human rights during

the release of both The Night of the Living Dead and The Shining. In

fact, Duane Jones, the actor who played Ben in Romero’s lm, was

the rst Black actor to be cast in a lead role for a Hollywood horror

movie. These types of monumental racial milestones were undoubtedly

triumphs for the Black community due to their cultural and canonical

importance but elicited mixed emotions due to the depictions of Black

characters and the Hollywood ideal of Black manhood. As a result

of this, Blaxploitation became a normative occurrence in Hollywood

which led to more lms comparable to The Night of the Living Dead

and The Shining that served as outlets for the hegemony of America,

and consequently, neocolonialism.¹

Blaxploitation, in simple terms, is the exploitation of Black people,

but considering the context of the term within the scope of this paper,

Blaxploitation can also be dened more specically as “an era of Black

lm offering which often drew their inspiration from Black power ide-

ologies while presenting themes of empowerment, self-sufciency,

and conscious-raising” (Coleman 120). These ideals of Black identity,

while pillars of progress in civil rights movements that occurred during

the inception of the Blaxploitation lm, depend on the stereotype of the

Black macho man, which obviously excludes various other identity ex-

pressions. This stereotype served as the prominent representation of an

entire people and was produced by White male Hollywood powers that

were not cautious to curate enduring and non-racist depictions. These

Blaxploitative lms provide an opportunity to critique society as racist,

given that the fears and biases of reality are reected in the depiction of

the “Other” in media—in this case, lms like The Night of the Living

Dead and The Shining, in which Black male characters are portrayed

as inherently monstrous due to a lack of Whiteness and, resultantly,

normality. This ideal of monstrosity is emphasized as, “Black macho

became dominant social expressions of racial identity for many African

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Sarah Rand

American men . . . In general, blaxploitation lms depicted a stronger,

more militant image of African Americans who triumphed over White

antagonists” (Benshoff 33). This strong and dominant expression of

Black male characters reects the commodication of Black bodies,

stemming from the extensive and dark history of America. As a result,

Blaxploitation lm is a nuanced subgenre that should credit its origins

to the legacy of racism (and generally, the lack of resistance to this leg-

acy). Due to the masculinization of the African American man and the

unequal power structures of society, the revenge plot is an unattainable

lm fantasy heavily sought after in this era. The (racial) revenge plot

in which the Black man has the power to punish his ancestor’s former

(White) “massa” is a dominant narrative in Blaxploitation lms. But

this depiction is only one side of the racialized coin and parallels that

of subjugation. In both The Night of the Living Dead and The Shining,

these racial dynamics are taken a step further and transmute into the

subjugation of the Black laborer and protector, which I offer as the

primary tool of neocolonialism in Blaxploitation lm.

Black male subjugation, as I refer to it, is a product of neocolonial

hegemony that makes its way into lm narrative. Subjugation compels

the “Other” to be under control and become submissive. This, for Black

Americans, was nothing new, but it was acted out in the new medium of

lm for their viewing pleasure. In this same vein, Coleman afrms, “Hor-

ror, for Blacks, continues to be a study in racism, exoticism, and neocolo-

nialism in which Black Americans are portrayed as outsiders of Western

images of enlightenment, while being subordinated to a system of primi-

tive images’’ (213). Depictions of Black Americans in horror lms there-

fore were dualistic due to exoticism which was represented in the lms

as the consumption of Black labor or enlistment of Black characters as

the exception to the White gaze and primitive stereotypes, although they

were never allowed to reach narrational enlightenment. The Black man

is the “privileged Other” in horror lms due to their proximity to Western

images of normality based on gender identity while also being excluded

as minorities of racial identity. In other words, while Black male char-

acters were subordinated in horror lm narratives, due to their gender

identity, they were deemed acceptable sidekicks to White men. This hin-

ders narratives to “remain(s) unapologetically exclusionary, propagating

the Western hierarchal framework of privileging the experiences of the

White male” (Brooks 461). Centering the White male gaze narratively

fuels a racist and often hyper-masculine spirit that translates from the

cultural ideals of the audience, to the curators of the lm, and nally

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Sarah Rand

to the characters seen on the screen. This translation of the white gaze,

resultantly, paralyzes the Black male character by only acknowledging

their masculinity rather than permitting them to be dynamic beings. In

some narratives, like in The Night of the Living Dead, this emphasis on

masculinity is the reason the Black man is challenged by other (usually

White) male survivors. Black American characters (particularly Black

men) occupied a complex space in the early horror lm as their masculin-

ity was dramatized but their Blackness was seemingly overlooked. The

Shining notably doesn’t employ this dynamic to establish the non-threat-

ening nature of Dick Hallorann.

Two-dimensionality is an aspect of Dick Hallorann’s nature. Unlike

Ben in The Night of the Living Dead, whose character is fraught with

normative ideals of masculinity, Dick is written with a different kind of

two-dimensional identity. He is instead personable and kind, which is

evident in one of his rst orientational conversations with the family:

DICK HALLORANN. Mrs. Torrance, your husband intro-

duced you as Winifred. Now, are you a Winnie or Freddy?

WENDY TORRANCE. I’m a Wendy.

DICK HALLORANN. Oh. That’s nice. That’s the prettiest.

(Kubrick 15:35)

This cordial relationship dynamic is maintained until later in the lm when

Jack’s hateful and violent behavior gets out of hand. Ben, in contrast, is not

permitted to be likable. I believe this is because the men occupy two vastly

different roles, as Dick slides under the (threat) radar at the beginning of

the narrative because of his older age. Ben’s character, as a strapping young

man, is not afforded that same kindness and accommodation because he

possesses physical power while Dick possesses mental power.

