Violence in literature

Kyriakos

Creator
Joined
Oct 15, 2003
Messages
78,218
Location
The Dream
I finsihed writing the first story of my third book yesterday. It is by far the most violent story i have ever written. In it a wolf, which appears to be an apparition, tears apart the face of a hated person of the protagonist.
The story is based on the ability of the subconscious to give its own, imaginative solutions to anxieties. The protagonist was miserable because that enemy was hostile towards him, but could not act out his anger. So the subconscious created the apparition of a wolf, who through a series of events got to attack the enemy (or at least likewise an apparition of the enemy).
The effect the story had on me was therapeutic. I was thinking of someone i had reason to hate. After writing the story i felt more relaxed, as if i had taken my revenge. Moreover it was by doing something creative, and ultimately harmless, whereas had i acted out such violence other problems would inevitably occur.

Do you find violence in literature to have an therapeutic effect, for the writer, or even for the reader? Personally i plan to utilise this in my own life, since it seems to me to be an excellent outlet for anger :)

21509wolf.jpg
 
Sorry but I won't read anything that would, if turned into a movie, garner anything higher than a "G" rating.
 
Well, at least I know that violence is thing that should be used sparingly (in arts, in real life we have no right to critcize violence). It has potential to turn into a cheap trick. Violence brings out emotions, and especially younger readers take that to mean their reading something good. I've notice that as years have passed I've become more and more critical to it. Last time I encountered it in a novel I felt dissapointed.
 
I agree that violence in literature can be a cheap trick, but that is when poor writers use it :) In good art everything has a puprose. In this example the violence was born out of the feelings of anger, which could not be expressed in any natural way.
 
Yes, I noticed it was different: your story is surreal, while exploitation novels have to be realistic.
 
Sorry but I won't read anything that would, if turned into a movie, garner anything higher than a "G" rating.

But Forbidden Planet was from the days before the rating system. Does it still count?
 
Brutal violence as a kind of therapy is well...kind of sick.
 
Anybody here read the new Dune novels by Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert? They're full of gratuitous violence against women, children, people unable to fight back (ie. downtrodden, weakened slaves)... and the books are utter CRAP. They're excellent examples of the cheap trick, because the only lasting impression they leave on a mature Dune reader is revulsion. They don't give any positive emotional experiences, and add nothing of substance to the story. Whether they were therapeutic for the authors, I don't care to speculate.

Shakespeare, on the other hand (and Forbidden Planet was based on a Shakespeare play), can be violent and the violence suits the story and the underlying messages Shakespeare wanted to incorporate. There really are teens and young adults immature enough to see suicide as the only solution to forbidden love (not saying it's right, just realistic), and who have seen street fights go horribly wrong. This is what makes a Shakespeare play timeless and appropriate for whatever century or decade the reader/viewer is experiencing.
 
Valka D'Ur said:
Anybody here read the new Dune novels by Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert? They're full of gratuitous violence against women, children, people unable to fight back (ie. downtrodden, weakened slaves)... and the books are utter CRAP. They're excellent examples of the cheap trick, because the only lasting impression they leave on a mature Dune reader is revulsion. They don't give any positive emotional experiences, and add nothing of substance to the story. Whether they were therapeutic for the authors, I don't care to speculate.

They're an evil mixture of poverty porn and sadism mixed into one hateful little package. I stopped reading them. I shall keep to the originals.
 
They're an evil mixture of poverty porn and sadism mixed into one hateful little package. I stopped reading them. I shall keep to the originals.

The new Dune books are totally impoverished with hollow and vapid characters, but the premise of Butlerian Jihad is somewhat interesting and could have made a good book if it had been written by a good author (preferably one. Having two writers or a committee of writers guarantees a crappy book).
 
The value of violence in lit. depends on how it is used. If it is there is a high level of violence with gruesome descriptions to criticize war, that has value, however, the same description simply to shock does not have value. It is like any other medium.

Personally, I do not find violence in lit. therapeutic personally (I get my therapeutic violence from video games), however, if it works from someone, great.
 
