Nightmares

The last book to really give me nightmares was Night by Elie Wiesel. We read it in 8th grade, and I've always sort of resented my 8th grade teacher for making us read it. I am as pro "read whatever books you want to, banning books is ridiculous and horrible" as you can get, but I don't think that book was anything that any of us could really handle as 13 year olds. It is such an important book, but I've never revisited it since 8th grade. I couldn't sleep for about two weeks while we were reading and studying the Holocaust, and I was plagued with the most graphic nightmares I've ever had. I don't think I'll ever forget this passage from the novel:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

How are you even supposed to be able to read that and not have nightmares? I cannot elaborate on Night at all, and to be honest, I never know what to say when people ask me what I think of it. I understand why it's so incredibly important, but the selfish part of me just wants to set it aside and never think of it. Some things are too horrific. That's one of a select number of books I've had to just put aside. 

I bring this up because of the current book I'm reading; Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. It's pretty disturbing, and I've made a point to only read it during the day when I'm around people, because I don't want to have any nightmares about it. The concept is creepy: it's based off the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and focuses on the character Quentin, who is also the narrator (he is referred to as Q__ P__ in the book) who becomes obsessed with the idea of performing a lobotomy on someone to turn them into a virtual "zombie" who will always love him. 

The murders are depicted in gruesome detail, and Joyce Carol Oates really gets into the mind of a serial killer, which is extremely frightening, to say the least. As one reviewer put it, "What Joyce Carol Oates has done is not write about madness but write in the voice and with the logic of madness itself. The horror of the novel is in the very absence of horror, as we enter the mind of a murderer who has no trace of what we like to call conscience as he depicts the people he manipulates and the sexual savagery he perpetuates upon his victims." 

I've only sparsely read Joyce Carol Oates; I remember her best for her short stories, particularly "June Birthing," (not my thing) "Life After High School," (probably my favorite) and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (creepy but good). I'm going to wait until I finish this book to see how I feel about her. I think it's very interesting how she is able to completely inhabit her narrator, and she makes me feel uncomfortable because it's hard to hate the main character. Because to him, what he's doing is not wrong, and he does not have any sort of moral compass whatsoever, and comes off almost sympathetic at times. 

I never know what to think of myself when I feel that way, and similarly, when I watched a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer last year for psychology class, I felt horrible for feeling sympathy for the man. He savagely murdered 17 young men; he was a monster. And yet, whenever I hear about anyone getting bullied when they were young, I cannot help but feel sympathy. For Dahmer's mother as well- after Dahmer was killed in prison, she said, "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" 

On a lighter note (this is the darkest blog entry I've posted in a while; I'm not in a sort of dark mood or anything, it's very odd), I was discussing Joyce Carol Oates with my dad, and his response was, "Eh, she kind of makes me uncomfortable," and when I asked why, his response was, "Well, I don't know, I feel like I'd be having coffee with her, and I'd leave to go to the bathroom, and when I got back she'd have published a new anthology." I was not familiar with how prolific she truly is, I can be surprisingly ignorant that way, but after a quick google search, I understood what my dad meant. She's certainly published her fair share of novels and short stories, and I'm going to have to wait and see what I think of this in order to see if I want to read more of her stuff.