The (almost super-humanly) empowered and subjugated Black

male character, exemplied here by Dick and Ben, are two extremes

of monsterizing. Both characters are empowered and subjugated in dif-

ferent ways. In the case of Dick, he has super-human powers of telep-

athy and clairvoyance. This ability connects him to young Danny, who

doesn’t understand his budding super-human abilities, so Dick serves

as his mentor. However, despite his wisdom and powers, Dick doesn’t

foresee the danger that the family will be in, so he occupies a kind of

liminal powerless position. Although he is suggested to possess more

advanced power than anyone in the narrative, Dick is generally made to

be non-threatening and accommodating. Ben, on the other hand, veers

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Sarah Rand

on the side of hyper-masculine with his apparent need to supersede

the other male survivors and to control the bodies and behavior of the

women of the group. The hyper masculine and over-bearing portrayal

of Ben makes him an active threat throughout the lm, which near-

ly juxtaposes the non-threatening and pleasant portrayal of Dick. The

power struggles between the White and Black male characters show

that the White male survivors don’t see them as valid leadership g-

ures, whether the Black man tries to take leadership by force in apoc-

alyptic situations or for the protection of the White family unit. Both

Ben and Dick are made to be the monsters in their narratives, despite

their good intentions. The “monster” I label them as deviates from the

zombies and ghosts that belong in their horror narratives. Instead, these

characters are given this label because they are, “the monster, a speci-

cally Black avenger who justiably ghts against the dominant order—

which is often explicitly coded as racist” (Benshoff 37). The character

that is considered the “monster” is the one who deviates from norma-

tive behavior, which is commonly the Black hero who is not supposed

to overcome his circumstances yet ghts against those circumstances

nonetheless. This racial coding is visible in different ways for Dick and

Ben, but regardless of their situations, it is clear that they fulll this

role. While this labeling brings these men (the “Other”) under the con-

trol of the dominant culture of White normality, the racialized dynam-

ics of these narratives makes it clear that, regardless of their behavior,

Black men are still considered a threat.

The White Victim & Black Hero:

Another threat to White normative standards is how the Black man

protects the White woman in these narratives. The dependent relation-

ship between the defenseless White woman and protective Black man

is supported by the apathy of the White male. Subsequently, the norma-

tive standards established by these lms depend on the dynamic of the

White damsel and Black hero. This relationship is marked by a White

damsel that lacks senses in some manner. This kind of racial and gender

standard highlights how:

the lm . . . offers a variety of representations of (White) wom-

anhood ranging from competent to incompetent . . . critics are

guilty of creating a framework that, as bell hooks expresses,

“privileges sexual difference [and] actively suppresses recog-

nition of race.” (Brooks 463)

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Sarah Rand

By indulging in the White male fantasy of the White woman unarmed

and needy, these lms abide by Western hegemony, only to place the

Black man between the White male and female as a blockade. This

framework that privileges sexual difference is apparent due to the dis-

parities of the men and women in the lm narratives. In The Night of the

Living Dead, Barbara becomes physically incompetent as she goes into

a type of catatonia. The other women, Helen and Judy, who previously

showcased some semblance of competence, are not shown nearly as

much as Barbara, who is inactive for the majority of the movie. When

she is left alone after her brother is attacked by a zombie, Barbara sud-

denly does not have the wits to make wise survival decisions. This

psychological regression juxtaposes the immediate intelligence and

leadership of Ben, which situates the social dynamic so that Barbara

must be taken care of to survive. This White female victim/Black male

hero dynamic is also present in The Shining between Wendy Torrance

and Dick Hallorann. In the absence of a good father and husband g-

ure, with Jack Torrance preoccupied with his writing at the beginning

of the narrative, Wendy is left to her own devices with her son, Danny,

in the Overlook hotel. With Dick being a veteran of the hotel staff, he

assists in areas that Jack cannot in order to make Wendy comfortable in

her surroundings. As the head chef, he shows them around the kitchen,

which is traditionally a domesticated (and feminine) space and show-

cases his connection and appeal to Wendy. This interaction also serves

to exemplify how capable Wendy is of taking care of herself and her

family as she plans to take over the domestic spaces of the hotel in the

absence of Dick. Eventually, Wendy mimics Barbara’s catatonic behav-

ior from Night after Jack has started to exhibit threatening behavior, at

which point Dick comes to the mother and child’s rescue. By “dumbing

down” or diluting the women’s chances of leadership in dire situations,

the narratives reiterate that the Black man’s place is below theirs and

that a rearrangement of the social order is necessary to imagine a story

where the Black male is in power in any way. This rearrangement trig-

gers the White male, who assumes dominance in the power structure, to

seek out extreme means of recalibrating the social order, including the

sudden death of his narrational competition, the Black man.

