There's More Than One Monster in "The Yattering and Jack"

 

Timothy Sáenz

Blog Post – “The Yattering and Jack” by Clive Barker

Readings in Genre: Monsters

Spring 2021

MFA in Writing Popular Fiction


We have read only two stories, but when I add in the movies I have watched based on Clive Barker’s writings (the first two Hellraiser films, Nightbreed, Rawhead Rex, The Midnight Meat Train) patterns emerge in his characterizations and in the motivations that possess his characters, and thus in the way he creates monsters and the monstrous. With those ideas in mind, I will keep front and center the question imposed upon us: how might they influence our own writing.

One pattern that emerges from Barker’s writing is the presence of many monsters and/or the presence of characters who are defective. In “The Yattering and Jack”, for example, Barker offers the Yattering, a ghoulish looking demon at the base of an infernal hierarchy, his master, Beelzebub, and the quietly scheming Jack, who reminds me of a mobster who used to feign insanity to avoid detection and prosecution.

Though there is nothing wrong with Jack’s appearance, the story suggests he is the monster, that he has participated in occultic practices and has risked his daughters’ well-being to dominate the Yattering and become its lord, all the while lying over and over again to his daughters, planting them on the forward wall against danger. Jack has not overcome the spiritual hurdles his mother did when she died repentant in the arms of a priest.

Jack was playing a game with the Yattering all along, allowing his “perfect indifference” to engender underestimation, frustration, and desperation in the lowly demon. This most dangerous game comes at a heavy price: his wife’s adultery and suicide, the loss of his youngest daughter’s sanity, and the loss of his own soul. It’s as if he has been preparing his whole life for a stay in Hell, jockeying for the best position he could. He didn’t have to take that route. He could have enlisted the Heavenly Powers. Instead, his lust to dominate and win fuels his game-playing with the Yattering. At story’s end, he relishes the triumph of his skill over Beelzebub’s and compels the Yattering to say it, fully aware that heaven will not tolerate his direct contact with the demonic..

While not powerless, the Yattering comes across as a bumbling monster. He does not need to be feared any more than a significant human foe with murder or mayhem in mind. The Yattering can’t be taken for granted, but he’s not invulnerable. Despite his outward ugliness, the “demon” evinces his humanity. He cries, he gets angry, he gets tired, he gets bored, he gets lustful, he owns an invisible cerebral cortex that has been branded with Hell’s laws and instructions. He speaks with an Australian accent. He doesn’t know what heaven is precisely because he isn’t a fallen angel. He has never been to Heaven. The fallen angels have, and they cannot forget where they once resided, making the location so difficult to speak.

Nonetheless, the Yattering’s desire to dominate makes him a monster, too. Consigned to Hell, he is marked by its powers and only the negative characteristics of his lost humanity. The only fun he can enjoy is to toy with others and make them miserable.

In Barker’s universe, excessive, twisted, unimpeded desire, accompanied by knowledge of and indifference to the dangers and negative consequences likely to ensue, forms the germ of monstrosity. We see this not only in “The Yattering and Jack” but in, for example, the Hellraiser series. Frank’s lust drives him to escape the cenobites so he can be gratified. Julia ‘s lust drives her to murder so she can rejoin her adulterous relationship to her husband’s brother. Pinhead’s fascination with the LeMarchand box begins as a curiosity before accelerating into concupiscence.

Excessive desire drives the creation of other monsters, too. Dr. Frankenstein’s warped desire to become God by utilizing electricity to animate a man stitched together from dead bodies creates his monster. The defective android David’s desire to retaliate and punish both humankind (the race of his creator) and the engineers (the creators of his creator) fuels his creation of killing machine xenomorphs in Prometheus (clearly a double allusion to Frankenstein) and the wretched Alien: Covenant. Whether or not Ridley Scott will continue in that vein remains to be seen.

So what makes a monster a monster? For many, it is the appearance, an ugliness that strikes terror into its beholders combined with a lethal form that trumpets the ability to wreak death and destruction in the most savage and unnatural ways (as mentioned last week, the size of the creature, such as Rawhead Rex and King’s werewolf, the size of their heads, jaws, and teeth; the eyes, spindliness, and suction cups of Pinborough’s spiders). A monster is built to kill (the Alien xenomorph, the Jurassic Park velociraptor). The appearance reflects the monster’s animating principle, a ravenous rage or hunger (as with I Am Legend) with one task: to utterly obliterate human life and human souls.

The unnatural mode of a creature’s formation or existence makes a creature monstrous. Re-animation, transfer from one dimension to another, genetic mutation or manipulation, psychological manipulation, cross-breeding, fusing the organic with the cybernetic, spiritual degeneracy and perversion – all pave a path to the monstrous.

Barker has played with a number of these. In “The Yattering and Jack”, death and spiritual degeneracy, as well as the powers of Hell, have bestowed a new, demonic nature on the Yattering. This is implicit rather than explicit. However, as mentioned before, the Yattering is crippled by the leftover, bad aspects of its humanity. Likewise, Jack seems to have inherited his mother’s desire to sojourn in the occultic world but not escaped the depravity of it. She ultimately forsook it. By the end of the story, her son has not shared her regrets. Befouled by their desires, the Yattering has become slave to a new lord; Jack has cut himself off from Heaven. Hell awaits both.





Comments

  1. Ed DownesMarch 6, 2021 at 7:19 AM

    Hi Tim, I enjoyed your perspective on this reading assignment. I had looked at the motivation of Jack through a different lens but I like the points that you make.

    From my perspective, I had seen Jack in denial at first that anything was going on. As the story progresses, we find out that Jack had been studying the phenomenon that he was experiencing at the hands of the Yattering. He found its weakness, and then methodically exploited that weakness to take control and win against the Yattering.

    In your assessment, you paint a slightly different picture, which I like. You see, Jack as more premeditated and deliberate in his study of the occult and his motivations in his pursuit of the Yattering. You have given me food for thought in how I might consider this story.

    I also like your assessment of the style of Clive Barker. He is one of my favorite writers. I also like his defective characters and how he will many times show how the humans are just as evil and harmful as the monsters themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GlennaMarch 11, 2021 at 9:09 AM

    HI Timothy, I also liked your analysis of The Yattering and Jack. I agree with you that Jack was an expert practitioner of the occult, and was premeditated in his secret pursuit of the Yattering. I agree with your comment that excessive, twisted desires drive the monsters in Barker's work.

    I wonder if Jack thinks that Hell will be more to his liking than Heaven would. You might be onto something that he's jockeying for a position as a lord in that kingdom. I couldn't square the fact that he loved his daughters, yet was willing to place them in such danger.

    The Yattering was indeed a bumbling monster, and funny, too. I cracked up at the thought of him sitting there watching daytime tv.

    ReplyDelete

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