Moynihan Paper

Moynihan 1

Maureen Moynihan

Torturous Laughter: Expression and Repression of Horror in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast”

Laughter is never innocent. It has form and purpose and certainly power. Recently, critics have devoted hundreds of articles and books to the topic of laughter and the related subject of humor, but contemporary studies of laughter often fail to consider examples in the horror genre. This oversight makes sense in that many are eager to study comedy and more pleasant texts. Few would grudge them room to study such appropriate material. However, one must look to critics and theorists confronting horror to find mention of laughter that coexists with fear and even serves a valuable function in decoding horror texts. For the purposes of discussing laughter and horror, I have isolated a single case of a 19th century writer describing what many current theorists overlook, finding it exemplary in its detail, ambiguity, and ethical resonance. Though existing theories of laughter’s form and function indicate it should break the finely tuned tension appreciated by aficionados of classic horror, the H.P. Lovecraft-approved Rudyard Kipling story, “The Mark of the Beast” (1890) describes a fit of laughter as a horror on par with native revolt, supernatural revenge, and torture. Seen through the complementary lenses of humor studies and the psychoanalytic work of Julia Kristeva, the layers of expectations within the production of laughter offer an exemplary point of entry for inquiry as a second climax in the story, perhaps more important than the rescue of the victim’s soul. By drawing a broader conflict down to the scale of individual men, Kipling makes intimate a conflict of national proportions and undermines personal and national assumptions of integrity and superiority on which the

Moynihan 2

colonizer’s role in that conflict has been justified. The interpretation of laughter is far from straightforward, although it occurs on a regular basis in ordinary communication. As a sign, laughter’s meaning depends particularly heavily on context and intonation since it lacks a precise denotative meaning. It has a referent, but it refers not to an object but to a quality or relationship compared to the laughing individual’s expectations. In order to pin down laughter by its causes, recent interdisciplinary work in humor studies takes on laughter in the general terms of superiority, incongruity, and relief. The fundamental concepts of these theories deal respectively with A) the relative status of the persons involved (superiority to inferiority), B) the gap between the event and the observer’s expectations (incongruity), and C) finally with the event causing a shift from tension to relief. All three traditional theories depend on social and often unconscious expectations. The extensive history of assertions of the primacy of a particular factor has been well reviewed by scholars such as Dr. Linda Houts-Smith, whose research incorporating these views I will touch on later. So, why Kipling? Certainly not for a shortage of examples of laughter in horror texts, though they fall into a number of categories from a reaction to witty banter in a casual conversation to the triumphant cackle of the villain, but much of the laughter within horror texts operates in tandem with humor and is treated as secondary. Not only has the narrator highlighted laughter as a moment of horror in this text, the duality of Kipling’s perspective on India complicates its interpretation. As Salman Rushdie explained, “There will always be plenty in Kipling that I will find difficult to forgive; but there is also enough truth in these stories to make them impossible to ignore” (80). Rushdie may not look to “The Mark of the Beast” as a model, but his analysis focuses on such glimpses at the limits of the colonizers’ power and control. On the topic of assumptions, ignorance, and the breaching of supposedly firm boundaries, fellow

Moynihan 3

cultural critic Edward Said cites Kipling as a preeminent observer of the East-West chain of being, aligning the rungs of the medieval chain of being with the hierarchy of British Commonwealth (45). Any failure of its components to support the others threatens chaos, a statement which should recall Lovecraft’s words on cosmic terror, which entails “a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos” and daemons (Lovecraft 2). Where the conflict begins is difficult to discern, short of going back to the initial violence of the colonial project. The “Catch’em Alive-O’s” at the party in the opening scene have political dominion but not the moral superiority they assume (Kipling 307). The current breach of cultural boundaries, Fleete’s drunken defilement of a statue of the monkey god Hanuman serves as a catalyst. Having made “the mark of the beast,” a beastlike leper marks him in reply. The curse transforms him into a beast by the gradual erosion of his humanity (civility, rationality, identity, and ultimately his soul). To rescue the civilized self, the British officer Strickland and the narrator commit wordlessly to torture unfit to be printed of the leper who conveyed the curse (316). Once the leper’s speaks, they end the torture and demand him to end the curse. He clothes himself for the first time to cover his wounds and leaves, never to be seen again. Seeking his speech, his humanity, two British men abandon language and go straight to force, only using language to make their request once they are both returned to language. It is not to be the last of their wordless communications. The evidence of the event vanishes mysteriously, except in the home and memories of the perpetrators. Strickland even begins to doubt their experience before Fleete’s entrance. The narrator omits any verbal response and instead makes note of sensory evidence: “The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the carpet. The smell was entirely real”

