So, I'm going to go
ahead and out myself as a crazy cat lady because I'm going to talk about the cats
in The Yattering and Jack a lot, but
first…
This was a funny story.
Out of all the nooks and corners of horror I’ve visited this semester, this was
the first piece I can honestly say gave me chuckles. The Yattering was quite a
character, a low level demon sent to torment Jack until breaking him and
claiming his soul for hell. The only problem is Jack is all but impervious to every
diabolical demon trick the Yattering can think of, and the poor fiend slowly
starts to lose his mind when confronted with endless days of ineffective
drudgery. I sympathized with the Yattering, far more so than Jack, because the Yattering’s
story pretty much reflected my inner feelings about my time in the retail hell
of Wal-Mart. Over worked, under paid and underappreciated hourly workers everywhere
will be able to share in the demon’s suffering as he struggles to complete a
near impossible task for a purpose his superiors won’t even share with him.
In comparison to the
Yattering’s plentiful emotional outbursts, Jack left me cold. As the human
victim of a demonic haunting, one would think Jack is the obvious protagonist.
However Jack’s POV comes into the story very late, after I’ve already begun to sympathize
with the demon, and Jack’s POV reveals that he is in fact playing the demon on
purpose, and willfully risking the lives of his family and….
CATS.
The cat murdering is
the only thing the Yattering did that felt truly villainous to me, though I will
admit, the first murder was kind of funny. The Yattering just sort of scooped
up the cat and threw it into the fireplace. And the way it is written makes it
seem like the cat just sort of instantly turned to ash. Poof. Cats are very flammable.
Bad Yattering!
But then the real evil
shows itself. Jack brings home another cat. A cat the Yattering drowns. Then Jack
brings home yet ANOTHER cat. The Yattering blows this one up. Jack brought home
two additional cats knowing the Yattering was going to murder them. Jack is a
monster. I don’t really care that he brought his daughters home for the
holidays and exposed them to the demon. They’re big girls, they can take care
of themselves, they have thumbs, they can leave the house. But three defenseless
cats, which in addition to murdering the Yattering tormented for quite some
time… that is a level of coldness that chills me to the bone.
By the end of the story
when Jack cements his clever victory over the demon, my final sentiment was “yeah,
that’s right Jack. You don’t get to go to heaven you cat murderer.”
Also I think Yattering
would make a good name for a cat. An evil cat that destroys your kitchen when you're
not home, like the one I have. Then when you hear something break from the
other room you can yell “knock it off Yattering!”
Plans. Big plans.
High five for being a cat lover. :) I didn't like the Yattering killing cats, either, though I'll admit I still took the section in good humor. Jack's game really was rather cruel, wasn't it? Not only to the Yattering, which you can justify to a degree since it was after him, but to all the people and animals around him.
ReplyDeleteYeah... now that you mention it, Jack was a huge ass bringing two more cats into the house. He put them in a threatening environment that he knew had a little demon that already killed his first cat.
ReplyDeleteI figured, though, that this was a horror story, and killing pets is always a disturbing addition to a story. Still, I wanted to punch the Yattering in the face. And now I want to punch Jack, too.
New name idea for the next cat I get! :-D
ReplyDeleteThe cat murders bothered me, too. I was able to accept the first murder because it's a horror story and the Yattering's original plan of attack was to mess up as much of Jack's stuff as possible. But the following cat fatalities? Not cool. I like my cats--fictional or otherwise--alive. Even if it was a means to an end for Jack to beat the Yattering, he didn't have to bring more cats into the house. It shows that Jack's not just a boring, generally decent guy he's presented to be in the first part of the story.
Well Jack obviously didn't care about the cats that much--I wonder why even bothered getting new ones? He didn't even give them new names, just Freddy 2 and 3. I don't think the Yattering would have thought Jack caught on to him if he didn't bring home a new cat. Obviously after the third one Jack gave up on being a pet owner and the Yattering didn't get suspicious.
ReplyDeleteSee, and I felt like the cat murdering was so over-the-top and fable-like that it didn't bother me. I'm a crazy cat lady, love the little furbabies and hate animal cruelty, but this repetition of the scenario was more like classic fable structure. You have the event that gets repeated, and those involved in it don't see the pattern until long after the reader. In fables and folk tales, events usually happen in threes before a change occurs. I feel like this whole story was Barker playing with storytelling tropes more than anything, and I think Jack is more of a classic underdog folk tale hero than a true monster.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone about the cats. When they used to say the number one thing not to do in fiction was kill the dog, I always interpreted that as cats too. And the Yattering boils the fish if I remember correctly? Poor pets. Definitely made me dislike Jack.
ReplyDeleteI wondered why he kept bringing home new cats, as well - he had to know the same thing was going to happen, or at best that the Yattering was torturing them while he wasn't around.
ReplyDelete