Joyce Carol Oates Challenge: Haunted

Joyce Carol Oates' Haunted is an excellent collection of stories that, for the lack of a better word, are "scary". However, these are not "scary" in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft are. These tales are much more like the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone with a twist at the end. As other reviewers have stated, her stories range from traditional scary stories that could to told on Halloween, to creepy tales with psychological implications, to horrific passages of violence.

The majority of the tales center around the relationship between a woman/girl and an abusive man. In most of the stories, the man and woman are related to each other though sometimes it takes a while to figure out their relationship. Though when reading these stories for the first time, the plots and characters may seem harmless. The terrifying elements lay just below the surface. Unlike in other scary story collections, Oates rarely shows the reader what is exactly to be feared. Instead, she describes and fear and panic surrounding the event and lets the reader infer. This technique makes the tales even more grotesque and horrific because there is no defined conclusion and it is up to the reader's imagination.

Oates also uses a variety of techniques that have become familiar to her readers. In one story, she begins each sentence with the word "because" which makes the tale almost seem like a free verse poem. Another story is segmented with each passage numbered as if the entire story is a list of some sort.

Though descriptions of the tales may sound interesting, the majority of the stories are incredibly upsetting. Instead of murderous hitchhikers or clawed murderers, these are stories that burrow deep into the reader's psyche and wreck havoc. These are not for readings around a campfire or for someone who wants chills on Halloween. The kinds of chills that these stories give are far deeper and are not easily ignored.

-DLP