Alexander Diaz
Capstone
Rah ‘17
Count:
The Old Deluder
Temperance was a time of reform in alcohol from what people thought was a sinful thing. Some would call for moderation while some would call for complete abstinence. The temperance movement in America started in the 1820’s when the American Temperance Society was first established. And even though alcohol had affected men the most, it was still a woman’s problem too because men’s drunkenness would eventually come around to hurting innocent women and children. During this time people fought the distribution and use of alcohol in many ways, to include literature, poems, and even songs. Through their writings and poems, temperance writers created stories of life and how better it would be if it were a life of temperance. They were stories of how evil drunkenness manifested itself through a bottle and how the sunshine in that bottle that so many people enjoyed was merely just darkness waiting to take over. These temperance stories usually showed the consequences of drinking, showing that change could only be for the better for all parties. The American Temperance Encyclopedia gives a story of a man that is persuaded by his wife to stop drinking. The story, named A Remedy for Drunkenness tells the story of a man who comes home drunk to his wife. The wife proceeds to pick him up and roll him into a blanket. Once he is successfully rolled into the blanket she proceeds to beat the husband in the blanket until he was sober again. The effect to that was that he never got drunk again (Wakely 138). This was the general mood for most temperance stories. They tried to show how the abstinence from alcohol would be better for everyone, and they could do it all while having some fun with it. Before 1830, temperance literature had been produced by two sides, the protestant clergyman who preached that God himself would not visit the inebriated and the rationalists, who emphasised the harmful effects on both the mind and body if one were to drink in excess (Reynolds 65). Either way, the idea of human perfectibility characterized the end goals of temperance societies such as The Sons of Temperance, Temperance Cadets, and the American Temperance Society. This idea set well with people, because numbers grew within these organizations from 1826 to 1832 to have membership of these societies from 100,000 to over a million. Temperance had rapidly become one of the most influential and most broadly based reform movement in America (Reynolds 66).
It was not until 1833 where temperance writing started to take a turn to the darker side of the spectrum. Writers would no longer write about what remedies would come from abstaining from alcohol, but instead they would talk about the repercussions of becoming drunk. No longer was the motive of these writings to show people how good life would be without alcohol. Now it had turned to how tormented one could become with the constant use of alcohol. Whitman says that “Temperance writing had so many sides to it: noble or devilish. As it grew, temperance writing went from a conventional genre and assumed a notably “devilish”, subversive aspect as it fell into the hands of immoral reformers and opportunistic publishers.” (Silverman 65-66). Whitman went on to explain how the writing of these authors began to posses post-Calvinist universality and Gothic savagery. He brings up one story from McDonald Clark, called The Rum Hole which tells a story of a place where alcohol is produced. But this is no normal place one might think. Instead this place burns and is built on a ledge of human bones. It is called the lighthouse of hell in which human blood is its cement. It is said in the story that this place swells with bad memories and floods with people tears. Certainly a more gruesome and terrifying way to describe a place that makes something so simple as alcohol (Wakely 66). This story greatly differs from the former temperance writing above. Before temperance writers used humor in order to bring about their message saying that there is a remedy that can be found in order to abstain from alcohol. But in this story we can see that fear and intimidation is the main method in order to get the message across. This type of gothic savagery is evident in the second story. It was these authors who had influenced Edgar Allan Poe in joining the temperance writing movement. David Reynolds states that “All of the major American Renaissance authors were influenced by the temperance movement. Poe had close friends in the movement and actually joined it before he died, and used the devices of dark temperance in his tales.” (Reynolds 32). Here in Reynolds quote we can see that Poe was actually influenced by his friends who were already involved in the temperance movement and how he used dark temperance or this “gothic savagery” in order to make his tales a little different from his friends.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, and critic for his tales of horror and mystery. Poe was born on January 19th, 1809. He was known for his uncanny short stories and poems that captured the reader and used their imagination in order to depict a picture within their heads that would last. Some even called his stories the modern detective tale because of how he left his readers in suspense, hurrying to turn the page in order to know who was killed or what they were killed by. Poe’s stories seem to always have an underlying message under them. Whether it was about depression, alcohol, or anxiety, the sense of what Poe was living was always prevalent in his works. This was more concretely seen during the years of temperance, where temperance writing became the norm. But it is clear, when looking at Poe’s stories, that he was not interested in the normal way of writing temperance stories that aimed to change a person’s mind on what alcohol really is. No, Poe took a more uncanny route to writing, a more sinister route. Kenneth Silverman states “Poe was influenced by the temperance movement which produced a body of literature and lectures filled with the kinds of horrifying images that fascinated him.” Everyone knows that Edgar Allan Poe had an uncanny way of writing stories, so much so that we classify them as gothic or horror. It is my belief that Edgar Allan Poe produced such horrific stories, stories that made the skin crawl and the mind wander, by drawing from the studies of demons and their abilities in order to create his own dark temperance stories, stories where the main characters would be possessed by this demon and do unspeakable acts in order to have his readers thinking twice on whether or not to take that next sip of dark rum. This use of demonology can be traced back to two stories specifically being: The Black Cat and Hop Frog. In both stories, the reader can see resemblances back to one demon in particular; Ba’al, the prince of hell.
