I'm sure we've all seen THE RING? Yeah. Freakiest movie EVER. What is it with the innate creepiness of wells?
Well! (lol) I enjoyed a lot of things about this story, mostly because the elements in "Sob in the Silence" made me think about other tales we've read so far. I'm not sure I would have liked it if it was a stand-alone read, though. I know this will probably catch me a lot of guff in class, but it seemed a bit cliched. I know that it's difficult to come up with original ideas in a notoriously overused genre, but nothing about this story really seemed to stand out. Well, except the fact that the scary bad guy was a horror writer. I'm sure that has some interesting implications. Cuz, see, he is a HORROR WRITER...and he's doing evil things...writing them, if you will...horror...*ahem* The identity of the main character made me hearken back to some Ford and Link and discussing the relationship of the art to the artist, particularly in "Magic for Beginners" when Jeff's(?) dad writes him dead. I also thought about this story in relation to the tales about perpetuating tales. You know, like "Jupiter's Skull" and "Lull." The main character has obviously experienced some horrible things that he perpetuates. Isn't that sort of like being trapped in a story?
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A horror writer guilty of horrible things also appears in "Best New Horror," the lead story in 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill's brilliant 2007 fiction collection. I almost put it on this syllabus, but I didn't think the semester could hold three single-author collections, however much I love the form, and I feared that "Best New Horror," in particular, might have sent students fleeing for the exits (perhaps rightly).
I also would really like to tie "the well" as a horror trope to the Dormouse's disturbing story, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, about the three sisters who lived at the bottom of a treacle well -- but it's early yet, and I'm not up to it. (The hike to the treacle well at Binsey is well worth doing, if you're ever in Oxford in summertime.)
I guess in a sense he was perpetuating the murders, but I wasn't entirely sure what exactly was going on when he killed Robbie. Was he really possessed by the ghost of that Maude woman (*snicker*)? I'm really curious why he didn't kill Kiara as well, since she was pretty child-like. I guess that was the part of him, not the possessor, that took over the murder-plan. Off topic. Nevertheless, it would appear that the writer was an outside party to the original tale, and not "trapped" within it. Do you think that the writer experienced something horrible he is perpetuating? If he was one of the orphans, why isn't he dead too? Yay for class discussion to clear this up!
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