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The Horla And The Damned Thing By Guy De Maupassant And Ambrose Bierce

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Guy de Maupassant and Ambrose Bierce are linked through the ambiguity of the monster of their stories. “The Horla” and “The Damned Thing” involve a hunt of sorts. “The Horla” is a subtler hunt, where the creature does not seek out opportunities to harm the narrator. “The Damned Thing” is a tangible hunt, as the reader witnesses the recounting of Hugh Morgan’s death. While both stories are both plausible and implausible, “The Horla” is about a creation of the mind, which is inherently scarier, while “The Damned Thing” is, in fact, a tangible monster. “The Horla” and “The Damned Thing” have an invisible being at the center of the story. In “The Horla,” the being is very humanistic. The narrator notes the Horla drinks water, and picks flowers, and the narrator believes the Horla reads, just as he does. “[His] armchair was empty, appeared empty, but [he] knew that [the Horla] was there, He, and sitting in [his] place, and that He was reading… But before [he] could reach it, [his] chair fell over as if somebody had run away from [the narrator]” (Maupassant, 14). This is just one example of the narrator feeling the Horla’s presence and challenging him, only for the Horla to slip out of the narrator’s grasp. Unlike in “The Damned Thing,” the Horla does not seem to have malicious intentions towards the narrator, simply mimicking the actions which the narrator demonstrates. In “The Damned Thing,” the monster is just that: a monster. William Harker recounts the Damned Thing thrashing in the bushes, and he sees “[Hugh Morgan], down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side” (Bierce, 883). The Damned Thing, in behavior, is far more animalistic than the Horla, and seems intent on attacking the two men. “A scream like that of a wild animal” supports the animalistic tendencies, and the injuries Hugh Morgan sustains show an animal attack (Bierce, 883). While both creatures have plausible and implausible characteristics, the stories utilize these characteristics in different ways. The plausibility of the two creatures affects the terror the reader experiences. The narrator of “The Horla” and William Harker both note

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