Poe uses demonology in his works is because of the undeniable similarities between his works and demon possession. Poe wanted to do more with his stories. He wanted to make them darker and more terrifying than anyone had done it before. Poe wanted to make those dark things that other authors wrote about in their stories come alive into this physical manifestation of fear in his readers minds. So Poe does the unthinkable and makes alcohol the key that opens the door to the realm of demonic forces. He makes the sipping on that glass of rum and getting to the bottom of that bottle a thing to fear. To explain how alcohol can possibly connect to demonic possession we must first go back to the root of the word alcohol.
It is said that when we black out it is really just an evil forcing pulling our strings making us do things we normally would not do. Although our good soul is still tethered to the body, the discomfort of the body being heavily intoxicated makes the soul wonder and leaves the body open for more sinister things to take its place. This is why, when drunk, we see people carry out dark acts such as violence, sexual encounter, rape, destructive behaviors, and more. The word alcohol, sometimes also known as spirits, goes back to the arabic root Al-Kuhl which means “body eating spirit”. It is called a body eating spirit because it is believed that alcohol has the ability to eat at one’s own soul and make a person more susceptible to the evil forces around them. This is why we sometimes call alcohol “spirits”, and people black out without remembering what happened. In her article Sita quotes a writer and health enthusiast, Jason Christoff who states that demonic possession can be explained by going back to the root of alcohol when used in alchemy. “In alchemy” Christoff says “alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its’ use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies.” ( qtd. in Christoff). So what Christoff states here is that ingesting alcohol can actually make you more vulnerable to lurking entities outside of your body. This is because the alcohol makes your soul leave the body, leaving it open for other spirits to be able to take control. Christoff goes on to explain what this means for the body and how it effects us. “That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage.” (qtd. in Christoff). So what Christoff is stating here is that the soul is still connected to our bodies, yet we are no longer in control. This allows for something more sinister to sneak in and take the reigns for a while until the body returns to its natural state in which the soul can then return to the body and continue normal functions. Christoff ends his statement with a quick conclusion stating; “Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity.” (qtd. in Christoff). Although Christoff is not specific about what entities specifically can enter one’s body, we can assume that the entity that takes over is not one that will have good intentions. It is terrifying to think that something so mainstream in our world’s culture can hold such a powerful effect over us. This idea of alcohol has been around long before Poe, so it is not far fetched to think that Poe had knew about this fact of alcohol and mixed it into his stories. Now that Poe had his story that would bridge alcohol and demonic possession, he needed a demon that would live up to its name, someone well known and rightly feared. It is my belief that Poe uses the ancient demon Ba’al in his stories in order to strike terror in his readers.
The ancient demon Ba’al is one that goes back for centuries and is well known amongst the supernatural scholars of the world. Ba’al is referenced many times throughout the bible and was once even hailed as a god amongst some groups of people such as the canaanites. To some, Ba’al was the god of the sun, to others he was the god of fertility. But when Christianity came around, they labeled Ba’al as a demon, but not just any demon. Ba’al in christian religion, is labeled as one of the seven princes’ of hell, and has even been labeled as the chief of these princes’. Ba’al is also mentioned many times in the Old Testament of the bible as someone the Canaanites worshiped within their own communities. Numbers 25:3-5 reads, “So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry against Israel. The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.””(Knowing Jesus). Clearly God was not too happy about the worship of Ba’al and wanted his followers erased from the world. But what is more interesting is what the Dictionnaire Infernal says about this demon Ba’al. For those who do not know, the Dictionnaire Infernal was basically an entire dictionary that aimed to define and describe every demon known to man. This dictionary was written by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy in 1818 and has been revised many times in order to update the book on new found demons or even on their images. The Dictionnaire Infernal states that “Ba’al is cited as the head of all infernal powers. He is the first king of hell with his estates in the east. He is depicted as a demon with three heads: one of a man, one of a toad, and one of a cat. He repays those who invoke slyness and cunning and teaches them how to become invisible.” It is no coincidence that Ba’als main forms are of a man, a cat, and a toad. These forms relate straight back to Poes’ own stories of Black Cat and Hop Frog.
