Tag Archives: lycanthropy

Shapeshifting and Estrangement of the Social Mind in Whitley Strieber’s The Wild

Essays, To Export, , , , , , , , ,

Harry Underwood
ENGL 3010
Dr. Loretta Clayton
11/6/2012

Shapeshifting and Estrangement of the Social Mind in Whitley Strieber’s The Wild

Within the body of speculative fiction literature, one of the most enduring and captivating tropes to be employed is that of physical shapeshifting. Whitley Strieber’s The Wild, published in 1990, is an exception to the historic, cultural treatment of therianthropy and shapeshifting. Instead of the violent, gory, inhuman “monster” which has been associated most with the werewolf legend, The Wild employs the werewolf as merely human consciousness and its complexities simply bound within the body of a wolf. Through the main characters and their ordeals, the readers of the novel are offered not only a succinct environmental critique of socio-economic conditions in the thick of modern society and the impact of such conditions upon the human mind, but also a subsequent vision of the human mind and human socio-economic patterns on the edge of civilization.

The troubled state of the main character, Bob Duke, is most evocative of the psychological themes within the book. Bob, a computer consultant, works at the bottom rungs of society as he attempts to provide an income for his wife and his son. Simultaneously, he experiences frequent dreams and visions of turning into a wolf, apparitions which are often sensual and sublime or involve grotesque experiences (Strieber 10-11). This shapeshifting into a wolf state – by dream, by sublime bleed into his reality, by waking life – is only the most recent, and most violent, of many shifts which already frequently occur in his human life: he shifts between the roles of Bob the troubled father and husband, Bob the hopeless romantic poet, Bob the dead-end worker in the lower rungs of the corporate structure, and Bob the frequent patient in the practice of Monica, a long-time confidant and psychologist. When he ultimately shapeshifts into a wolf in front of Cindy, Kevin and Monica (Strieber 99-115), their own prior assumptions of how the world works are suddenly turned upside down.

The socio-economic consequences of his ultimate shapeshifting are palpable. The wolf, in essence, is projecting Bob as utterly stripped of most of the meager external trappings of what he considered as his humanity, having “fallen from the human state” (Strieber 116). As a wolf, Bob is deprived of his home, his job, his ability to speak a human language, “the power of speech [,] what he now saw as the great privilege of hands” (Strieber 116), his ability to freely walk the streets of New York City without molestation, “human” food, “human” clothes, his ability to express his anxieties, and access to his family. His wife, Cindy, and his son, Kevin, find themselves evicted from their home, travelling as far as they can to northern New York in order to find Bob as he escapes the pursuit of animal control and the general oppressive environment of the metropolis. This socio-economic alienation is described by Marx as entfremdung, or estrangement, from the gattungswesen (lit. “species-essence”), or human nature, as caused by the stratification of social classes (Marx 31, 66), the cracks through which Bob has inadvertently fallen.

Throughout much of the first part of the book, a frequent point of reference for the narrative is to Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis (Strieber 101). The novella depicts the strongly-similar situation of a salesman who finds himself transformed into a monstrous vermin (Kafka 3) and experiences the desolation of ostracization by an uncaring world. This is important, as The Metamorphosis, the story of which parallels the ostracization experienced by Bob in his transformed state, distinctly contrasts with The Wild in the depiction of both the fates of their main characters and their treatment by their families. While The Metamorphosis’ Gregor Samsa ultimately dies in the face of the isolation and abuse by his own family (Kafka 89), Bob, throughout his ordeals as a wolf, never lets go of his human consciousness (contorted as it is by his experience as a wolf), nor does he lose the attraction of his human family, as they follow him from afar to the northern Northeastern United States. This shows Bob to be one who rejects the false consciousness enforced by human ostracism and pathologization, adapting to the alternative mode of living in which he fends for himself and projects his most vivid dreams come alive.

Monica, meanwhile, personifies much of the damage of the false consciousness, as she attempts to provide her earnest diagnosis and support to Bob without understanding the root of his inner estrangement. Engels describes this approach as seeking a “more remote process independent of thought” (Engels), which is exactly not being done by “so-called thinkers” like Monica, who pathologizes Bob’s inner estrangement to the bitter end of her professional life and “works with mere thought material which [s]he accepts without examination as the product of thought.” Indeed, at their final session together, Monica comes to the realization that “her science, in seeking to penetrate the heart, locked the heart,” Bob feeling that “she had just at this moment discovered her own fraud” (Strieber 87).

As the book pushes onward, the narrative of Bob in his wolf state also becomes an unwitting, romantic reflection of his environment. Through his ordeals, he reflects the oppression and violence of the environments through which he finds himself. He finds himself caged in a kennel cell, perilously aware of the stench of death which pervades the atmosphere. His acute sense of smell becomes a discomfort for him as he even smells the fear of those around him, arising as “stench like acid wax” (Strieber 117).

