The Yattering and Jack
I am assuming most of you do not suffer from a psychosis, but let's just say, at the start, The Yattering reminded me a lot of the things I hallucinate with my illnesses. In fact, Jack reminds me a lot of myself at the beginning. I zone out, don't bother with things, don't care what how other people live as long as they aren't intentionally hurting someone in the process. (Well, cheating I can never look past. It's a pretty rough road to go down when you're cheated on.) But in general, I really do not care 99.999% of the time because what is the point?
I find the loneliness of the Yattering to be humorous. (I feel like I see all misery hilarious. It seems I have been able to point out the humor in everything weird so far.) It gets upset when the postman has no mail to drop off because it desperately wants to bother someone, anyone to keep itself entertained. Like, I understand it feels stuck in this going no where cycle, but also being alone is nice. Maybe I feel this way because I barely get a time where voices or hallucinations aren't there.
It is tough to drive an already "insane" person out of their mind. And because of that, I feel bad for the Yattering. I mean the poor demon resorts to fucking with and murdering most of the cats brought in for replacement of the other dead one by Jack's nonchalant self. Can I also mention Jack just cleans up the dead cats? At one point, he even blames dogs, and well, considering my experiences, I get it. Until we find out what Jack is really up to, then the Yattering wins my heart entierly.
I also feel bad that the law of minor demons is basically to wait until the soul is released. Unless it gets assigned someone suicidal, I can only imagine the torture of being trapped in the way it is trying to drive a seemingly mad person over the edge. I also feel for it when it appeals to Beelzebub. It wants to die. I have been there. Am currently in a pretty rough spot myself. There are a lot of sympathies I have for this poor little demon. Very weird, I know. I also think the little guy is rather adorable. The majority of its facial expressions are cute, even the angry ones. How dare you, Barker.
The story builds up that Jack's mom sold her soul then conned her way out of an eternity of damnation. However, when your contract is up, in most of the lore I have read, the hell hounds come for you, or whoever you promised the soul of to the high demon. So, it is a bit confusing how she wiggled her way out of that. It is also equally concerning that she had damned her next of kin with no shame. Take it like a woman.
The Yattering is also a minor demon mad at the limits of his able-allowance. It is like the wealth structure of America. Unfair, but also, keeps certain people up, and prevents others from getting up, even when they deserve it. You can't allow a minor demon the same level of law as a major one, or else there would be no wage-gap and glass-door effect, and they all could have potential to cause mayhem in any way that does not separate them from Beelzebub. Despite that, the Yattering clearly thinks his turkey idea is enough for a promotion - can't say I disagree with him either.
Then the readers are hit that Jack knows about and is playing the Yattering. That he knows all about the order of demons, and their different abilities and capabilities. Despite the Yattering's unawareness of this, he does pretty good at spooking Amanda and Gina to the point where Jack has to one-up to keep his secret. But, it falls short thanks to the effort instilled by the little Yattering. This Jack, I guess the real Jack, is not like me much anymore at this point. I admire his cunning, but no longer feel like I relate to him as a character. Why would someone want to pretend they are not sane?
It is funny, here I go again, that now the demon has broken the laws and loses its allowance to hide. It is now stuck being visible to Jack. Jack takes advantage of this by ordering the Yattering around, acting like he is its master now. The final scene with the iconic phrase we see repeatedly, "Que sera sera" - "whatever will be, will be." And of course, I laughed at that in combination with the faces of both the Yattering and Jack.
Rawhead Rex is more up my alley, but I really enjoyed this graphic novel despite its lack of gore.
I find the loneliness of the Yattering to be humorous. (I feel like I see all misery hilarious. It seems I have been able to point out the humor in everything weird so far.) It gets upset when the postman has no mail to drop off because it desperately wants to bother someone, anyone to keep itself entertained. Like, I understand it feels stuck in this going no where cycle, but also being alone is nice. Maybe I feel this way because I barely get a time where voices or hallucinations aren't there.
It is tough to drive an already "insane" person out of their mind. And because of that, I feel bad for the Yattering. I mean the poor demon resorts to fucking with and murdering most of the cats brought in for replacement of the other dead one by Jack's nonchalant self. Can I also mention Jack just cleans up the dead cats? At one point, he even blames dogs, and well, considering my experiences, I get it. Until we find out what Jack is really up to, then the Yattering wins my heart entierly.
I also feel bad that the law of minor demons is basically to wait until the soul is released. Unless it gets assigned someone suicidal, I can only imagine the torture of being trapped in the way it is trying to drive a seemingly mad person over the edge. I also feel for it when it appeals to Beelzebub. It wants to die. I have been there. Am currently in a pretty rough spot myself. There are a lot of sympathies I have for this poor little demon. Very weird, I know. I also think the little guy is rather adorable. The majority of its facial expressions are cute, even the angry ones. How dare you, Barker.
The story builds up that Jack's mom sold her soul then conned her way out of an eternity of damnation. However, when your contract is up, in most of the lore I have read, the hell hounds come for you, or whoever you promised the soul of to the high demon. So, it is a bit confusing how she wiggled her way out of that. It is also equally concerning that she had damned her next of kin with no shame. Take it like a woman.