Black Cat and Hop Frog were two stories that Poe had written during the late American Temperance era. Poe had come into the game of temperance writing late, and had to distinguish himself from the other savage gothic stories that aimed to dissuade all those who dared to pick up a bottle. So Poe did something so sinisterly clever and created stories that not only called on the uncanny, but also on the supernatural. Before Poe’s stories, tales of temperance were brutally direct, immediately depicting a world of skull, bones, and blood that all came together to make this devilish drink. But Poe took another route in telling such stories. Insead he gave the reader a detective’s tale of sort, one in which the reader had to know all the details in order to understand the story, yet still be left in wonder. Poe used this sort of story telling in order to create this concoction of alcohol, murder, and demons all in one. But Poe never outright explained much about the demonic on purpose. This intentional holding out of information was Poe’s secret in making his stories such page turners. In his stories, the link between alcohol and what the characters were feeling was assumed. No one had ever asked the question as to why the main characters of each story had done such heinous acts merely by being a little drunk. No, this would not be believable to the normal person, no matter how against alcohol they might be. So Poe added this demonic step in order to place that subtle fear in his stories, one people would surely ignore because of how terrifying the thought might be. This thought was that there is more to alcohol than eradicate emotions or unwanted consequences. The idea Poe imposed in each story was how alcohol revealed to us the true monsters that lie waiting for us to slip up and leave ourselves vulnerable. To understand the connection between these stories and the demon that inhabits them, we must first delve into what they are about and expose the small details that explain a demonic intervention.
The first story we will begin with will be Hop Frog. In summary, Hop Frog is a story of two slaves that were taken from their homeland into a far away kingdom where they are subject to the kings’ biddings. The two slaves are not like the others, they are dwarfs compared to the king and his entourage. The king, liking jokes, names the male dwarf HopFrog and makes him his jester. The female dwarf is merely named Trippetta and is around and some sort of servant. What happens next is what brings into question the idea of demonic possession. The king enjoyed making HopFrog drink wine, as he was not used to it and it made him easily drunk. One day, as the king was making HopFrog drink more wine, HopFrog rejected the wine. This obviously angered the king, so Trippetta tried to plead with the king and let HopFrog go without drinking the wine. This angered the king even more and he pushed Trippetta to the ground and threw the wine in her face. To make a long story longer, this disrespect towards Trippetta obviously angered HopFrog and on the day of the kings’ masquerade party, he chained the king and all of his entourage up to the ceiling and burned them alive in front of all of their guests. This is where the idea of demonic possession comes in because hanging seven people to a ceiling and having them burn in front of hundreds of people seems a little excessive in response to wine being spilled on your girlfriend’s face.
In HopFrog, there are several details in the story that direct us toward the notion of demonic possession. The first detail is HopFrogs extreme rage towards the king after throwing wine in Trippettas face. After drinking the wine and witnessing this action against his significant other, HopFrog becomes enraged past the capacity of a normal human reaction. HopFrog not only exhibits abnormal anger against the king but also immediately comes up with this sinister plan to burn them all alive for their actions. This eludes that HopFrog was already somewhat possessed by this demon and it was actually this demon that created such rash emotions and devilish plans. The second detail is one more evident in the story, which is the dwarfs name “Hopfrog”. As stated above, Ba’al only had three forms other than being a demon, and these were of a human, a cat, and a frog. Hopfrog may not have literally been a frog, but the king clearly gave him his name for a reason. We are innately visual creatures and the king had to name Hopfrog off of his resemblance to a frog. Once again this points us to believe that Hopfrog had been possessed by this demon Ba’al. The last detail in the story is how Hopfrog managed to carry out this plan of burning his enemies. The story states that Hopfrog was able to chain the king and his entourage up as they were amongst their friends. It is strange to think that no one realized this little dwarf with chains hooking the king and his friends up to each other. The only explanation for this has to be that Hopfrog had demonic help to carry out his sinister deeds. As stated above, it was common for Ba’al to not only show his followers how to become invisible but to become invisible himself. So it is clear that while carrying out his plan, Hopfrog was invisible due to the help of Ba’al. Now even though Hopfrog was not fully possessed, it is quite evident from these small details in the story that something more evil than himself was pulling the strings to nudge him down this path of revenge. This was the doing of Ba’al, prince of hell and master deceiver.
