Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#45: Anyone is Prone to Fall into Insanity

As once said by the Joker in the one-shot graphic novel The Killing Joke, "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy."  This quote rings true into the hidden fears of most people, who are terrified of the monster that they might become when given one strong push.  We fear ourselves more than anything else crooked and unjust in this sometimes pleasant, sometimes cruel reality of ours.  Hence, we wear a sanity mask at all times to coat our seemingly irrational thought processes, fearing the day we lose it and become insane.

  The fear of insanity has been for centuries a prevalent theme in the horror medium, which has crafted various classic stories based off of our own inner fears of losing it.  The novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a prime example of a writer using their own fears of insanity to fuel the narrative.  In this classic horror novella, the kindly Doctor Jekyll creates a serum that allows him to unleash the innermost workings of his ID; the primal desires inside someone's head that for the most part are usually kept under a strict lock and key.  This unleashes an alternate persona of the doctor, Mr. Hyde, who is primarily based off of these primal instincts and uses them to spread terror throughout  London's streets.  Doctor Jekyll quickly becomes horrified by the growing brutality of Mr. Hyde's transgressions and stops taking the transformation serum in a quest to regain his morality.  However, the transformations resume anyway, with Doctor Jekyll slowly being consumed completely by the insanity Mr. Hyde has to offer.  The only way Doctor Jekyll can escape becoming the insane Mr. Hyde is through death, a chilling metaphor for how many people feel trapped by the inner workings of split personality disorder and ravaging mental distress in real life.  The novella is a strong reflection of the fear of insanity and loss of morality that comes with it, a very common ideology that has become a prevalent theme in horror writing.

  However, what many writers and people do not realize is that the fear of insanity is for the most part an irrational itch that lives inside all of us.  In reality, the power of the human soul is a lot stronger than most people give it credit for.  With the strong emotional control many people contain inside their body and minds, falling into insanity is almost impossible.  Unless the emotional distress was at a state in which no type of therapy or support from friends could truly repair it, the human sense of morality for our everyday actions would immediately set in and halt any chance of insanity from inflicting that said person.  Insanity is far from the inevitability The Joker in The Killing Joke makes it out to be.

  In fact, The Killing Joke story itself makes the strong argument that insanity is not so easily obtained by the average moral person.  This is proven to be true after the Joker fails to make the kidnapped Commissioner Gordon fall into insanity like the Joker desired.  Despite causing strong mental distress to the commissioner by paralyzingly his daughter Barbra Gordon in front of him and torturing him with explicit imagery of his daughter's suffering, he still leaves at the end of the day with his sanity in check.  Although he is mentally scarred by the imagery he was forced to witness, his morality remains unchanged, wanting to arrest the Joker for his crimes versus wanting to outright kill him like the Joker had expected.  In truth, turning someone insane is a much harder process than most people realize and the moral fiber inside most living people will prevent them from falling into its inky tendrils.  A strong moral compass can kick insanity straight in the butt.

  It is this truth of the human psyche that horror fiction tends to forget about almost completely.  By focusing solely on the universal fear becoming insane has on most people, writers tend to neglect mentioning the true power of the human spirit.  The human spirit is strong enough to fight off most foes, including those mental ones that threaten to taint our morality for the rest of our days.  It is a strong shield that has the potential to empower those who hear about its vast power in a strong narrative, yet still is not touched upon often due to the irrational grip insanity has on most people's fears.

  Authors in the horror genre need to better address this truth about the strength of the human spirit when crafting their complex narrative webs.  They can still haunt the audience with a strong chilling narrative, but need to give the audience balanced moments of hope with this truth about human morality.  To achieve a great horror story, despair has to exist alongside the hope.  Otherwise, how is the audience going to feel satisfied at the end when nothing but darkness fuels the entirety of the narrative?