Unsettling atmosphere

[Zee.]

I've been reading a bit of Shakespeare lately, and have found a lot of his work to be incredibly disturbing. Little things, subtle things, that are effective in giving me the creeps,
e.g The horses eating one another in Macbeth, and the beginning of Hamlet when Bernardo comes to relieve the watchman, Francisco

It got me thinking about unsettling books. Books that don't have to be incredibly graphic, but books which unsettle you and make you think that something isn't "natural" or "right",

What books, if any, have contained "odd" passages etc, that have disturbed you and perhaps created a bit of fear in you?

[Helga]

I like those unsettling moments in shakespeare. you should read woody Allen's short stories, very odd and can be a bit unsettling, but very entertaining.

[JacobF]

The descriptions of sperm whale encounters in Moby Dick stirred me. "The Days of Perky Pat" by Philip K. Dick still terrifies me, even though there's nothing graphic or forthright about it.

Many parts in Hamlet put me on edge too. For some reason Macbeth didn't, except for Macbeth's famous soliloquy.

[Adagio]

Some that have disturbed me:

- Gloucester's eyes and Desdemona's silencing gives me the creeps.
- The murder of the old woman and her sister in Crime and Punishment.
- Ivan's anecdotes in the Rebellion chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, oh and the character of Smerdyakov.
- Various parts of Lolita.
- The Grapes of Wrath's ending.
- The laughing in the middle of the night in Jane Eyre.
- The subtle revealing of Paul's oedipal feelings in Sons and Lovers.

[kasie]

The end of John Barth's The End of the Road. I won't go into details in case anybody has not read it yet but I didn't see the denouement coming, though with hindsight of course I should have done: it shocked and saddened me so much, I could not get up out of the chair and when I eventually staggered downstairs to find a cup of coffee, my friends were so concerned at my haggard look, they kept asking me if I had witnessed some dreadful accident or something, which, in a way, I had.

[LitNetIsGreat]

* Cathy's hands coming through the window in Wuthering Heights.
* Certain sightings of the apparitions in The Turn of the Screw like the one just before she is going to leave.
* The blinding of the horses in Equus.
* The killing of the children in Medea.
* The painful realisation of the shortness of youth in Dorian Gray.
* The guardians at the gates of hell at the end of book II of Paradise Lost, especially the woman (in particular the hell hounds which retreat into her womb!)
* The bleakness in King Lear, the eyes being put out, the death of Cordelia and just the whole weight of it.

[wessexgirl]

The end of John Barth's The End of the Road. I won't go into details in case anybody has not read it yet but I didn't see the denouement coming, though with hindsight of course I should have done: it shocked and saddened me so much, I could not get up out of the chair and when I eventually staggered downstairs to find a cup of coffee, my friends were so concerned at my haggard look, they kept asking me if I had witnessed some dreadful accident or something, which, in a way, I had.

That sounds intriguing Kasie, I've never heard of that book. It sounds a very powerful denouement. I found an incident in Jude the Obscure very unsettling. For those of you who have read it, you probably know which one I mean.

Some great choices there Adagio and Neely, particularly Lear, Macbeth, Crime and Punishment and Wuthering Heights.

[LitNetIsGreat]

That sounds intriguing Kasie, I've never heard of that book. It sounds a very powerful denouement. I found an incident in Jude the Obscure very unsettling. For those of you who have read it, you probably know which one I mean.

Yes of course, that one for me too.

[kelby_lake]

Les Enfants Terribles- the implied incest
Parts of Lolita
The bit in Titus Andronicus where Lavinia is raped and has her tongue and arms cut off...eww...

[Barbarous]

In The Tin Drum by Günter Grass has some pretty 'unsettling' scenes, such as the horse head full of eels on the beach. Also, some pieces of Baudelaire as well, such as the poem titled 'Une Charogne'.

[prendrelemick]

Guildenstern and Rosankrantz being dragged off and immediatley put to death after delivering the letter.

[amarna]

The Piano Player by Elfriede Jelinek, actually the whole book from the first to the last page. I never read something more vitriolic than this.

[mono]

The bit in Titus Andronicus where Lavinia is raped and has her tongue and arms cut off...eww...
I wanted to mention this one, too, to limajean, especially if she thinks parts of Hamlet and Macbeth have disturbing parts - watch out for Titus Andronicus! :eek2:

Certain sightings of the apparitions in The Turn of the Screw like the one just before she is going to leave.
Same here - creepy!


As for me, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty scared the bejesus out of me, containing such sick, twisted images that the film adaption did not dare touch. I read it at an age that my silly, immature mind still somewhat superstitiously believed, or at least questioned, things like possession and exorcism - a lot of hogwash now, but it frightened me at the time.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Poe certainly unsettled me in a few parts - all of that decapitating and dismembering - yikes! Some parts of his short novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, got quite disturbing, too, psychologically-wise, rather than in a gruesome manner - floating at sea, starving, questioning canabalism.
In such books as Crime and Punishment (the horse-flogging dream) and Death in the Afternoon, I felt a little sensitive to blatant and unimpeded descriptions of animal abuse; Dostoevsky intentionally portrayed it in a much more disturbing way than Hemingway, since Ernesto's sarcasm and awkward humor relieved a lot of that tension of reading of bulls and horses getting gored.