The second story we will need to analyse is Black Cat. In Black cat we can see many examples in which Poe uses demonology to further his own story and make it terrifying for the individual who dares read it. The story itself is about a man who is described as a lover of animals. He has a wife and lives in a house with a plethora of pets, a black cat being his favorite out of them all. But this man comes with a major downfall that is ignited by the copious amounts of liquor he drinks. Every time this man becomes drunk, this man becomes enraged and aggressive, taking offense to almost anything that is done to him. But the cat, named Pluto, was the only one who was an exception to this wrath. That is until, Pluto had been the subject of his anger. As said before, the alcohol was getting to him, making him more and more lost to the evil forces that lay in wait to corrupt and destroy. Hey states “through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them” (Black Cat). You could see, surprisingly, how self aware the narrator is to his own change. He realizes the descent into darkness due to his own insaciable drinking but cannot stop himself. He craves the high of being drunk and does not see that when he slips away into another drunk state, something else slips in. The reader can see this more concretely in just the next passage when he comes home from the bar, plastered once more, he states he feels like a demon had possessed him. The narrator states “ inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket” (Black Cat). Right here we see the first real emergence of this demon, one in which its rage was let loose on a poor little cat that meant no harm. The rage engulfed him into hurting the one thing in which he loved most, this cat that he held above all other pets and even above his own wife. He lost himself in the gin and emerged the next day terrified of his actions. But it did not stop him from returning to the bottom of that bottle.
Then one night, for no real reason or offense, he takes the cat and hangs it from a tree saying “It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself — to offer violence to its own nature — to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only — that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it” (Black Cat). This is so important to the main thesis of Poe using demons and demonology to influence his stories because this gives the exact moment in which the narrator has been fully corrupted and possessed by the evil entity. He hangs his own cat, his beloved friend who has done no harm or offense to him, merely because he knows it will damn his own soul, for the very reason of damning his own soul. What person in their right mind would commit “a deadly sin that would jeopardize my immortal soul” for no reason other than to commit the sin. Clearly this was not the actions of a human because no human would damn themselves just for the reason of damning themselves. No person wants to go to hell. Instead this is the possession of a great evil that had forced his hand into kill one thing he truly cared for.
Fast forward into the story and we can see the very embodiment of the evil we have been talking about. As the narrator is in a tavern, he sees a large black cat, the same size as Pluto, staring at him. He goes up to greet it and it immediately takes to him, purring and rubbing himself against the narrator. So the narrator unknowingly brings home what will be his own downfall. This far we have been talking about a demon that has been slowly corrupting the narrator and making him do these horrendous acts of violence and anger. But now we see the identity of the true culprit of this story which is Ba’al. We know this because Baals forms are of a human, a cat and a frog. The cat in this story, one who looks exactly like Pluto in every way except for a small white patch, is none other than the great deceiver, Ba’al. To make a long story longer, the narrator ends up bringing the cat to his home. As he dives into the depths of his alcoholism again, the cat purposely angers him, causing the narrator to bury his axe into the brain of his wife when she tried to calm him down. The narrator tried to hide the body of his wife in the walls but was discovered by the same cat that had made him commit the murder in the first place. The story ends with the narrator being hanged, and the cat’s disappearance.
Relating this back to the thesis, we can see that Poe had used demonology to make his story more terrifying to his audience. It had done its job in separating itself from other temperance stories during that time. If we look back at the story with this demonic screen of analysis we can see that Poe had inserted these subtle paranormal details to show that when someone drinks too much and becomes belligerent, they can be taken over by something else. In this story this something else just so happened to be Ba’al, identified by the re-appearing black cat. The alcohol not only made him destroy what he loved but it also brought forth a terrible demon that made him commit one of the seven deadly sins, which is murder, and took his soul for his own. We know this because of what the narrator said earlier about jeopardizing his own soul. These subtle facts make the story more horrifying and it teaches a lesson about the dangers of alcohol. This subtle use of demonology had accomplished the job of making Black Cat creepy and unforgettable.It had given Poe the edge he wanted and left readers wondering whether what he writes is true, or just another fiction tale. Either way, the message had gotten across.
It is my honest belief that Edgar Allan Poe had written such terrifyingly demonic stories by drawing from the studies of demons and demonology. These stories were not upfront about what they were doing like earlier savage gothic tales, instead they were subtle about how they approached the situation. The actions the characters took were subtly left almost nonsensical, maybe in order to leave the reader guessing about who is really pulling the strings. Demons were never supposed to be the main basis of these stories, they were just what lurked in the background and in the backs of people’s minds. Poe had expertly used his knowledge of demonology to achieve such an effect that people would think twice about opening that next bottle of gin.
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