John Armellino
American Literary Traditions
Major Knepper
2/20/15
The Uncanny
The uncanny is an important element of gothic literature, if not the most important. It is the key to taking a reader out of his or her comfort zone, and bringing a sense of fascination along with the disturbing. The website Merriam-Webster.com provides a decent definition of uncanny with which to start: “strange or unusual in a way that is surprising or difficult to understand.” To expand more on that brief definition, we could say that the uncanny combines elements of the familiar with those of the strange and foreign. This combination is something that at first glance may seem familiar, but upon examining it closely and it takes on an alien, sinister quality. It is something that is almost innocent and normal, but there is just something “off” about it. Uncanny objects have a mysterious quality about them, such as dolls and toys that are obviously modeled on humans, but look like no human ever. In gothic literature, the uncanny is an ever-present effect. Stories like Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” both bring a sense of the uncanny pervading the atmosphere, albeit in their own unique ways.
“The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” have elements of the uncanny, and while different, are both similar in a few ways. Both stories have a strange feeling, like a heightened sense of reality. In other words, they have a surreal quality to them. Irving’s Sleepy Hollow has been described as foggy, with “a drowsy, dreamy influence hanging over the land.” It is almost as if the inhabitants of the village occupy their own separate plain of existence, a place outside of our reality, where ghosts are revered rather than feared. To outsiders like Ichabod Crane, and the reader, Sleepy Hollow may not always be frightening, but it is definitely always on the very edge of the bizarre. The customs are different, but not so different as to raise any alarms. And, perhaps this is only my perspective as a former city dweller, but the villagers of Sleepy Hollow seem just a little too friendly. When someone is exceedingly friendly for no reason, it always gives me the creeps, as if they are hiding something. Even the character Brom may have seemed friendly on the outside, but he was secretly hostile toward Crane, and was looking to get rid of him. Perhaps part of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’s” ability to be uncanny stems from not just the environment, but also the characters themselves, and their hidden motives.
While we are on the subject of secrets, the most uncanny part of “The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow” is that we do not know if the ghost of the headless horseman is
real, or if Brom is simply dressing the part to scare away Ichabod Crane. After all, he “was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.” It is certainly implied that Brom was the headless horseman that fateful night that Crane disappeared, but it is never confirmed nor denied. Most readers would agree that Brom was dressing as the ghost, but we all have in our heads the faintest idea that the Headless Horseman was present that night, that the ghosts haunting Sleepy Hollow do not simply live in the villager’s and Crane’s minds. That is all we need, that voice in the back of our head telling us: maybe that is a ghost, and maybe it is after you.
On the other hand is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” Like Sleepy Hollow, it is a surreal and dreamlike world. The widely accepted interpretation that the characters, the rooms, and plague are all symbols reminds me of a vivid dream in which everything means something. The entire story feels like a nightmare brought on by our subconscious. It is familiar territory; a castle, a prince, a plague, all reminiscent of the Middle Ages, but it is not our Middle Ages. It is oddly foreign, as if it were a parallel universe. It is similar, but not the same.
Alternative to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” this work’s streak of the uncanny is not because of the familiar made strange, but from the strange made familiar. Poe’s world in “The Masque of the Red Death” seems a little too surreal and unbelievable at first glance, what with all the crushing symbolism and one-dimensional characters. In a story in which nothing feels real, one cannot help but feel safe and secure. “It may be familiar, but it is not so familiar that I feel it could happen to me,” one could say. Even the plague, the most realistic part of the story, is turned into a walking symbol at the end of the story. Unless, of course, you were to look at the figure in red as not the plague or death personified, but as a person. The idea that a plague victim from outside the castle, somehow got inside makes one uneasy. A person dying of such a horrible illness arrived in a dreadful costume with the intent to kill. The amount of the hate and malevolence that it takes to do such a thing makes me shudder. Somehow this interpretation is more terrifying to me than the figure being the grim reaper. A commoner acts as death’s hand, and is almost like the grim reaper himself. All of a sudden the nightmare becomes a little too real, considering our current fear of contamination by diseases like Ebola.
The uncanny, a seemingly innocuous term, can take many forms, most if not all of which are terrifying. All it takes is the right kind of story, and our minds do the rest. Irving and Poe knew that when composing their greatest works. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The Masque of the Red Death” prove it.
Reflective Tag
This essay takes a look at two gothic stories: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” Specifically, it takes a look at the uncanny, an important factor in any gothic story, and how these works make use of it. I like to think that I know quite a bit about the uncanny, and horror stories in general, so I drew from my unnecessarily large reservoir of knowledge of the horror genre to discuss what makes these stories unnerving. I looked at what scared me personally and found those elements within the two works. The only challenge was to make it comprehensible to someone reading it, meaning anyone who is not me.