Personified wild,/ reversion by destruction./ The inner darkness.HAIKUPRAJNA - (“The Wendigo”)
Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” is a fantastic example of classic literary horror, in that there is little to none in terms of ‘terrifying’ content beyond the inner darknesses within any bodily being. The plot follows a moose-hunting party, composed of a hunting guide, a shared-hallucinogenics author, his divinity-studying nephew, the party’s cook, and the nephew’s guide to the backwoods, who collectively encounter the Wendigo and suffer from their experience in the Canadian forest. The Wendigo is the personification of ‘the wild’, which is described as the hindrances toward human progress, and as a being that possesses others. The characters exhibit the restlessness that prevents the sustained focus required to create anything meaningful, along with a destructive ill-will toward humanity and our monuments.
“The Wendigo” makes a point, that this inner horror, this force-of-nature which we have evolved out of, is more akin to a reversion to the wild than a literal destruction; the true terror of their experience, rather than being a mythological embodiment of the wild, is the possibility of their experience being a case of mass hysteria which laid dormant within each of them.
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Until next time,
Allen W. McLean
