How Weird "The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter" Is

-

If you’re looking for a dark story that is equally weird, “The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter” is the one to choose. Right off the bat, the title tells us that something strange is afoot. This short story, written by Angela Carter, is filled with beautiful language, dark imagery, and strange themes, such as incest, executioners and hypocrisy.

            The story starts with an executioner executing his own son for an incestuous relationship with the executioner’s sister. The character of the executioner is also weird in his own way. He always wears his executing mask and never (I mean never) takes it off. He also lives his life above the law and doesn’t fear punishment. The executioner partakes in weird and horrific actions, such as having an incestuous relationship with his daughter and eating eggs that were almost ready to hatch, so they are filled with calcified beaks and feathers.

            If it weren’t for Carter’s poetic language, I would have found this story much harder to get through because of it’s disgusting topic. There’s a great juxtaposition between the language of the story and the topic. It’s as if Carter can see the world and she’s both enamored and disgusted by it –like a scientist. It almost makes you think the executioner has no choice, but to be with his daughter once you hear about how horrific everyone else looks and behaves.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Literary Speculation

-
Image
"The Aquatic Uncle" "The Aquatic Uncle" is a strange story in that it doesn't really write in genre and more takes some elements from genre, but does stay mostly literary. When I first read the story I found it to be more of a folk tale. While the message in the beginning was hard to distinguish, rereading and talking about it in class gave me a better understanding of the story. While the story has fantastical elements, it takes a scientific idea and weaves it throughout --evolution. The story delves into things that come on land and go back into the ocean, like whales. It was interesting because there was a family reunion twist on the story that was also explored. The entire time I read this story I was imagining a cat and a frog being together. The author relates out knowledge of humans and we try to put it together in our head and he uses animals as stand-ins like most tales. This story is not dark or grim, but rather amusing and charming. She finds
Read more

Cyber and Steam Punk

-
Image
"Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is a story that just makes you think. There's a constant switch between points of view, yet at the same time it's not switching. By listening to these cassette tapes we're able to gather a sense of what a person has done. The time of this story is a bit confusing, as well. We constantly bounce between present day, the past, and a completely different place in what could be the present day or the future. I found it neat how there is really only one character in this story (Parker,) but we are able to get other characters through the holograms. There's a great contrast between the rotting United States (in the future of course) and his dreams through these sensory tapes. The structure of this story was very confusing at first, but upon a second read it's a bit easier to understand. The setting is pretty great as well. This dystopian future where people use sensory holograms as a form of escape and a drug and the rain is a
Read more

Satire and Sci-Fi

-
Image
I listened to the first hour and a half of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Each week tops my favorite thing that I looked at for that week. Although it's a fun listen, it does touch on some political topics in a satirical way. Right of the bat, the protagonist is having an issue with his city officials because they are trying to take his house down to build a new road. This bit is taken even further when the protagonist says the only way he found out was by going into a dungeon with a torch, that had all kinds of "beware" signs just to get to the file that would alert him of the change. This is something that commonly happens in our world today. The want for progress and new things that are supposed to better our world are often hidden from us, do not better the world, and actually inconvenience us all. The icing on the cake with this example is when they go as far as to explode the planet Earth because in space they are building a new space way
Read more