Big I, Eye, Aye.

I can format! Yes I can!
 (Sir, the above document has all the correct formatting, but a few of my text/quote corrections aren’t included in it. Please read the blog-post text, but look at the pretty pretty formatted one in the downloadable file)

By: Ilayda Williamson

For: Mr. Murray

ENG4UE-02

December 15, 2008

“Hell is the place of those who have denied;
They find there what they planted and what dug,
A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing,
And wander there and drift, and never cease
Wailing for substance.”
-W.B. Yeats, The Hour Glass

Hell. The word evokes clear images for all, no matter if the person is religious or not. Lakes of fire, eternal agony, spending forever in the waiting area of an airport terminal are all situations considered hellish. There are then the more personalized versions of Hell, based on a person’s own tragedies and experiences. Author Clive Barker proposes that there is one universal Hell, however – one which terrifies all of humanity. It is meaninglessness and nothingness brought to life, existing eternally in a place that is the essence of emptiness. He proposes this while weaving a tale around Marty Strauss. Marty is chosen from prison to work for Joseph Whitehead, a very wealthy man. He then encounters those around Joseph. Most importantly, he meets his future lover and Whitehead’s daughter, Carys, and Mamoulian. Mamoulian is the master of Barker’s depiction of Hell and pivotal to the nature of Hell. Through the eyes of philosophy, psychology, and the narrative of Barker’s story, The Damnation Game, one can see that the ultimate Hell to imagine is in fact, nothing – it is the void.

One must consider the portrayal of Hell in The Damnation Game on its own before relating it to the psychological and philosophical. The Hell portrayed in the book is a grey, nondescript place. Being damned is much like being both deaf and blind, but it is not a mere absence of these senses. It is the complete oppression of them, to the point of extermination. To take this torture one twisted step further, Hell even drives it’s mantra home with a forceful use of the damned’s own voice, uttering Nothing is essential. It has certain other features that appear before this murk. Joseph Whitehead first encounters this pre-Hell horror in bombed Warsaw as a young thief. “[...] [He] walked on a little way, and rounding the corner into the Square itself discovered the ghost of a tree, prodigious with blossom, hanging in the air. It seemed unrooted, its snow-head lit by starlight, its trunk shadowy.” (Barker, 15). Beneath this tree, the soon-to-be-damned catch glimpes of someone whom they admired, or loved, or was in some way significant in their life. This seems horrific enough as it is, and indeed each character that witnesses this is disturbed. That which comes after is even more terrible, though. Marty is the unfortunate character in the book whose experience in this Hell is most exposed to the reader. His thoughts as he enters it are as follows:

Arms spread before him like a blind man on a cliff-edge, he reeled, looking for some point of security. His wasn’t the adventure he’d thought it would be; it was nothing. Nothing is essential. Once stepped into, this boundlessness nowhere had neither distance nor depth, north nor south. And everything outside it – the stairs, the landing, the stairs below that, the hallway, Carys – all of it was like a fabrication. A dream of palpability, not a true place. There was no true place but here. All he’d lived and experienced, all he’d taken joy in, taken pain in, it was insubstantial. Passion was dust. Optimism, self-deception. He doubted now even the memory of senses: the textures, the temperatures. Colour, form, pattern. All diversions – games the mind had invented to disguise this unbearable zero. And why not? Looking too long into the abyss would madden a man. (Barker, 381)

With no senses to guide him, he is utterly lost spatially. Following this disorientation, all else loses meaning. This is due to the fact that one goes through life by sensing things – seeing, hearing, touching – and then interpreting the information. Without this, Marty loses touch with reality as there is nothing to interpret. Such is the power of Mamoulian’s Hell.