Black Death: The Imposition of Black Life

The deaths of the Black protagonists in both The Night of the Liv-

ing Dead and The Shining are notably violent and are seemingly unnec-

essary. It is evident that as the “Other,” the men are disposable in the

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Sarah Rand

narrative. In fact, their untimely deaths both occur near or seemingly

because of White victims that they valiantly attempted to save. This

signies that no matter their intentions of heroism, their lives are de-

ned by their proximity and assimilation to Whiteness. Walter Metz as-

serts this in his analysis of the violent rejection of Dick in The Shining:

[The lm’s] narrative concerns only one murder, that of Dick

Hallorann . . . we see Jack strike one blow to Hallorann’s chest

in a long shot. Hallorann offers an external resistance to the

patriarchal structure . . . The lm locates Hallorann’s murder

within a larger critique of colonialism . . . Thus, the hotel as a

symbol of American success literally covers over the violence

and corruption it took to build it. (53, 56)

The swift killing of Dick, when considered symbolism within the larg-

er critique of colonialism, represents the disenfranchised being swept

under the rug for the benet of those at the top. Historically and sys-

temically, those at the top are typically White, cisgender, and heter-

onormative, and they contribute to the downfall (whether knowledge-

ably or not) of those that are marginalized. In The Night of the Living

Dead, this critique is evident as well through the protagonist dying in

a situation which is reminiscent of a lynch mob. Ben suffers an almost

uncharacteristic death because “[he] who was calm under re, compe-

tently took charge . . . and . . . kicked some (White) butt . . . is symbol-

ically lynched by a mob of shotgun toting White men” (Coleman xvii).

Seemingly after the brunt of the zombie apocalypse, the home Ben and

the other survivor’s occupied is surrounded by a large group of White

men carrying guns. As though they don’t see Ben looking out the win-

dow assessing the group of White men (notably, without any zombie

mannerisms), they shoot him upon sight. This sudden change in Ben’s

ability to survive is almost jarring as his sudden death occurs in the

conclusion of the lm and his body is discarded within minutes along

with zombie corpses, but it also signies the revenge of the normative

in response to Ben’s ascension in the social order.

Furthermore, the relationships of these characters are dened by an

underlying jealousy informed by a lack of the White man’s humanity

towards and relation with the non-normative. In Dick and Jack’s narra-

tive, this jealousy establishes itself as the resentment Jack has towards

Dick for extending empathy. Daniel O’Brien, in his chapter on Black

heroism, notes:

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Kubrick’s The Shining does illustrate the violent, destructive

irrationality of racial discrimination . . . It is, however, worth

noting that the lm’s prime embodiment of Black masculinity

remains superior to his White counterpart on numerous levels .

. . (Jack) forsakes his roles of husband and father . . . attributes

taken up by Hallorann, out of both professional duty (head

chef) and personal choice (fellow shiner). (173)

Because of racial discrimination, which Jack starts to verbally express once

he spirals into delusion with another White male patriarch (Mr. Grady),

Black death serves as a release from the pressure Jack feels. It is also im-

portant to note that in the novel and original script, Dick survives and is

the hero who saves Danny and Mrs. Torrance. Scatman Crothers (the actor

who plays Dick Hallorann) even claims that “The strange thing is that even

Stanley’s screenplay has Hallorann saving them. I just don’t understand

what happened. I still don’t know why Stanley changed the story. I nev-

er asked him why he did it” (Beebe). The decision to have Dick die was

somewhat last minute and signicantly altered the tone of the movie. We

can infer that the increasing tension between Jack and Dick impacted the

producers enough that they decided that Dick must die. This decision was

likely made because Dick’s character displayed the attributes that Jack’s

wishes he could possess, such as nancial stability, kindness, and an effort-

less connection to Danny. These attributes are not present to establish that

there is a possibility of Dick replacing Jack as a husband and father gure,

but to instead establish Dick as a threat who must be killed off because of

the potential to escape his predetermined role as a servant (and to under-

mine White normativity). In The Night of the Living Dead, Black death is

swift, sudden, and hastily discarded which recenters the narrative on the

White male hero that could not be bothered to consider the Black male as

an ally even after nearly surviving the apocalypse singlehandedly.

Genre & The Big Bad Presiding White Man

In my analysis of the social implications of these two lms and their

characters, it is imperative to engage with the trends of the horror genre.

Horror that incorporates elements of melodrama, as in the case of these

examples, is a landscape that is very experimental. This is perhaps why

horror has so seamlessly reected the anxieties of race. Horror, in all its

complexities and subgenres, can expose the true desires and fears of a

society. Melodrama, on the other hand, offers the viewer sensational and

exaggerated events and characters. The Night of the Living Dead and

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The Shining possess elements of both genres but, “[i]n a poststructural

sense, The Shining offers a liminal narrational system caught between

the horror lm and the family melodrama which offers the possibility

of critique unavailable to either of the genres in their ‘pure’ state” (Metz

40). The complicated social structures from the melodrama genre that

exist in the lms are benchmarked by exaggerated displays of emotions

and abrupt plot twists. In The Shining, these displays are acted out by

Jack and Wendy, while Dick never truly displays any intense emotion.

This further asserts his innocent nature as he is simplied and the White

characters are situated to be more complex. In The Night of the Living

Dead, a similar phenomenon occurs with Ben’s character. Although Ben

is attributed with intense emotions, he seemingly can only express a lim-

ited amount of them, rage and violence, unlike his narrative counterparts.

This realm of limited possibility only conrms the inuence of Western

hegemony, which simplies “Others” for the sake of presiding over them

as superior. Considering the lack of racial representation in lm in the

1960s and 1980s, this genre mix also makes for the perfect backdrop to

take narratives a step farther as:

queers (broadly dened as anyone who rejects the essential su-

periority of a straight White male identity) are drawn to the genre

because of its many intriguing “not normal” representations.

This would suggest that the horror lm functions hegemonically,

in effect enabling socially oppressed people to contribute to their

own oppression by consenting to the manufacture of their own

identities as monstrous Others. (Benshoff 32)

As I stated in my analysis of Blaxploitation, subjugation is present in

the narratives of the horror lms The Night of the Living Dead and The

Shining, but as a system these lms that monsterize the Black male

characters also rely on the production and consumption of media to

perpetuate it. Certainly, with those things considered, the racial anxiet-

ies of the times could be blamed for the representations of Black men in

lm, but when time and time again White normative standards are used

to size up “Others,” our culture enters dangerous territory.

Conclusion

The articial Black masculine enemy that tries so hard to be an

ally in lm narratives is never reconciled because they can’t be the

true hero while under the guise of Blaxploitation exhibited as muted

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or sensationalized emotions, sudden Black death, and performative or

dampened masculinity. This is particularly true when normative char-

acters and social power structures continue to see them (and won’t ac-

cept them) as queer for simply existing in a space not made for them.

Blaxploitation, White victimhood, Black death, and the implications of

gender and social norms all create the ideal environment within horror

lms for the legacy of Western hegemony to live on. Systemic subju-

gation, while not new, is explored in The Night of the Living Dead and

The Shining in complex ways that reveal the racialized attitudes of so-

ciety and the “monsterization” of Black characters that audiences have

become so horried and entertained by.

SARAH RAND graduated from The University of West Georgia in

Spring 2022 with a B.A. in English and a certicate in publishing and

editing. She wrote this paper for Erin Lee Mock’s Film as Literature:

Horror class and would like to thank the English department for se-

lecting her as the 2022 recipient of the Gordon Watson Award and the

2023 Robert Snyder Prize for most outstanding contribution to a Se-

nior Seminar. Sarah would like to thank Dr. Mock, Dr. Haught, and Dr.

Franks for their support and encouragement. She currently works as a

copywriter and editor and ultimately hopes to continue her research on

the intersections of English Literature, lm, and cultural studies and

eventually move abroad.

NOTES

1. The economic and political policies by which a great power indirect-

ly maintains or extends its inuence over other people. Neo- : new and

different period or form of.

WORKS CITED

Beebe, Jessica. “The Shining’s Original Script Didn’t Kill Dick

Hallorann (Why It Changed).” ScreenRant, 9 Sept. 2020, https://

screenrant.com/shining-movie-original-script-no-dick-hallorann-

death-explained/.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023

Sarah Rand

103

Benshoff, Harry M. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappro-

priation or Reinscription?” Cinema Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, 2000,

pp. 31–50, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225551.

Brooks, Kinitra D. “The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race

and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories.” Af-

rican American Review, vol. 47, no. 4, 2014, pp. 461–75, http://

www.jstor.org/stable/24589834.

Kubrick, Stanley. The Shining. Warner Bros., 1980.

Means Coleman, Robin R. “Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror

Films from the 1890s to Present.” Routledge, 2011, https://doi.

org/10.4324/9780203847671.

Metz, Walter. “Toward a Post-Structural Inuence in Film Genre

Study: Intertextuality and ‘The Shining.’” Film Criticism, vol. 22,

no. 1, 1997, pp. 38–61, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44018898.

O’Brien, Daniel. (2017). Leaving the Overlook: Black heroism and

White nightmare in The Shining. In: Black Masculinity on Film.

Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-

59323-8_8

Romero, George A. Night of the Living Dead. Walter Reade Organi-

zation, 1968.

LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research, Fall 2023104

Women After the World:

Analyzing the Representation of

Female Characters in Modern, Mainstream,

Post-Apocalyptic Films

Ahmed Wael Ghuneim, The American University in Cairo

emale representation in lm, across different genres and countries,

is a topic that has been examined and researched in numerous re-

search papers. Perhaps the most famous paper on female representa-

tion in lm is Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema,” which denes the term “male gaze” as the objectication of

women through the male perspective, and especially the male camera

in lm. Other researchers have studied the representation of women in

lm across different cinemas and genres. These studies have explored

questions related to gender roles and stereotypes in lm, as well as the

impact of representation on societal perceptions. The continued interest

in representation of women in lm emphasizes that there is still a press-

ing need to delve deeper into the topic, particularly across genres that

have been less comprehensively studied, such as the post-apocalyptic

genre. This essay aims to expand on the existing literature on female

representation, by examining the topic within post-apocalyptic lms.

Post-apocalyptic ction narratives, including lms, are set in fu-

turistically dystopian environments and revolve around the status of

humans and the world following an apocalyptic event. These narratives

increased in popularity after the Second World War and during the Cold

War, reecting humanity’s collective realization of the destructive po-

tential of nuclear weapons. Isaac Asimov, one of America’s most re-

nowned science ction authors, argued that the increasing popularity of

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105

the genre can be attributed to the fact that the atomic bomb “made sci-

ence ction respectable” (168). During the Cold War, post-apocalyptic

ction became a vessel for social commentary (Seed). Interestingly,

the genre did not necessarily take a side in the conservative-liberal

discourse. In the book Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imag-

ination on Film, Jerome Franklin Shapiro argues that while some of

the genre’s Cold War era lms critiqued American conservativeness

and advocated for progressiveness, others were critical of liberalism

and promoted a return to the social norms. It is important to note that

World War II and the Cold War being the main triggers for the rise of

the post-apocalyptic lm genre is a dominantly American or Western

notion. For example, Barbara Gurr argues that other communities who

have experienced collective generational traumatic events, such as in-

digenous communities in North America who had been subjected to

mass murders by colonizers or African communities who had been en-

slaved and later colonized for centuries, have a different perception of

post-apocalyptic narratives and attribute its rise to different historical

events. Nonetheless, because this paper is primarily concerned with

mainstream post-apocalyptic lms, its main focus will be on lms pro-

duced in Hollywood. That is not to discredit other understandings of

the genre and its history; however, the inuence of American cinema

on the world is massive enough to warrant analyzing the lms within

the context of how the genre grew specically within the United States.

