Horror. To some, the word is thrilling. To others, it inflicts fear. When we think of horror, we usually think of monsters or some scary, unrealistic event. While this is in some works of horror, it’s not a deciding factor. Psycho, Jaws, and The Shallows are some horror movies that have neither monsters nor supernatural occurrences. However, there are certain elements that are generally recurring in most horror stories. Some examples of these elements are a dark setting, a lone protagonist, and decline and decay. Decline and decay can be mental, physical, emotion, or other forms. Some stories that display decline and decay are “The Outsider,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” and “Skeleton.”
“The Outsider” by H. P. Lovecraft is a story about a man who has lived in a castle for as long as he can remember, never leaving it, never seeing people, and never seeing himself. He refers to the castle as “infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations.” This is referring to decline and decay because he refers to crumbling stone and the corpses of dead generations, which are both samples of decay. The definition of decay on Merriam-Webster is “decline in health, strength, or vigor.” This is a physical specimen of decay, as it is in a physical body of matter. This decay is of a building, the castle, falling apart over time and eroding. The protagonist also refers to the decaying castle with, “...my first conception of a living person was that of somebody mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle.” Finally, he sees a mirror for the first time and describes his reflection as “the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation.” This is yet another specimen of physical decay. This time, he’s talking about his own body and how he has fallen apart over the years. This is when he doesn’t know he’s looking at his reflection, so he’s holding back no details as he’s listing off all these grotesque words to describe his body. He does the same with what he thinks other people look like.
“The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs is a story about an old couple losing their son due to a supernatural force, appearing in the form of a monkey’s paw. Beside themselves with grief, their mental states slowly collapse. This is represented when the author writes, “But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation—the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled apathy.” Resignation is another word for retirement, or giving up. The old couple steadily extract themselves from society and go quiet in the midst of their grief. They are declining from the outgoing, friendly couple they once were. This is also displayed with, “It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window.” The couple’s last resort is to cry at night, finding it difficult to cope with the passing of their only offspring. As their grief continues to convey itself in different ways, the couple slowly declines mentally.
“Skeleton” by Ray Bradbury is a story about a man named Harris who is having difficulty syncing with his skeleton. Harris, often described as a hypochondriac by his fellow characters, is convinced that his skeleton is a separate entity, trying to free itself from Harris’s own flesh. This is represented with anomalies portrayed in the story with, “[Harris] weighed himself on a penny scales and watched the slow glide of the red arrow as it pointed to: ‘164.’ He groaned. ‘Why I’ve weighed 175 for ten years. I can’t have lost ten pounds.’” His weight continues to spiral downwards over the course of the story, much to Harris’s dismay. Unfortunately, he is unable to control it, so he has to watch as his skeleton takes control of his bodily functions. His health slowly declines. This is another example of physical decay, with Harris’s body is declining into chaos as his skeleton shows more and more defiance. Harris also slowly falls into this psychological mindset that his skeleton is attacking him; yet another form of mental decline. Throughout the story, there are whisperings of his skeleton supposedly attacking him. By analyzing the story, it can be found that this is all Harris convincing himself that the pain he’s feeling is an administration from a separate creature entirely. The doctor he sees, a self-proclaimed bone specialist, goes by the name of Munigant, and he is feeding into these fears and beliefs. Harris is psychologically tormented by the idea that his skeleton is trying to escape. All this is represented when the story reads, “His cranium, crowding in slowly, began giving him some of his own treatment right back.” He seriously believes that his skull is attacking him because he is speaking and threatening it.
In brief, although some of the most famous horror stories have supernatural occurrences, monsters, or similar elements, these are not the deciding factors of a work of horror. Another element that is common among works of horror is decline and decay. This element can be found in “The Outsider” in a physical representation, in “The Monkey’s Paw” in a mental representation, and in “Skeleton” in both of these forms. With the outsider protagonist living in a decomposing world and a decomposing body, the old couple suffering and drowning in grief, and a man torturing and starving himself with the belief that he is being killed from the inside out. These are all representations of how horror can be deeper than we expect, but still hold common factors. They may not always be exactly the factors that we assume to find, but they are there. This is how we distinguish horror.
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