Carys’ and Whitehead’s feelings towards this Hell is very telling as well. It should be noted that Carys must be considered seperately from the norm, as she has certain advantages over the average person in relation to Mamoulian and his Hell. Carys was taken care of by Mamoulian as a small child. As a result, some of him was passed onto her and she became a ‘sensitive’; she has no fear for his Hell because of this familiarity. Instead, she welcomes it, invites it in by escaping through the use of heroin. “She wasn’t prone to believing that the world was all in the mind. That’s why she’d gone to H: the world was too real.” (Barker, 384) While this shows that Carys is unusual, it also shows the quality which makes this Hell terrible – it’s unreality. It forces the world to become unsure, fuzzy, pushing the damned into their mind. Their mind is equally as unsure and fuzzy because of sensory deprivation. This vicious cycle continues as time elapses in Hell. Carys’ father, Joseph Whitehead, is also unusual because of a close relationship to Mamoulian. Like Carys, he has a lesser fear of Hell, although it is shown that the fear exists still. At first he says that he does not fear it at all. In fact, he is quite in defiance of it. “There is no Hell, the old man thought, putting the boudoir and its charred Casanova out of his mind. Or else Hell is a room and a bed and appetite everlasting, and [he's] been there and seen its rapture and, if the worst comes to the worst, [Joseph] will endure it” (Barker, 336). His behavior and the unease exhibited in the novel prove otherwise, however. He confesses early in the novel that

[He] can bear the night itself. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not unambiguous. It’s twilight [he] can’t deal with. That’s when the bad sweats come over me. When the light’s going and nothing’s quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes…
It had been winter of such evenings: colourless drizzles that eroded distance and killed sound; weeks on end of uncertain light, when troubled dawn became troubled dusk with no day intervening. (Barker, 57)

This fear, although he does not relate it to Mamoulian and his Hell directly, bears a striking resemblance to it. The ambiguity and eradication of purposeful environmental input are similar. Perhaps Carys can avoid fear of Hell because of her nature or upbringing, but Whitehead is just as susceptible as the rest of humanity. These two characters, who unlike Marty, have some kind of experience with Hell and it’s maker, help to further illuminate the nature of the horror.

To truly understand this manifestation of Hell, a definition and understanding of the contrast between meaning and meaninglessness must be found. Many philosophers have theories on this subject, the first of which to be examined in this essay being Sartre’s existence precedes essence theory. Sartre postulates in this theory that meaning, or essence, must be found – that it is not innately known or owned as soon as a ‘thing’ comes to existence. To create this meaning, Sartre says a person must interact with their surroundings and self. For example, a baby is born without essence. As they play with toys, figure out what furniture is, and move through life exploring their personality or self, meaning begins to form. The implication of this theory to The Damnation Game is that Barker’s Hell is without a concrete environment. Relate this to Sartre’s theory. Meaning is not given, it’s gained, and it is gained through interaction with a person’s surroundings. Now consider what this would mean if finding one’s meaning is a lifelong process. One would still be in the process of developing one’s essence prior to landing in this Hell. The damned then find themselves in an environment devoid of input. Meaning evaporates in this place, so their essence evaporates as well.

The above concept would be useless if the need to find meaning is unimportant to humans. Many would disagree with this concept entirely. An entire branch of philosophy, in fact, is devoted to this idea, called existentialism. This branch of philosophy centers around the notion that the most important thing in life is the fight for meaning. An essay written by Albert Camus, author and philosopher, called The Myth of Sisyphus furthers this idea. It tells the story of Sisyphus, who is damned and sent to hell. There he must roll a formidable rock up a hill. Once this task is completed, leaving Sisyphus exhausted, the rock rolls back down the hill. Sisyphus then walks down the hill and rolls the rock up again. He repeats this for eternity. This certainly sounds like damnation, a terrible punishment. Camus thinks otherwise. “This universe henceforth without a master seems to [Sisyphus] him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” (http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm) In having his task and completing it, Sisyphus is not tragic. This is important to The Damnation Game as Barker’s version of Hell has no tasks whatsoever. Nothing to complete, strive toward, or build a palpable world from. Perhaps initially the thought of a grey world in which one languishes is better than an eternally useless and laborious task. To an existentialist, this is false – having the task is much, much better than having none at all. The plight makes hope possible, and therefore restores will. Without this, only despair can be felt.

Another aspect that makes Barker’s Hell terrible is it’s nothingness. Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher, offers some meaningful insight on the subject. A quote of his in particular is of great interest. “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if [one gazes] for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into [one].” (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26964.html) This perhaps explains the horror of Barker’s void most completely. Nietzsche is effectively saying that when one battles something evil, one risks becoming what one is battling. If one looks into nothingness, one absorbs some of that nothingness. Barker’s Hell submerges one in nothingness, and thus one eventually becomes nothingness. Drowning in non-existence, one starts to ‘non-exist’ as well. It may be that humanity’s fear stems from this notion.