His ordeal in the forested wilderness of northern New York places him in the midst of a pack of wolves, an hierarchical structure determined largely through violent tests of strength between members and reinforced by the harsh atmosphere in which they live. However, as structured and intimidating as the pack is to outsiders like Bob – “by degrees [..] realizing that he would not be welcome here” (Strieber 424) – the mobility within the classes of this pack is fluid and their usage of collective action in order to preserve both their young and their resources is exemplary of their level of economic knowledge. In this environment, in which he is not estranged for his new species, Bob finally begins to reconcile with his unconscious, the depths of which continued throughout his life through condensation (Dobie 59) of desires into the symbol of the wolf.

Bob’s unconscious desires, however that they manifest, are regulated by his families. Cindy, who often takes the unwitting role of the disciplinary superego, as she often calls him from the depths of his most intense dreams “in a shrill voice” (Strieber 11) and reminds him of his obligations to his human family. Kevin, and the pups who he has with his first wolf mate, also take the role of the superego, having regulatory effects upon his initial desire for reconciliation with his wolf self and later upon his despair over their future in the wilderness. Furthermore, as he watches the growth of his pups, he internally rejoices as he notices one of his pups aligning a line shape from a group of sticks, demonstrating a sense of constructing shapes at an assumedly-human level – “Made a line! They had to live!” (Strieber 479); this is a manifestation of his superegotistical sense of reward (Dobie 58) for not abandoning his progeny. The fusion of his cautious human mind and his wolf self act as the ego, balancing the id of the wolf self with the prior experience of humanity and human expectations. He eventually extends this experience to his wife and son as he transforms them into wolves of respective age (Strieber 491); in this act, he has finally regained both communicative and physical access to his family, and has also, ironically through his ordeal, become reconciled with his human nature, with his consciousness in a fuller state. In this way, he accomplishes a revolutionary symbiosis of the human mind and non-human body, and establishes his world in the outside.

In conclusion, The Wild manages to weave both psychological and socio-economic phenomena into a fantastic, ecologically-biased tale of human survival and reconciliation, both within and without. The alienation which plagues Bob through much of the book is painfully and painstakingly explored for what it is and for its causing agents, and he seeks an alternative from the outside world without ever exclusively recusing himself from his humanity, ultimately embracing and extending both the human mind and wolf body from himself to others. He becomes an agent of change by helping establish an alternative life for himself and others “deep into the freedom and safety of the wild” (Strieber 494).

Works cited

Dobie, Ann. B. Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston, Wadsworth (2012). Print.

Engels, Friedrich. Letter to Franz Mehring. 4 July 1893. Marx and Engels Correspondence. International Publishers (1968). Web. 6 Nov 2012.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marxist Internet Archive (1932). PDF file. 6 Nov 2012.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Planet PDF (1999). PDF file. 6 Nov 2012.

Strieber, Whitley. The Wild. New York City, Tor Books (1991). PDF file. 6 Nov 2012.

Shapeshifting as an Allegory for Sexual Desire in The Company of Wolves

Essays, To Export, , , , , , , , , ,

Harry Underwood
Film Analysis
NMAC 4481
10/18/2012

Shapeshifting as an Allegory for Sexual Desire in The Company of Wolves

In literary fiction, the shapeshifting trope is one of the more popular applications of fantasy to a large body of scenarios, ranging from horror to romance. As an act of fantasy, it also has strong cultural currency, as mythologies and folk tales emanating from China to South America have utilized shapeshifting for similar effects. As such a trope is largely fantastic and psychologically-impactful, it is little wonder that shapeshifting of entities or objects is often encountered in dreams. People like Sigmund Freud made it partly their life’s work to view dreams and dream acts such as shapeshifting and animal behavior as representative of the brain’s very structure and composition, and his emphasis upon the dreamwork as a means of dream interpretation has helped to redefine the dream state. Such imagery fits easily into the dream-like scenes and scenarios of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves, which utilizes various cinematic and psychological techniques in order to emphasize the shapeshifting of dream entities as both an allegory for sexual and orgasmic desires and an expression of the human dream pattern.

Sexually orgasmic imagery is evinced in at least one transformation in the film, as narrated by the grandmother. The gory transformation of the enraged lycanthrope ex-husband against his wife and his subsequent beheading results in the fall of his bloodied head into the vat of milk. The film’s slow-motion depiction of this scene dramatically evokes Freud’s theories on yonic and phallic symbolism, with the milk within the vat splashing fulsomely in reaction to the plunge of the werewolf’s head. The head’s subsequent final reversion to its human state upon its reappearance to the surface of the vat is emblematic of the ultimate realization of sexual release. However, the act of the beheading of the werewolf may also be emblematic of Freud’s statement that the “dream-work represents castration by baldness, hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading” (Interpretation 170), whereby the werewolf’s sexual desire for his wife, who is now prohibitive in her sentiments regarding him (an Oedipal reference to the “wrongness” of such a relationship between the inferior upstart and the motherly figure), have been short-circuited by the appearance of the new husband (a ‘fatherly” figure), one who is already able to assert his authority by having had children with her, resisted the werewolf’s headstrong advances and struck his wife in the face when she expresses fascination with the late werewolf’s disembodied visage (whereas the werewolf sought to do far worse to her in retribution for her remarriage).

