HP Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" was most terrifying for me.
It wasn't the skeletons the characters found under Exham Priory that scared me, even though the narrator and his companions seemed to find them extremely horrible. I was most disturbed when the narrator started speaking in aggressive tongues. I think maybe it's because the words are something logical people fail to understand. We can't understand the cause for speaking that way, so we assume that the words spawned from a madness found within the narrator. Although the talking in tongues had me quite scared, the best part was the sentence after: "That is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat." Isn't that horrifying? I loved that they used the word "plump." It's as if Capt. Norrys was always meant to be food. I also find it interesting that although we can assume that the narrator ate the Capt. because his cat is attacking him and the rats are an extension of himself, there is no definite proof that he ate the Capt. and that he and his cat are undergoing a type of bonded insanity.
I would also like to note my lack of fear of the quadruped and biped skeletons underneath Exham Priory. I understand they were breeding, almost inhuman (unevolved human-like ancestors), and cannibalistic skeletons, but I don't find any particular fear in that. Maybe it is because I can't exactly visualize such a sight; I see it as a mass of intact skeletons. They're white, maybe terrifying a bit, but dead. Or maybe these last few generations have grown immune to such horrors? Hm.
I found Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" to be interesting,but not horribly scary or anything. The narrator just seems like a depressed woman who goes full-blown insane; like the wallpaper that she obsessed with possessed her. I like how the wallpaper inevitably becomes part of the woman; like it was everywhere and it was possessing her just as she wanted to possess it and make it so others wouldn't know about its secrets.
The one thing that really, really bothers me about this piece is that she uses the word "delicious" to describe the garden. It's italicized so we know it was placed there and emphasized on purpose but it just seems so wrong! It would make perfect sense if it was a vegetable garden and I know that "delicious" could also be interpreted as "delightful," but the word just disturbs me a whole lot. Well...in any case "delicious" is a great word to use to disturb a reader, especially me.
I actually found the ending pretty funny. I mean...she sounds like she's being nice to the husband she just locked out of the house by telling him where the key is and then she just keeps creeping over her husband who fainted. It's like...her speech is still normal but her mind is pretty far gone. Was I meant to find the ending funny? Haha...probably not.
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