The urge to study this genre today is due to the current status of

the planet, in terms of the environmental problems that the world cur-

rently faces and the sense of impending climate doom that dominates

media and social discourse. Similar to how the threat of nuclear de-

struction helped shape post-apocalyptic lms, the imminent dangers of

climate change and global warming also contribute to the rise and the

shaping of the post-apocalyptic genre. In particular, it is worth study-

ing female representation in the genre’s modern lms because it can

provide us with better insight as to how the modern-day patriarchal

society views women, especially in times of distress or turmoil. The

post-apocalyptic genre should be subjected to the same scrutiny in its

representation of women as other genres have been, because the lms

of the genre conceptualize new worlds and environments. The gender

expectations perpetuated by these new conditions carry within them

gender expectations for the modern world. It is therefore necessary to

study the representation of women in post-apocalyptic lms, particu-

larly who these representations seem to serve and to what end. Exist-

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106

ing gender power structures rely heavily on the longevity of traditional

gender stereotypes and would benet from their continued presence in

media, whereas any attempts to dismantle the aforementioned power

structures would require the support of progressive representation in

media. The analysis of different modern (post-2005 for the purposes

of this paper) post-apocalyptic lms allows a deeper understanding of

how the portrayal of women in futuristic, end-of-the-world societies

reect their contemporary status.

The Feminine Hero: The Hunger Games (2012–2015)

The four installments of The Hunger Games are the top four high-

est grossing post-apocalyptic lms of all-time, making the franchise

an essential starting point when it comes to studying modern, main-

stream post-apocalyptic lms. Based on and sharing the same name as

a series of books by Suzanne Collins, the lms’ protagonist is Katniss

Everdeen, who is played by Jennifer Lawrence in the lms. Within the

lms, the Hunger Games are an annual event, in which one female and

one male from each of twelve Districts ght to the death for the enter-

tainment of the extravagantly wealthy citizens of the Capitol. Over the

course of the four lms, Katniss Everdeen transforms from one of the

Games’ participants into one of the de facto leaders of the revolution

that takes down the oppressive Capitol.

The popularity of the franchise has driven debate about its female

representation, particularly through Katniss, the main female lead of

the series. In their paper “The Hunger Games: Transmedia, Gender

and Possibility,” Baker and Schak argue that the protagonist being fe-

male is, in and of itself, a positive representation for women. This is

because it had been found that across the most popular ction Holly-

wood lms released between 2007

–

2016, only 21% of action lms had

a female protagonist (Smith, Choueiti and Pieper). The Hunger Games

challenged the male-dominated landscape of action lms, offering a

signicant alternative to the male heroism that oversaturates the genre.

On the other hand, Firestone contests that Katniss Everdeen lacks au-

tonomy as a character, claiming that she is a reactive gure throughout

the events of the four lms, taking initiative only once to destroy some

of her rivals’ food source during one of the tournaments. However, this

argument fails to recognize much of Katniss’s autonomy throughout

the events of the lms, such as when she decides to shoot the apple

inside the mouth of the roast pig to assert her presence in front of

the disinterested game makers. As Baker and Schak also point out,

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107

Firestone’s argument about Katniss’s lack of autonomy conveniently

forgets that Katniss took what was perhaps the single-most important

decision in the franchise: the decision to kill the newly inaugurated

President Coin in the last lm, consciously choosing not to enable the

ascension of another dictator. It is important to note that while Fire-

stone’s argument is based on the books, the events in question occur

in both books and lms. Throughout the lms, Katniss’s character is

given depth and development. She is portrayed as heroic, all the while

being awed; she is brave and intelligent, yet arrogant and often im-

pulsive. These layers to her personality make her feel like a real per-

son, with autonomy and decisions over her life and the lives of the

people in her life. The complexity of Katniss’s character particularly

stands out when she is contrasted with the large majority of female

characters in action lms, such as “Bond girls,” who have historically

been portrayed as secondary, one-dimensional characters driven by the

interests and goals of their male counterparts.

The most important aspect as to why Katniss is a well-represented

post-apocalyptic action hero is that she looks feminine. The femininity

of Katniss Everdeen challenges the notion that the female hero needs to

me masculine-looking or androgynous, compared to Imperator Furiosa

in Mad Max: Fury Road, for example (who will be discussed in the next

section). For instance, during the galas, Katniss wears stereotypically

feminine dresses and puts on feminine make-up; even as a huntress in

District 12 and as a participant during the Games (two environments

where most outts are gender-neutral), she is clearly feminine-look-

ing. Herein lies the signicance of Katniss Everdeen’s femininity: it is

never an obstacle in her journey. Never throughout the franchise do the

characters or the lm language imply that Katniss embodies courage

despite her femininity, or that she needs to compromise that femininity

in order to be stronger. Katniss is both strong and feminine, and the

lms never imply that the two attributes are in conict. In fact, Kat-

niss even sometimes weaponizes her femininity and uses it as a tool to

her advantage, for example, to gain audience sympathy in the parades

before the games. Philip Kirby raises another important point about

Katniss’s appearance: she is never oversexualized during the lms, un-

like other female action heroes such as Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider

lm franchise. While one could denitely argue that the sexualization

of Katniss would not have made sense within the world and events of

the franchise, Hollywood is notorious for oversexualizing its female

characters in any lm genre and environment; therefore, compared to

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108

Hollywood standards, the non-sexualization of Katniss is an important

step towards a better representation for female heroes. The insistence

on the non-sexualization of Katniss puts Katniss in a position where

she is not objectied by the male gaze, allowing the audience to engage

with her heroic personality and actions as a complex character. Addi-

tionally, the character’s non-sexualization is especially signicant since

the lms were released during the peak of Jennifer Lawrence’s popu-

larity; she topped the For Him Magazine’s “Top 100 Sexiest Women in

the World” list in 2014. The lms, however, refused to oversexualize

Katniss Everdeen, which adds to the signicance of her representation

as a feminine female hero.