Moynihan 4

(316). The return of the victim to the scene of the torture by the light of the next day offers a perspective in stark contrast to that grim description: One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything in the night’s work. When Fleet was dressed he came into the dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when he sniffed. ‘Horrid doggy smell, here,’ said he. ‘You should really keep those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.’ But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair, and, without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me that we had fought for Fleete’s soul with the silver man in that room, and that we had disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete thought that we had both gone mad. We never told him what we had done. (317) At what are they laughing? At Fleete for his ignorance? At his banal comment for how far it falls from the truth? Or instead for how close it comes? Or perhaps the laughter is inspired by the deeper, ironic implications, considering the “beasts” involved? Certainly the advice to keep the dogs in line with sulfur (brimstone) has ringing implications for both Strickland’s control of the natives and of his fellow officers in a land beyond the reach of Divine Providence (307). One thing is certain: when they hear Fleete’s comment, the hellish night closes with an unexpectedly mild chastisement. This response has much to do with relief: emotional tension has built up as the two men realize how far they have, so to speak, fallen on that chain of being. When confronted with

Moynihan 5

evidence grossly misinterpreted by Fleete, they are prompted to laughter rather than awe. Fear and humor stem from the same source: social values and limits. Both screams and laughter are visceral responses resulting from an assessment of a situation. The cognitive aspects, while often unconscious, are integral in its interpretation after the fact. Answering “Why do they laugh?” with only “Because it makes them feel better” is like asking “Why did the chicken cross the road?” without looking at the either side. Why not stay put? Why laugh then? Due to the cognitive component, laughter highlights conflicts between its context and the laughing subject’s implicit values and assumptions of the status quo. In light of this similarity between screams and laughter, it is little surprise that the first laughter in horror appears in the work of a scholar intent on the interactions of physical and psychological experience. In Power of Horror, Kristeva refers to laughter as a means of “placing or displacing abjection” (8). For Kristeva, to laugh ejects the abject and thus aids in the establishment of personal identity. True to her visceral style, the physiological explanations and psychological combine: the body’s convulsion becomes the emotional equivalent of vomiting. Laughter highlights incongruity, the difference between the real and the desired. Interpreted in terms of abjection, laughter indicates a break in the desired boundaries of I versus not-I. In Kristeva’s model, the laughter rejects the part of the narrator’s identity that permitted him and Strickland to go to the extreme of torture for the sake of a guilty countryman--the beast within. The abject posits a “threat […] beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable” but which fascinates nevertheless (Kristeva 1). In particular, this involves “those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal” including hostility (12-13). The title declares the abject in the story, but readers may not realize they will find it within the familiar “I.” Though abjection is productive force, excising the abject creates and establishes an identity

Moynihan 6

by contrast with the not-I (45). The non-hysteric succeeds in displacing the abject well enough to feel secure that the boundaries are unbroken. Conversely, the hysterical subject recognizes the permeability of the self and loses its grip on its identity. The narrator’s continued anxiety puts him in the category of hysteric at least in so far as the evidence prohibits recovery the identity others assume of him. But this explanation, however plausible, is unsatisfying. Still, why laugh rather than cry or scream? Laughter as a form of relief only establishes part of its function. Despite a long history dating back to antiquity, the superiority theory has recently been championed by professor of Law F. H. Buckley. The popularity superiority may stem from the experience of those left out or laughed at, since it assumes those laughing are sharing in triumph over an inferior other. The superiority theory does focus on judgment, but it creates a knot when applied to Strickland and narrator. The narrator laughs in part at himself because he recognizes his inferiority in relative to an expected standard of behavior. In the superiority model, that explanation should be impossible. As Buckley puts it, “He might be an inferior brute, but he can never think himself so when he laughs” (37). In contrast to Buckley’s exclusively humorous laughter, an explanation of hysterical laughter seems dependent on flexibility in the definition of superiority, at least if one expects to maintain superiority’s superiority. Superiority in the case of the narrator bleeds into the analysis of the incongruity, since narrator’s self-image proves incongruous with his behavior and accepted standards. Incongruity supporter Immanuel Kant does allow for laughing at one’s own errors (Houts-Smith 7). Kant’s view still incorporates relief, but emphasizes the contrast of expectation and reality. Laughter results when “our expectations evaporate into uselessness” (7). For the narrator, this has dire rather than humorous results. In the fall from his position in the social order, he has seen the lie of the hierarchy. He has witnessed the perceived order and stability of the boundary between