Thank you for your replies :)
In my case i have found that writing the story did have a therapeutic effect on me. First of all it is something creative, something that can be enjoyed by me, and others, nomatter that it has some violence in it. Secondly due to the fact that i targeted the violence against the image of someone i had reason to be angry with, and later on felt like i had taken my revenge, which was utterly harmless for him. Had i instead tried to act out my anger in such a fashion i would have had to hurt him physically, something a lot less perfect as a solution for many reasons. And although it is just a story, i still feel that i have really extracted my revenge, even a more severe one than that needed. In my imagination i can no longer think of the past without viewing the story as part of the same memory, and this enables me to feel that i have repaid what had been done to me, with an interest, and at the same time got to acquire a nice story out of it as well :)
So in that sense i have no doubt that violence in literature can be therapeutic for me. I was wondering if readers have sometimes experienced something similar out of it. Naturally it would have to have been something highly artistic, not some mindless blood and gore simply injected in the piece with the false hope that it would make a lasting impression, since literature does not work that way :)
 
Ok, this is the beginning of the story i wrote a few days ago:

The nightmare

“Dear fellow student,

Although we don’t have good relations, and I am fully conscious of that fact, I am forced to write to you this letter, for my own reasons. I do not hope to explain the reasons, and besides, the letter is of no matter to them. I only ask something of you, when you return to your room in our dorm to knock on my door, since I have something to say to you. Thank you for your understanding”

I think that this is a good text. It is short, it does not present anything of my situation, and on the other hand it is as much it was possible informative of my intention. Of course it could also be true that this Englishman would not accept to be interested, and will not knock, but in that case I can do nothing. Anyway it is already too late, and despite the intense smell I think that the only thing I can do is to fall asleep, hoping when he returns that I will hear him.
Of course my situation is very bad. It was already too bad, and now I am observing its frightening evolution. I would have wanted too much to simply fall to bed, I am so tired, that that cannot simply happen, to fall asleep without having examined for once more that which happened this night. I do not want to see it again in my dreams, because I am afraid that then perhaps even tomorrow the same sight will be expecting me here, and that is perhaps able to make me entirely insane.
If, at least, this unbearable smell would be toned down for a while! But maybe even that is in reality a proof that all these merely constitute a nightmare, because maybe under different circumstances I would have had already become accustomed to the smell, and it would not make any impression on me. This is a thought, but it is too weak, it is not enough to soothe me, and of course how could it soothe me, it would be as if someone was expecting to calm down by thinking that the blood that he sees flowing out of the wall has a deeper red color than the real one, while however the fact would remain that he is seeing the wall bleeding! Consequently I cannot relax with such thoughts, even if they are correct.
And really do I expect that they are not correct? Do I have inside me even the slightest doubt that I am seeing a nightmare? Is my letter to the Englishman something which shows that I have second thoughts about it? I do not treat it that way. I am of the view that if I could see him I could simply become certain of what must be in effect, of that which it is only logical to be in effect, and besides all that I do believe is in effect. And of course had I not believed it then nothing would be saving me, because then there is a very dark speculation, from which not even the thought of the other, that of which I am certain that it was a nightmare, frees me.
Thus I am restricted to think that the one nightmare replaced the other, which disappeared, vanished again with a jump out of the window. Sometimes in the past hour I had again stood in front of the window, trying there to see that which I was looking for, but without achieving it. But even that, as I am fully aware, could not really calm me down. Do I, after all, doubt that previously I was watching it in front of me? Of course not. Then why I seek to see it again? Perhaps because I hope that as the new nightmare replaced the old, thus the old can again acquire the position of the new, and this time I could welcome it with much happiness, as something which would fill me with peace, no matter how much its meaning would be already so gloomy.

(end of the passage)

It is not evident what is going on from this passage. The story is about a student who tries to understand what happened to him one night in his dorm room. In the previous days he had seen a wolf, as he was sitting near a forest in the edge of the university. Later on that wolf, which already have been argued to have been an apparittion, followed him to his room. That wolf is the first "nightmare". Then, as he is in the room, with the wolf looking at him, pressing its teeth, the door knocks. It is the english student. The narrator is certain that he cannot see the wolf, since it only exists in his mind. However the wolf shortly after his entry begins to howl, and then suddently jumps towards him and the narrator. The narrator has to step to the side violently, something which he immediately regrets since now he can find no way to explain his move to the fellow student, but when he looks at the other student he sees the wolf ontop of him, biting his head violently.
That is the second nightmare, the corpse of the english student, which remains in the room even after the wolf has left. This is why he writes the letter to the student, hoping that he can visit him, thus making it obvious- since he still needs that- that his corpse is merely another apparittion.

I will be very interested in reading what you think of the passage, and the idea for the story. :)
 
When I read Dracula I was surprised at how graphic the violence was (mainly staking vampires).
 
Back
Top Bottom