The Conicted Liberator: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road is technically the fourth installment of the

Mad Max franchise. However, since the rst three lms were released

between 1979 and 1985 and star Mel Gibson as Max, while Fury

Road was released in 2015 and stars Tom Hardy as Max, most audi-

ences view the lm as a soft reboot of the franchise as opposed to a

sequel. The lm is very conicting

—

and conicted

—

when it comes

to its representations of women. This is visible through some of the

secondary female characters, such as the slave-wives, whose repre-

sentations swing between reductive and empowering throughout the

lm. For example, the scene of the wives showering has been criti-

cized for oversexualizing the wives and, by extension, their enslaved

positions, while others contest that the same scene signies the wives

cleansing themselves of the tyranny and injustice they were subjected

to by Immortan Joe (Du Plooy). The focus of this section, however, is

on Imperator Furiosa, one of the lm’s two protagonists and the most

essential character to an analysis of the conict that exists within the

lm’s representation of women. Furiosa is a warrior-turned-liberator

who aims to free the group of slave-wives and lead them to the home

that she was forcibly taken from as a child. She has more lines than

the titular Max, and director George Miller revealed that one of the

lm’s proposed names was “Mad Max: Furiosa,” which implies that

her character has the same importance as Max.

One of the biggest feminist concerns regarding a lot of modern

female-led action lms is that the attempt to create powerful female he-

roes is often too forced and unnatural, resulting in the creation of sexy,

shallow, one-dimensional characters who lack the necessary character

depth to be taken seriously. Mad Max: Fury Road subverts this con-

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109

cern through Furiosa, a powerful, emotionally complex warrior with a

strong moral compass, and a rebel who sets out to free the oppressed.

She is an enslaved, orphaned warrior, forced to ght for the evil ruler

responsible for her enslavement and her mother’s death. The nuances

of her background add layers to Furiosa’s character, as the rebellion

against Immortan Joe becomes a rebellion against the patriarchal sys-

tem that has oppressed her. However, one critique of the lm is that

the decision to revolt against Immortan Joe—arguably the single-most

important decision in the lm—is taken not by Furiosa, but by Max. In

“Female Action Hero vs Male Dominance: The Female Representation

in Mad Max: Fury Road,” Bampatzimopoulos argues that some aspects

of Furiosa’s character carry enough profoundness to be considered

feminist representations, such as her autonomy throughout the majority

of the lm and her superior combat skills, while other aspects of her

character cannot be labeled feminist, specically her reliance on Max

to make the decision to rebel against Immortan Joe.

Moreover, physically, Furiosa has a shaved-head and does not con-

form to a traditional feminine physique, compared to the slave-wives

who have long, owy hair (with the exception of Zoë Kravitz’s charac-

ter) and are non-muscular. Her physical appearance is logical within the

narrative of the story, as Furiosa was kidnapped as a child and forced to

become a warrior alongside shaved-headed males. However, this does

not change the fact that this representation emphasizes the idea that femi-

ninity and heroism cannot coexist. Heroes embody strength and courage,

and limiting heroes to masculine-looking gures limits those traits as

well. While it is important to portray women as heroes and gures of

power, the decision to make them unfeminine-looking sends the message

that femininity is not a desirable trait in conjunction with heroism.

Another point worth analyzing is that Furiosa has a bionic arm,

which is not unusual for the world of Mad Max. As someone who has

been forced to conform for the majority of her life, her arm takes away

her uniqueness by physically connecting her to the post-apocalyptic

society that oppressed her. However, her uniqueness is highlighted in

the scenes in which she does not wear the bionic arm, such as during

the rst ght against Max when the audience rst realizes her inten-

tions as a liberator, then at the moment of her greatest despair when she

nds out that her home no longer exists, and nally at the moment of

her triumph as she ascends the citadel. In these scenes, Furiosa shows

her truest self, both to the other characters in the lm and to the audi-

ence by physically existing as an entity separate from the oppressive

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110

society which her arm represents. Additionally, the decision to portray

Furiosa as a woman who has lost an arm serves as a powerful symbol

of empowerment for women with disabilities. When she is wearing her

bionic arm, she is one of the most powerful ghters in the Wasteland,

and when she is without it, the audience gets to see her truest emotions.

Thus, the lm’s representation of women with disabilities is respectable

because Furiosa’s disability is not showcased in a patronizing manner,

but rather as an integral, but not limiting, aspect of her identity.

The ‘Ideal’ Woman and the Problem with Wall-E (2008)

Wall-E is an animated lm, produced by Disney/Pixar, which dif-

fers from the other lms mentioned in this paper in that it is primarily

marketed towards children, despite also being well-received by adult

audiences. It is important to analyze the gender stereotypes (or lack

thereof) in Wall-E to understand how it impacts children in their forma-

tive years because of its child-aimed marketing and intended audience.

