Week 10: Social and Political Commentary in Horror

Hi, welcome to the tenth week of my blog!

During this week’s meeting with Ms. Tilly, we mainly kept working on my summary of Medea along with figuring out the key points I would be making when connecting Carrie and Misery to Medea. At the time of that meeting, I hadn’t yet analyzed The Shining, which is why we didn’t discuss it much. Right now, my summary is almost done, but I will most likely make some edits as I continue writing my paper.

Mrs. Gorla and I spent this week’s meeting talking about The Shining, as well as talking a little more about Misery. We also talked a bit about the article she had given me the week before, “The Metafictional Narrativization of the Traumatized Body and Monstrous Femininity from Stephen King’s Horror Fiction” by Csetényi Korinna. Since the article is about 160 pages long, Mrs. Gorla told me that I should mainly focus on the introduction and the sections talking about Carrie and Misery. Due to the length of the article, I figured I’d just mention one detail from the introduction that I thought was interesting: Korinna mentions the idea that despite usually providing insightful commentary on social and political issues, horror is typically dismissed from having any analytical value. While this was one of my main reasons for having my project focus on horror, reading it made me realize that despite it being a main component at the start of my project, I’ve drifted away from it a little. Having that reminder was extremely helpful, as it gave me a solid answer for why I think my analysis and research is important.

I hope to have a full draft of my paper done by next week, and I look forward to seeing the finished product soon!