In another segment of the film, slightly contrary to the trend from much of the film, shapeshifting is also utilized in the seeming taming, rather than unleashing, by one character of another’s sexual passions. Rosaleen’s shooting of the Huntsman, his subsequent transformation into his wolfish form, and his acquiescence to Rosaleen in his transformed state would be most emblematic of Rosaleen being able to repress her sexual desires. The Huntsman, outwardly, shows himself to be as cunning and gentlemanly as he can to Rosaleen, thus confirming himself to be a fulfillment of all that Rosaleen was told of both men and wolves by her grandmother and arousing her hackles. The camera posits this, climactically, as an oppositional moment between the two characters through repeated shots and reverse-shots, with Rosaleen being shown with lower-key frontal lighting in her fright. Yet, when revealed as the wolf underneath, he doesn’t pursue her further and sits at his position opposite to her; she realizes his station in the world and she finds herself less apprehensive against physical contact with the wolf. The high key backlighting of the moment, accented by soft fill light, helps to affect the display of new-found intimacy between the two characters. The lighting and camera work in this contrast between the two characters both before and after the Huntsman’s transformation help to identify the displacement of Rosaleen’s sexual feelings for the Huntsman from the “problematic” human form (one which was plagued by his striking yellow eyes in his semi-shifted state) to the “acceptable” wolf form (one which, in comparison to the other fantastic transformations in the film, is not shown as being especially ravenous, visibly showy or predatory, but accommodating to Rosaleen’s touch). Freud considered this to be “dream displacement”, in which “it is often an indistinct element which turns out to be the most direct derivative of the essential dream thought” (On Dreams 34).

The approach to the depiction of such transformations, or, more specifically, the resulting forms of such transformations and the sexual subtexts of their accompanying scenarios are largely influenced by the bias of the character. From the older and more soured Granny’s perspective, the bloody, hyperbolic transformation of the estranged werewolf husband reveals a churlish, fearsome creature underneath an uncontrollable, ungainly, haggardly humanoid guise, one that is wrought by frustration and rage. In contrast, Rosaleen’s werewolf is cheery, cunning and quite in control of his human guise, and is only brought to his own violent transformation through being physically, momentarily wounded. Underneath the guise, however, is the downcast, humbled figure of a gray wolf who is a stark contrast in behavior and depiction to Granny’s bellicose beast. This wolf, in fact, may be emblematic of Rosaleen’s entire diegetic time within the dream: shy, downcast and selective of to whom she will open her ears and heart, yet possessing of a yearning, unfulfilled potential sexuality which is innate to herself.

The importance of shapeshifting as a shift to a more animalistic state is key to understanding the sexual and wishful undertones of such events. As shapeshifting usually involves the changing of the physical image of an entity from one state to another, on dreams. The transformation of characters into other species is emblematic, superficially, of a core mantra of the film, that men are sexually-charged animals. However, as it is a young woman who holds the dreams depicted, Freud holds that such dreams “fulfilled wishes which were active during the day but had remained unfulfilled. The dreams were simple and undisguised wish fulfillments” (On Dreams 21). Granny, on one hand, represents an authority figure who represses such thoughts as loathsome and perverse, although Granny is an expression of Rosaleen’s fears of her own sexuality. On the other hand, Rosaleen utilizes men in the film as figures of both fear and admiration, those who are able to hide themselves in public yet contain the most rapacious desires, thus imbuing the transformations in the film with new meaning.

In conclusion, The Company of Wolves succeeds in exhibiting characters and their actions as composite conveyances of the relationship between both the most instinctual desires from within the human mind and the most rigid repressions which are integrated from outside. In particular, the transformation of the lycanthropes in the film best conveys the eruption of desire – be it violent or from behind the dream facade, while giving due importance and reason to both aspects. Through targeted lighting, cinematography and special effects, the film testifies to shapeshifting as a tool of wish fulfillment, sensory distortion and sexual desire in one’s individual dreamscape.

Works Cited

Company of Wolves, The. Dir. Neil Jordan. Per. Sarah Patterson, Angela Lansbury, and Stephen Rea. Henstooth Video (Video & DVD), 1984. DVD.

Freud, Sigmund. Interpretation of Dreams, The. 3rd Edition. MobileRead. 2009. Print.

–. On Dreams. New York, New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1980. Print.