The Yattering is also a minor demon mad at the limits of his able-allowance. It is like the wealth structure of America. Unfair, but also, keeps certain people up, and prevents others from getting up, even when they deserve it. You can't allow a minor demon the same level of law as a major one, or else there would be no wage-gap and glass-door effect, and they all could have potential to cause mayhem in any way that does not separate them from Beelzebub. Despite that, the Yattering clearly thinks his turkey idea is enough for a promotion - can't say I disagree with him either.
Then the readers are hit that Jack knows about and is playing the Yattering. That he knows all about the order of demons, and their different abilities and capabilities. Despite the Yattering's unawareness of this, he does pretty good at spooking Amanda and Gina to the point where Jack has to one-up to keep his secret. But, it falls short thanks to the effort instilled by the little Yattering. This Jack, I guess the real Jack, is not like me much anymore at this point. I admire his cunning, but no longer feel like I relate to him as a character. Why would someone want to pretend they are not sane?
It is funny, here I go again, that now the demon has broken the laws and loses its allowance to hide. It is now stuck being visible to Jack. Jack takes advantage of this by ordering the Yattering around, acting like he is its master now. The final scene with the iconic phrase we see repeatedly, "Que sera sera" - "whatever will be, will be." And of course, I laughed at that in combination with the faces of both the Yattering and Jack.
Rawhead Rex is more up my alley, but I really enjoyed this graphic novel despite its lack of gore.
Again, the graphic novel is my favorite version of this, though I did read the short story first.
ReplyDeleteThe little bugger is so adorable in the graphic version! I'll admit this is the one I did not actually read the story version of because I became attached to it with the images.
DeleteI would have liked to have see a little more about the rules regarding the "selling of souls." If the mother could sell the soul of her son to Hell, how does that work? A baby is born and can have its soul sold, then grow up to adult and have to pay the bill? Is that only possible with offspring or blood relatives? Can you sell the soul of your annoying neighbor? What circumstances have to be in play for one person to be able to prosper from selling the soul of someone else?
ReplyDeleteI agree that Jack was no longer relatable once we found out he knew what was going on. It did set the scene for an interesting contest of wills, but the manner by which we were told (basically... oh, Jack knows what's going on and all the demon rules and all that) just kind of blew his character out of the water for me. Perhaps if the Yattering had seen signs that Jack was possibly studying up on demonology or something... websites, borrowed books, bible discussion invitations... I don't know, just something that would explain why he knew what he knew... then I'd have been much more comfortable with it. Even if the Yattering wasn't able to piece the clues together but the reader was, that would work. But just changing him like that in the middle of the story was the only real let down for me.
There is specific lore where people can sell the soul of their first born son to the devil in return for something. I see it a lot in things that relate to infertility, the parents exchange the inability to have kids for the soul of their first born.
DeleteI wish it would have been Jack was out of his head and the little bugger couldn't figure out how to get past it. As far as selling the soul, the hell hound gets a sold soul regardless, so I am not sure how the Yattering got into it, but it was an interesting take on it. I really like Barker because of his morbidity, so I always have a hard time really finding anything bad about his works.
I thought this story had been adapted as an episode of "Monsters" but it was "Tales Form The Darkside". They both ran at about the same time so I got them mixed up.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0717006/
So in addition to GN now you have television version too!
I like the Yattering character and I think his frustrations are entirely human and easy to relate to. Obviously, very few humans are trying to collect souls for Beelzebub, but we can at least easily relate to the Yattering's feeling of being trapped. It looks like he feels the way people feel when they're trapped in a job doing grunt work without much reward. They just do it because they have to and suffer the whole time. His way of causing annoyances would relate to the drama people create in office settings to stir up the otherwise mundane day.
ReplyDeleteI think this may have been a typo for you, but I have never read anything where humans hunt down the sold souls?
DeleteI never sympathized with the Yattering. I understand the being bound by law and told what to do, trapped in a house, all sucks, but to me it felt more like a child whining than an adult being tormented and trapped.
ReplyDeleteI agree that I wanted more gore. The scenes with the cats could have been amped up to be something good, and I was waiting for the big scene at Christmas, which I felt could have been made better if we took out the reanimated meal and skipped straight to the Doctor Who like spinning christmas tree of death.
I don't know if I would have wanted more of the scenes with the cats. As you'll see in the coming weeks, a lot of my opinions on good works drastically change once an animal is killed. The Thing is a perfect example. The dog scenes deeply disturbed me and made me want to vomit because animals have such a special place in my heart.
DeleteI'm so with you on the animals thing, Alexis. I loved The Thing but the part with the wolf just killed me.
DeleteDid you enjoy the ending? I had really mixed feelings about it... I though the Yattering was such a great character and I wasn't a fan of the twist where we learned Jack knew about his demon houseguest the whole time. I guess I appreciated that Barker acknowledged Jack might be a little evil—he knows he's probably not getting into Heaven now, and doesn't care—but I kept feeling like Jack was pretty despicable for traumatizing his daughters like that. I get that his soul is on the line, but as a dad, shouldn't his daughters be his first priority? He felt pretty selfish. I would have liked him and the story much better if he'd just gone ahead and let the Yattering win; both because I wanted the Yattering to succeed and because then I might have felt some sympathy for Jack, too.
ReplyDeleteI must say, my streak of not like endings continues with this one. I felt too bad for the little guy to be happy with how Barker ended it.
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