Last Friday, I posted a Horror/ Dark Fantasy video on Stephen King’s 2019 novel, The Institute. I’m also preparing another video based on my favorite work of Horror. (I can’t tell you which one yet 🙂 Look for it the last Friday of October.) Both novels feature child protagonists. Which prompted the question in my mind:
What are the reasons for, and advantages of, using children in the horror genre?
I’m referring to adult fiction, not young adult. Because even there, children often play a central role in the genre. But why is that? As I considered it, several compelling reasons stood out. Let’s look at three of them, and some examples of how these have played out in the pages of horror literature!
Children Represent Our Deepest Vulnerability
Using children as protagonists won’t appeal to everyone, but a child protagonist is so much more than just a young character. He’s a proxy for the vulnerability of adults. And judging by the popularity of these characters, many readers sense this at some level.
Unless you’ve lived a magical, glitter-infused existence, you probably know that though we may try are hardest, our efforts may still not pay off. We can exercise regularly, eat only organic produce and still face a horrifying diagnosis at an early age. We can drive carefully, buckle our seat belts and still be blind-sided by a semi.
I apologize if that’s depressing, but I write it in order to illustrate something most people understand: how little control, if any, we have over our lives.
The loss, or absence of control is the source of ulcers, panic attacks and nightmares for many. Making it a great basis for the Horror genre in which we want to highlight and address those kinds of themes – the ones that make us uncomfortable and which we can so easily avoid avoid.
Children often represent the weakest individuals in humanity. They are largely dependent on others and are physically, emotionally and psychologically undeveloped. They represent the part of ourselves that feels the most vulnerable, susceptible to forces and circumstances against which we have no control.
Who does the demon attack in The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty? Eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil. Why her? Because the story isn’t about her. It’s about her atheistic mother and the priest, Father Damien Karras, whose faith is faltering. They’re the ones who need to learn that the spiritual world is real and that it’s not to be trifled with. Regan is simply a symbol of weakness against those unseen powers, a warning to those who don’t know how weak they actually are.
Children Intensify the Consequences of Adults’ Actions
If you’ve watched my videos, you may have heard me mention Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. In her writing craft book, she mentions that the horror genre should always include a secret sin, meaning some unresolved failing in one of the character’s lives. That character can also be a larger entity – a government or military, or even a global organization. It’s that secret sin that symbolically manifests as the opposition to the main character.
In the case of child characters, it’s rarely the child who’s the source of that secret sin. Rather, it’s the child or children who often have to face the consequences of the secret sin of adults. And that’s crucial, because using a child character exaggerates the severity of our failings as adults. It’s one thing to see how a adult is harmed by another adult’s actions. But it’s another to see the lives of the most innocent in society experience the horrifying fall-out of the terrible choices that adults sometimes make.
Swan Song by Robert McCammon is a great example of this. The titular character, Swan, is a bewitching young girl, gifted with the ability to bring about growth in the earth. In the beginning of the story, she is a tragic character, focusing on her beautiful tiny garden alongside the trailer where she lives, while her mother and her mother’s boyfriend abusive relationship rages in the background.
But before long, the world collapses under nuclear war and she is caught in a struggle to survive amidst greed, famine and environmental hardship. Of course, she is the one able to help the world heal and recover, but it’s not without great trials that she didn’t earn or deserve. And her helplessness highlights the consequences of the terrible actions of the world’s most powerful entities.
Children Give Us the Most Hope
Lastly, working with child-characters can give readers the most hope. It seems odd to say that pitting a child-character against seemingly insurmountable foes can do this. But, when the child prevails, it does. What that victory says to readers is that no matter how powerless we may feel – and actually be at times – it is possible to face horrible odds and to succeed.
Despite the popularity of Marvel movies, it isn’t as spectacular when a superhero hits a home run as when the little near-sighted, dyslexic boy next door faces the same odds and comes out ahead. Then our hearts soar. Because that speaks to us the most closely. We aren’t gods. We’re fallible, mortal, vulnerable. But we need hope. We need to know that there’s a chance for those who don’t have any superpowers.
If you’ve ever read Summer of Night by Dan Simmons, you know what it is to see true horror manifest in the lives of five twelve-year-old boys. One of these is exceptionally intelligent, but the others are merely a well-rounded mix of relatively normal kids. None have any supernatural abilities. And yet they prevail. They go to war against something that seems too great for even adults to vanquish and come out ahead. It’s a beautifully nostalgic book within a pervasively horrifying tome of suspended tension. Simmons’s writing is brilliant.
And the children’s victory makes it doubly poignant.
Conclusion
There are plenty of books with adult protagonists that I count among my all time favorites. But some of my all-time favorites feature child protagonists. And now I can see why these sometimes impact me the most strongly. Because they speak to our greatest weakness while simultaneously holding out the most rewarding victory.
If you love them as well, don’t be afraid to use young characters in your adult fiction. Those characters might just be the ones that convey your theme the most clearly.
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