Analyse af Chuck Palahniuks novelle 'GUTS'

Explained by Sigmund Freud's theories about the Id, the Ego and the Superego.

The genre appeals to the readers' repressed feelings.

We feel things we usually avoid but in a less scary way.

Strengthens our Superegos and different senses.

Society

Often reflects the historical and cultural conflicts happening in the written time.

Experience fears in society.

Horror movies with themes like religion, the concepts of family and gender, science gone wrong and so on.

Playing people's fears.

Human nature

Horror with focus on biology and evolution.

Provoking strong and addicting responses: rushes of adrenaline, nausea, screams…

Biological explanations behind the fears.

We naturally fear things that might be dangerous to us.

Instincts of survival for generation after generation.

GUTS

Did you ever think about how one decision might change your entire life? This very question is considered in the horror story “GUTS” (2013) by Chuck Palahniuk who is also named “Saint gut-free”. This essay will investigate the narrative mode as well as the setting of the story and how this affects the reader.

The story is told by a first-person narrator. The narrator is a teenage boy who has some crazy fetish’ together with his guy friends. As a typical teenage boy his friends and him are getting ideas from each other, some of them being kind of ridiculous. One of the guys has an older brother who tells him about different cultures like the Middle Easterners and Arabs “jack off”. The narrator seems to have a bright future ahead of him until the fetish goes too far and ends up tearing out his large intestine. At first his mind makes it look like a snake that has come up the drain therefore he tries to pull away but fails. This snake is described as a sea monster, very intimidating and dangerous, “Some horrible sea monster, a sea serpent, something that’s never seen the light of the day, it's been hiding in the dark bottom of the pool drain, waiting to eat me”(p.18,l.8). This monster in the darkness is a typical trait of the horror genre which awakens a fear in the reader. The shock factor is something the author uses deliberately to the point where you sit and uncomfortably begin to visualize the description of what is happening. In the beginning of the story the narrator makes some kind of connection to the reader as he starts out saying, “Inhale. Take in as much air as you can. This story should last as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.(p.12,l.1)”. This is written directly to the reader which makes it feel more personal and catches their attention. This quote also creates sort of a common thread in the story since we later on are told about the narrator learning how to hold his breath underwater for a long time by mastrubating which leads to him almost drowning. The reader is very likely to actually hold their own breath without thinking about it because of how catching the story is, written with the shock factors and this direct speech as well as the way the events are described. The story uses a lot of description of the narrator's mind which almost makes it feel like we are the narrator experiencing the thing that happens, mostly when it comes to the part in the pool, “The heartbeat inside my head getting loud and fast. The bright sparks of light crossing and crisscrossing my eyes, I turn and look back...but it doesn’t make sense.(p.17,l.32)”. In this part the reader almost feels the scenario as if they were the narrator themselves. Most people know the feeling of intense heartbeat when they are scared or nervous and can relate to the feeling of being stuck in your own fears.