Moynihan 7

West and East, the basis for his national and personal identity, literally dissolve at a touch. Although relief and superiority are here at work, incongruity appears to be essential to the triggering of laughter, with the other two providing value and energy but not comprising the “laughable” itself, to borrow linguist Gail Jefferson’s term. Fellow linguistic scholar HoutsSmith’s confirms, finding “differences in experiences, perceptions, and expectations” provoke both humorous laughter and nervous laughter (3). Although the research findings are limited to conversations, her analysis resonates with the buzzwords of both literary theory and humor studies to combine the various traditional theories: “The tension is primarily the differentiation of reality from unreality as it relates to the difference between self and other” (27). In this case, the narrator sees his reality replaced by a harsher world and self-image, only to find that the world around him has not changed. His perception was the illusion, but that illusion still exists for others, such as Fleete. His articulation of his laughter reveals his altered perspective. In terms of the theories discussed, the structure of his laughter appears congruent with several elements of the predominant theories considered in humor studies. The laughter responds to Fleete’s statement in the context, but excludes him from explanation. The narrator and reader are superior in knowledge in respect to Fleete, aware of the incongruity of the explanation, but also relieved at the outcome of the incident. Most importantly, the components establish that the other side of the cognitive conflict that caused the laughter is an incongruity between the “White Man” and the narrator’s transformed self-image. He recognizes consciously what Edward Said asserts: “Behind the White Man’s mask of amiable leadership there is always the express willingness to use force, to kill and be killed. What dignifies his mission is some sense of intellectual dedication” (Said 226). Indeed, the horror of “shamefully” dissolving into hysterics lies precisely in his loss justification and dignity. The “irreducible distance” between the two

Moynihan 8

cultures is illusion; “the line of tension” between White and Oriental must be reestablished (228). In Kristeva’s terms, Strickland succeeds in expressing the abject, returning to Church and society. More conscious of the dissolution of these definitions, the narrator fails to regain the integrity of his self definition as congruent with the expectations of his society. In Kipling’s tale, the nostalgic portrait of the colonial experience of the colonizer as an indolent, civilized lifestyle beside the primitive, exotic world of the East festers after a physical breach of cultural boundaries. Intentionally or not, the story expresses what the status quo wants to repress--the violence of the colonial project and the false premise of the inherent civility of Western man. The struggle of wills between torturers and victim succeeds in returning life and “soul” to one “beast,” but damns the Englishmen for hypocrites and beasts themselves. When the narrator comprehends the cost of his actions, the rationale of the colonial project collapses. Its fictional representatives fail the test, but the narrator remains incapable of confessing and atoning because he cannot be taken seriously. Kipling ends this horror tale with the echoes of this torturous laughter in the memory of the narrator. The narrator’s confession exposes the underside of his laughter, the unthinkable reality of his experience. He cannot convince his readers of the unthinkable possibility of an alternate power, but perhaps he can expose readers to their animal capacity for brutality, regardless of their assumptions of civility. Explaining the target of his laughter, he shows its components in slow motion, so to speak, at the speed of contemplation and reason rather than instinct. By this rhetorical delay, the story becomes horrible, not in spite of, but because of the laughter’s wordless judgment on the civilized façade of authority and self-control. By exposing the reader to the cognitive dissonance that produced the laughter, he cracks the assumed integrity of that identity.

Moynihan 9

Works Cited

Buckley, F. H. The Morality of Laughter. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2003.

Houts-Smith, Linda. “Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Strange: The Structure and Meaning of Laughter in Conversation.” Diss. U. North Dakota, 2007.

Kipling, Rudyard. “The Mark of the Beast.” The World’s Greatest Horror Stories. Eds. Stephen Jones & Dave Carson. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004: 306-317.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.

Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. (1927, 1933-1935) http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/superhor.htm

Rushdie, Salman. “Kipling.” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta Books, 1991: 74-80.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism: 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.