Gender representations in children’s media inuence the young audi-

ences’s perception of gender roles and contribute to their beliefs sur-

rounding masculinity and femininity; for example, Coyne et al. found

that children who watched more Disney Princess movies were more

likely to conform to gender-stereotypical behavior.

Even though the two main characters in Wall-E are robots (and there-

fore technically genderless), Wall-E is depicted as masculine and Eve is de-

picted as feminine through their colors, geometry, and names (Centenero).

Wall-E and Eve are representations of masculinity and femininity, respec-

tively, and both are gures that children look up to. The gender stereotypes

that each of the robots assumes and the expectations they live up to inu-

ence how children perceive gender roles. In “Creating Gender in Disney/

Pixar’s WALL-E,” Brittany Long argues that the physical appearances of

Wall-E and Eve promote stereotypical gender roles. Throughout the lm,

Wall-E is dirty and rusty and makes no effort to tidy itself/himself, whereas

Eve is a glistening white robot who receives regular maintenance to keep

a pristine form. The lm therefore enforces expectations on women to be

well-groomed and to take better care of themselves than men. The char-

acters’ jobs and mannerisms also perpetuate gender stereotypes. Wall-E

is childlike, clumsy, and curious, always gathering earthly objects and

showcasing his collection to Eve, whereas Eve is a nurturing gure, who

scolds and guides Wall-E throughout the course of the lm. Additionally,

the characters’ jobs continue to perpetrate the same gender stereotypes:

men are expected to perform physically laborious jobs, as seen by Wall-E’s

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111

job as a cleaner, while women act as nurturers even in professional settings

(teachers, caregivers, etc.), as evidenced by Eve’s job, which is to search

for life on Earth and nurture it within herself. Traditional representations of

romance and the associated gender stereotypes are also present in Wall-E

as 1890s American stereotypes, à la Hello, Dolly! (Howey): Wall-E is the

heterosexual male who wants to win over the female he likes, and Eve is

the female who sees the male when he nally gives her what she needs,

and together, they dance in space. However, during action scenes, both

Wall-E and Eve support each other without conforming to the gendered

stereotypes they represent in other parts of the lm. And yet, with the em-

phasis that the lm places on Wall-E’s crush on Eve, she is still ultimately

an object to be won by a man and perpetuates gender stereotypes about

how women should look and act.

In a lm where Earth has become a desolate planet and robots

advocate for the restoration of Earth and humanity, it is important to

analyze what the lm believes humanity should return to: the status

quo. The problem with Wall-E is not just that its characters conform

to traditional gender stereotypes; the vast majority of lms, post-apoc-

alyptic or not, predominantly have characters who conform to these

stereotypes. The problem with Wall-E is that its characters conform to

traditional gender stereotypes while the lm’s narrative calls for the

restoration of humanity and Earth. By combining these ideas, the lm

advocates for the restoration of the gendered status quo in tandem with

the restoration of the planet. Not only does the lm miss an opportunity

to challenge and redene gender roles, but it also actively abandons

neutrality (the lm could have simply not made any clear statements

about gender roles), and instead deliberately chooses to promote ex-

isting stereotypes and present them as the only option for humanity to

return to. Wall-E therefore contributes to the normalization of tradition-

al gender stereotypes and perpetuates the same traits associated with

the “ideal” woman: clean, pretty, nurturing, and keen on taking care of

herself and those around her. Since its primary audience is children, the

lm’s reinforcement of these ideals and expectations can largely shape

their understanding of gender.

Children of Men (2006) and the Marginalized Woman

Children of Men stands out among the other lms addressed in this

paper because it is less commercial and was created by an auteur, Alfon-

so Cuarón. Its representations of women are interesting because of the

direct relation between its plot on one hand, and sex, reproductivity, and

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infertility on the other. In a world where humans have not conceived chil-

dren for nearly two decades, pregnancy is an incredibly rare occurrence.

Children of Men realizes that the identity of the pregnant woman is im-

portant to the lm’s message and purposefully chooses to make the only

pregnant character a marginalized woman. Cuarón consciously decided

that the pregnant woman should be a black, African, illegal immigrant

named Kee, as opposed to a British citizen, as in the book (Sparling).

According to Sparling, this decision is a response to post-9/11 border

and immigrant policies to portray the underrepresented struggles of im-

migrants, particularly women immigrants. In that sense, Children of Men

realizes the signicance of giving a voice to the unheard.

Kee is not the protagonist of the lm, and the question of whether the

lm represents her as a subject rather than as an object is worth exploring

because Kee herself also struggles with her agency within the world of

the lm. The growth of her as a person inside of the lm (text) occurs in

tandem with the development of her representation (meta-text). Some

might argue that the representation of Kee is reductive as she is sidelined

during earlier parts of the lm; however, this is a deliberate choice that

highlights Kee’s own struggles with autonomy. Kee is initially a passive

character, seen by other characters only as a means to an end instead of as

a person; concurrently, the lm deliberately excludes her from the narra-

tive and keeps her involvement to a minimum. When she begins to make

her own decisions, such as trusting Theo enough to reveal her pregnancy

to him, she receives more screen time and delivers more lines. Her screen

time increases with her autonomy to reect the relation between the text

and meta-text. Admittedly, this is done subtly, and in the rst half hour of

the lm, it is easy to dismiss the lm as another white-savior lm where-

in the white man saves the woman of color. However, the deliberate side-

lining of her character in the rst act of the lm intentionally emphasizes

the marginalization of women, people of color, and immigrants, and Kee,

as a pregnant illegal female African immigrant, represents the struggles

that come with marginalization.

