125
The Horla II
1. a. July 21 What conclusion does the narrator draw from all his strange
experiences? What conclusion does this entry suggest concerning the notion that
we are individuals and that we are free to do what we want with our life?
b. August 6-7 What happens to the narrator. On August 7, what new hypothetical explanation of his experiences does he now give? What prevents him from concluding that he is totally mad. Do you find his argument convincing? Why?
c. Compare how the narrator felt about himself in his yard on August 6 and how he feels about himself in his yard at the beginning of the diary on May 8. What has changed?
2. a. August 12-15 What has happened to the narrator’s power to act according to his individual desires? Is this freaky (uncanny)? Why? What does he truly fear? The correct translation of the fourth sentence of August 14 is : « In myself, I am nothing, nothing but a spectator….”. What has happened to make him feel that he is nothing? Why does he question the existence of God? What does his house now represent for him (as opposed to on May 8)?
b. August 15 What similarities are there between his present experiences and those of Mme Sablé under hypnotism? and the differences? What is the narrator indirectly saying about “suggestion,” whether by society’s leaders, another human being, or an invisible being? When the narrator concludes that the Invisible being exists what happens to the fantastic from his point of view? As a reader, are you convinced that the invisible being is the definite source of his experiences ? What other explanation might you hold onto? Is he necessarily fully conscious of himself as he said earlier?
c. August 17 What does the narrator imagine in these pages? If it is true, what are the consequences for humanity? Why do you think the narrator is so angry that the invisible being is reading the book on invisible beings that he is reading? Why is the narrator reading the book? What does he fear losing now? What else might the invisible be reading?
3. a. August 18-19 What is the new strategy on August 18? Why is he so excited by what he read in the Revue du monde scientifique? How does he explain his experiences now? Why does he say that the reign of man has ended?
b. August 19 If the invisible being is a metaphor for real powers in the contemporary world, powers that manipulate what we think and do, what would these powers being? What the does the short story seem to be saying about them?
c. When the narrator describes the superiority of the Horla and other possible creatures over human beings, does he sound afraid? What emotion does he seem to be feeling? How is his relation to the Horla changing? How might we explain this change?
4. a. August 20 (this a second passage marked August 19 in the original French) What happened to the narrator the previous evening. What does this experience suggest about:
his statement on August 7 : “if I were not conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it with the most complete lucidity”?
his power to say that he is not mad?
his identity (the power to see, say, or know who he is)?
the identity of the Horla?
about who is writing the narrator’s diary?
b. The translator has changed the second passage marked August 19 to August 20. How might you explain that at this moment of writing his diary, the narrator marks two passages, referring to different days, August 19?
c. September 10 What did the narrator do to his house the previous night? What were the seemingly unintended consequences? How has the narrator’s relation to his house changed since the first entry on May 8?
d. Comment on the description of the flames in the first part of the paragraph “I looked…their arms!” What do the narrator’s metaphors suggest about what he really wants now? Is this necessarily his desire? If we recall what his house meant to him at the beginning of the story, in destroying his house, what and whom is he symbolically destroying?
e. If the Horla indirectly represents hidden forces within society, what does his victory possibly say about society’s fears near the end of the nineteenth century? If it represents hidden forces within the human mind, what does it possibly say about society’s fears near the end of the nineteenth century? [Marx, who published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, had a strong influence on socialism and workers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Freud will publish his first work on the unconscious in 1899.]