A more scientific, empirical outlook may be taken on this idea of Hell as well. Certain studies have been done on humans that underscore their need for meaningful input. Take, for example, the situation of a prisoner in solitary confinement. This prisoner is locked in a cell without entertainment or fellow prisoners. They are kept in there for the majority of the day. With such a deprivation of environmental stimulation, prisoners often have mental and emotional crises. A medical paper explains a loss of touch with reality thus:

When inputs are all coming from the same place, parts of the unconscious experience the same inputted information differently because they are all interpreting the information with different randomness. The randomness helps us make connections between sets of inputted information and our own prior knowledge to ultimately create a story that explains our situation and surroundings. [...]

In an environment with very minimal stimulation [...] the randomness with which the unconscious explores the environment continues, although it is unclear whether randomization increases when fewer stimuli are reaching the brain. [...] [When] the brain is not receiving much input from the environment, there is little information based in reality that the unconscious can focus on or try to interpret.

(http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1898)

The above relates closely to Marty’s first few moments in Hell. As all mental inputs vanish, so does his grasp on reality because there isn’t the continual flow of information being given by his environment. Reality stops being verified, so reality begins to look false, unstable. Another medical journal worth noting is one written by Stuart Grassian. It outlines the effects of solitary confinement in prisons. The effects range from psychosis to depression to suicide attempts to hypersensitivity to stimuli. Some inmates also cease to care for appearance and surroundings. This relates much to Marty’s experience in Hell once again. After a short period of time, he simply gives up. “No need to go, he thought; nothing to lose if [he stays] here and the grey comes again.” (Barker, 387) Taking into account that this Hell does not even involve the input of 4 walls and a light, as one would find in the solitary confinement cell of a prison, the possibility of the ensuing torture to the damned is incredible.

A second example of a situation involving sensory deprivation and humans is that of the soundless room. Researchers for Microsoft have created an entirely soundless room so they may improve teleconferencing and auditory technology. Every aspect of the room has been controlled – the walls, the air ducts, even the distance from the room to the other rooms in the building. What is created is a room with the most minimal amount of auditory stimuli – not even vibrations from other activity can be felt. The effect of this room on a person placed in it is, as seems to be the pattern with sensory deprivation, a hallucination. People begin to hear things which do not exist or they tune into the minute sounds of their own body. Some even experience dizziness. One of the engineers, “Tashev noted that [the participants’] brains were simply hungry for information. As pattern deciphering machines, [humans] crave input — even when there is none.” (http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/03/inside-microsof.html) Imagine now this coupled with the above situation of solitary confinement. The idea of this utterly complete oppression of sensory stimuli is even to the bravest of hearts terrifying. Marty’s mind and will in this situation disintegrates in a matter of minutes.

He had fallen to his knees; what was left of his self-preservation was a tattered and hopeless thought, grey on grey. Even the voice had stopped now. It was bored with the banter. [...] Nothing is essential, it had said, and shown him the why and how; or rather dug up that part of him that had known all along.[...] He lay down, not certain if he was alive or dead, if the man who would presently come would kill him or resurrect him: only certain that to lie down was easiest, in this, the emptiest of all worlds. (Barker, 383)

Clive Barker presents his readers with an interesting picture that goes against the conventional. The usual representations of Hell – a fiery place under the world’s feet where the damned endure eternal agony – is quite opposite to what he proposes. The Damnation Game paints an image of the damned stumbling through a fog, utterly alone and without his senses. Perhaps, as Barker explains, this is more fitting. Historically, the void was considered heretical as there was no God to be found in it. Being a book not set in the context of religion, there is no God mentioned in this void. Nor, for that matter, is anything else. This highlights very effectively the profound fear that humans have of complete solitariness and meaninglessness. When Nothing becomes essential, as the novel’s favourite adage goes, a person to their core is proven to be without a reason. And this, unarguably, is Hell.

Bibliography

Print:

Barker, Clive. The Damnation Game. London: Sphere, 2007.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS