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Ching-Jo (Zoe) Lu

Greg McClure

WR 39B

13 February 2018

Exploring the Desire within Ourselves: Rhetorical Analysis of The Other Place

According to an American horror fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft, once states in his fiction

The Shunned House, “From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.”, the horror

genre consists of irony and contrasts that were not only created for recreation but also for the

emotional repression disguising as normal social standards. Horror fictions and films attract to

audience by spreading them an irony that helps release the devil deep inside. Based on an article,

“Why We Are Drawn to True Crime Shows”, from TIME, “It [true crimes] allow us to

experience fear and horror in a controlled environment where the threat is exciting but not real”

(Bonn). The irony that people are fearful of real crimes but love being exposed to terror explains

why Mary Gaitskill’s story, The Other Place, connects the readers to the negative personality of

the protagonist. The Other Place presents an art-horror story by contradictorily revealing a

conflict of a person between the authority of modern social norms and the inner disobedience,

which fulfills the expectation of conflict that readers deem as necessary in traditional horror

stories. The author emphasizes tones and language used to inform the readers that desire comes

from pain and strong affiliation to beloved ones, and people tend to find substitutes for the

painful desire. I will be using, among other scholarly works, Noël Carroll’s essay The Nature of

Horror in order to discuss the notion of categorical contradiction within the art-horror monster

and in order to make a primary point about the status of the story’s narrator.
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In the passage of the narrator talking about his background, Gaitskill shows the

contradiction between the nightmare and the reality of the protagonist appeared in the art-horror

genre. In the sentence, “I believe I had a normal childhood. But you have to go pretty far afield

to find something people would call abnormal these days” (Gaitskill), the narrator uses ironic

language displaying a possibly killer who states that the public has to reach far enough to find

things abnormal. People pay close attention to obvious unusual scenes, but they cannot see the

disguised “abnormal”, especially the speaker who considers himself normal. Irony is a crucial

element in The Other Place for establishing an art-horror story. In a scholarly essay, The Nature

of Horror, written by Noël Carroll, a famous American philosopher, he states, “An object or

being is impure if it is categorical interstitial, categorical contradictory” (Carroll 55). The

monster, who is the protagonist, represents a categorical contradictory being by revealing himself

of his abnormal childhood but considering himself “acting” normal. The expectation of readers

changes subtly with the protagonist’s statement since it shows a strong contradiction in this short

passage.

Besides the irony in the short passage, the perception of the protagonist in the passage

unveils the contrast that conflict with the readers’ traditional view of horror story by exposing

readers to the anxiety the protagonist considers normal. In the scene that the speaker indicates the

fights between his mother and father are understandable, his indifferent tone shows the mixture

of his love for his family and his distorted personality toward the women he targets. The

protagonist deems the fights between his parents and the nightmare he has about him being

chased by a murderer as understandable and normal. People’s expectation on fights and

nightmares is unbearable and horrifying, but the narrator once again employs the categorical

contradiction of the public’s actual expectation and the protagonist’s plain tone to provide
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readers another art-horror element. According to Morrison, who is an award winning prestigious

professor, in his article written with Magistrale, a well-know professor professionalized in

English, Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming, they mention, “The best horror fiction must be viewed

as contemporary social satire that reveals the collective cultural fears and personal anxieties of

everyday life” (Magistrale and Morrison 3). The collective cultural fear of confronting fights and

nightmares of people successfully relates to the contrast Gaitskill creates. She exposes readers to

the disguised social anxiety. While the protagonist acts like a normal person, under the skin hides

the indiscernible personality that attracts the modern readers. The indiscernible personality

appears obviously in another short passage which the protagonist introduces “the other place” by

wandering around the neighborhood.

Gaitskill emphasizes the protagonist’s indifferent tone of realizing the moment of “the

other place” and brings disjunctive connections to readers’ reactions. This breaks readers’

traditional viewpoints of modern art-horror fictions. In the sentence, “A world where I could sit

and feel the power of nature come up through my feet, and be near other people without them

being near me” (Gaitskill), the speaker rationalizes the abnormal late night wander and persuade

himself to normalize the existence of “the other place”. According to Magistrale and Morrison’s

essay, Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming, they state, “The monster represents some aspect of a

repressed self transformed into the Other” (Magistrale and Morrison 4). The speaker’s repression

of his true self appear during the night when he is alone and wandering in the neighborhood. And

the short-term transformation during the night leads “the other place” to devour the narrator

gradually as stated in the later story. Although the speaker has rarer walks during the night and

has changed his attention from getting drunk to feeling the power of nature, at the end of the

passage he still watches the girl sleeping soundly. The negative and positive sides of his action
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represent his repression of his willingness of normalizing all abnormal actions so the actions can

be seen normal for others, who live in “the other place”. The struggle of the protagonist causes

tension for readers, which Carroll implies in The Nature of Horror, “Art-horror is an occurrent

emotional state; it has both physical and cognitive dimension” (Carroll 54). The art-horror in The

Other Place creates physical dimension, such as tension and shuddering by enhancing the

protagonist’s self comforting of his behaviors. The contrast between the speaker’s actions and

readers’ anxiety brings the story perfectly to the art-horror genre.

With the anxiety readers already have, Gaitskill further provides a scene which the

protagonist threats the woman on the car. The woman’s reaction stirs up emotional responses for

both readers and protagonist that “the two places” are emerging to the same one. Within the

scene, “Like a star, a red dot appeared in the white of her left eye” (Gaitskill) and “Words

appeared in my head, like a sign reading 'I Don’t Want To.’” (Gaitskill), the term “like a star”

corresponds to the “sign” the narrator receives from his inner self. The situation puts the speaker

into a dilemma, and it is also a decision of whether to accept the emergence of the two places.

For the protagonist, the woman’s red dot not merely means that this is a decision but an

invitation for him to confront the existence of “the other place”. Furthermore, he wants to figure

out a different viewpoint from the woman’s to visualize himself or even the connotation of his

two places. In the sentence, “ She shifted her eyes from my face to a spot somewhere outside the

car and fixed them there. I fought the urge to turn and see what she was looking at” (Gaitskill),

the protagonist’s curiosity of experiencing the woman’s perspective and his eagerness to find

where he belongs prove that there is an emotional response to not only the “real” him but also to

readers’ expectations. In Noël Carroll’s essay, The Nature of Horror, he writes, “what

distinguishes the horror story with mere stories with monsters is the attitude of characters”
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(Carroll 52). The attitude appears vigorously that the protagonist acquires the sense of moral

codes and concurrently his inner voice betrays his desire to hurt anyone. Readers can tell from

the scene that he reminds his dead mother and relates her to the woman. The nostalgia that winds

the protagonist since his childhood creates the desire he cannot bear, and the idea of desire

Gaitskill signaling readers shows that nostalgia and pain of childhood are the keys to the

protagonist’s emotional responses.

Aside from the emotional responses, in the same passage of the protagonist with the gun,

Gaitskill shows the convert in the horror genre by demonstrating the contrast between the silence

of the protagonist and the voices he creates inside. This is another paramount emotional response

readers have— it is a slowly combination of disobedience and social norms inside the

protagonist. In the sentence, “I held my gun hand against my body to hide the tremor”

(Gaitskill), Gaitskill puts an emphasis on the contrast between “a gun” and “the tremor”, which

ironically shows the protagonist’s unsureness and weakening power. This brings the readers the

idea of silence in actions. The silence is outside; the narrator does not express any of his feelings.

But in the context, the narrator wanders from the expression on the woman’s face to an inner

voice restricting his action, which shows the conflict of suppressing his inner self and acting

powerful on the outside. The contradiction is discussed in Magistrale and Morrison’s article,

Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming. They imply, “Horror art is the existence of a being that emerges

to disrupt the personal and social relationships with the status quo” (Magistrale and Morrison).

The personal relationship is “the other place” and where the protagonist believes he is. And the

disruption of his power and his relationships conversely becomes a coexistence. Gaitskill

provides the disruption of the contrast within himself to deeply discuss the power of his silence

that enforces the two “places” to emerge.

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The silence is a vital transformation of the speaker and his desire deeply buried in his

mind. The desire appeared in the mundane world triggers actions, but the desire extensively

hidden are the ones causing pain to oneself. In The Other Place, Gaitskill alternates the

narrator’s background story with his attitude to show the contrast and obstacles, but what

beneath the scenes is the notion of desire and pain. They seem separated but interconnected.

From the narrator’s abusive parents and abnormal childhood to his family he cherishes the most,

the protagonist buries his desire but in the meantime let desire irrigates his painful memories

through time. The double pain of the protagonist gathers readers’ sympathy but simultaneously

offers them contradictory horror to show the power of his desire. In Deborah Treisman’s “Mary

Gaitskill on ‘The Other Place’”, Gaitskill mentions that “it’s a story about a delicate soul

carrying around something that is much too big and kinetic for him, but that he’s stuck with, that

won’t leave him alone” (Treisman). Desire devours the protagonist, but as the narrator find the

substitute, which is his family, it soothes the desire and eventually crawls back to his deep mind.

Although it does not mean his desire vanishes, the protagonist accepts the existence without

destroying the social norms he abides by. The coexistence leads the readers to the art-horror

realm and discovers the nostalgic pain that lives inside people’s hearts.
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Works Cited

Bonn, Scott. “Why We Are Drawn to True Crime Shows”. TIME, January 8, 2016.

Carroll, N. "The Nature of Horror"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No.1

(Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59.

Gaitskill, Mary. “The Other Place.” The New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011.

Lovecraft, Howard P. (1999) [1924]. "The Shunned House". In S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon

(eds.). More Annotated Lovecraft (1st ed.). New York City, NY: Dell.

Magistrale, Tony and Morrison, Michael A. A Dark Night’s Dreaming. University of South

Carolina Press, March 31, 1996.

Treisman, Deborah. “Mary Gaitskill on "The Other Place".” The New Yorker, The New

Yorker, 18 June 2017.