Findings and Conclusion

There is no single label that can represent female characters in modern,

mainstream, post-apocalyptic lms. The lms used as examples through

this paper challenge and reinforce various gender stereotypes to various

degrees, and offer different perspectives on femininity in lm. For exam-

ple, Children of Men deliberately represents the intersection of marginal-

ization and femininity, while The Hunger Games franchise is less complex

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but still brings positive, strong female representation to the mainstream

lm world. Mad Max: Fury Road, on the other hand, represents the inter-

section of femininity with heroism and disability, but ultimately compro-

mises Furiosa’s autonomy at a crucial moment in the narrative and implies

that masculinity is necessary to be a hero. Similarly, Wall-E weakens its

potentially strong female representation with its insistence on traditional

gender roles and the centrality of those roles to the status quo.

Amongst the four lms, three of them take clear stances on gender

stereotypes, while Mad Max: Fury Road does not. Ironically, it is the

only lm among the four that hired a “Feminist Consultant,” Eve En-

sler. The lm, however, is conicted in what it says about women in

heroic roles. For example, the female characters in the lm (lead by Im-

perator Furiosa) overthrow the system headed by Immortan Joe, which

could be understood as dismantling the patriarchy. However, Immortan

Joe is an almost cartoonish villain throughout the entirety of the lm,

which takes away from the weight of the revolution against his patri-

archy. The closest lms to Fury Road in terms of narrative and char-

acter prole are The Hunger Games lms, which comparatively are

more deliberate in progressive female representation. In an interview in

December 2022, Jennifer Lawrence stated that even before production

started on the rst lm, she was aware of the importance of The Hunger

Games lms from a feminist perspective. She stated that she knew that

there are disproportionately fewer female action heroes compared to

male action heroes, citing that she was always told (she did not specify

by whom) that female action heroes are not marketable to young male

audiences, whereas male action heroes appeal to both boys and girls

(“Jennifer Lawrence” 05:00–05:15). This emphasizes the idea that The

Hunger Games actively set out to create a feminine-looking hero who

exercises her autonomy in the lm’s key moments, which in turn under-

scores the conicted representation of Fury Road.

In comparison to the other two lms, Children of Men and Wall-E

are both more direct in their communication (though the messages they

convey are not similar). The former is clearly and extremely critical

of national systems that stigmatize and discriminate against immi-

grants, and the decision to represent the world’s rst pregnant wom-

an in around two decades–in the context of the lm, a very important

role–as a marginalized woman emphasizes the lm’s critique of immi-

gration policies and the systemic oppression of marginalized groups.

Kee’s growth as a person with increasing agency coincides with the

growth of her on-screen role, which emphasizes the lm’s purpose:

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to give underrepresented communities an opportunity to tell their own

stories within larger narratives. In contrast, Wall-E represents reductive

characters that proliferate and reinforce stereotypical gender norms. If

Wall-E is an urgent message about the importance of protecting our

planet by restoring humanity to its norms, then the lm also implies

that traditional gender roles and perceptions of romance are the “nor-

mal” benchmark humanity should hope to return to.

It is therefore important to ask, what goals do these portrayals and

representations serve? What, or rather who, stands to gain from either

the reinforcement or challenging of social norms? In order to answer

this question, one should look at the social norms in question. The

clearest reference point to start from is Hello, Dolly!, which was estab-

lished as Wall-E’s own reference point within the lm. Hello, Dolly!

promotes the stereotypes of an American romance: a white man seeks

a white woman as reward, and the story ends happily. The stereotypes

and norms advocated for by Wall-E benet those who are already priv-

ileged: people who already ascribe to traditional gender roles and ben-

et from the status quo. For example, a clear benetting party would

be fathers who expect their wives to contribute to the nances of the

household and to be the sole person responsible for domestic work and

caring for their children. The Hunger Games franchise, on the other

hand, benets women and girls in the workplace who have long been

told to “look professional” and compromise their femininity for better

chances at a promotion or a raise. Mad Max: Fury Road attempts to

bring about the same inuence as The Hunger Games, but ultimately

fails to do so. Children of Men advocates for the underprivileged–peo-

ple of color, people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, refugees,

and historically marginalized people who have been systematically op-

pressed by existing social and gender power structures.

These are but simplied, direct examples as to who stands to gain

from these representations. The nuances and complexities of existing

socioeconomic structures tell us that there is a plethora of different

groups who can stand to benet from any of the representations an-

alyzed in this paper, and from the other lms of the genre. Whether

it is dismantling systemically unjust national and international institu-

tions which obstruct marginalized women, or advocating for increased

women representation within the lm industry, post-apocalyptic lms

are vessels for lmmakers to challenge the status quo by portraying a

world where that status quo is exaggerated or completely dismantled.

However, the same genre and the same worlds can also be used to say

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115

nothing or uphold existing gender norms. It is therefore essential to

watch these lms through a critical lens to truly understand what they

are communicating and who stands to gain from them.

AHMED WAEL GHUNEIM graduated from the American Univer-

sity in Cairo in Spring 2023, with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer

Engineering and a Minor in Mathematics. His true passion is Film, and

he intends on pursuing a career as a lmmaker following his gradua-

tion. He originally wrote “Women after the World” for an undergradu-

ate course, “Women and Film,” and would like to thank his professor,

Maggie Morgan, for her guidance and mentorship throughout the ex-

ploration of the topic and the composition of the essay.

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