Over the past few months I have found myself reaching for more Southern Gothic horror
simply because it gives readers the best of both worlds: a dark, grotesque plot with dark,
grotesque characters that are used to convey a bit of commentary on the more, umm, unsavory
aspects within Southern culture without the characters being too didactic.
Michael McDowell, in his debut 1979 novel The Amulet, utilizes such characters, providing readers with different points of view from the residents of Pine Cone, Alabama. It is through this point of view shift that has readers follow several characters as they fall victim to the amulet, allowing an understanding
each character’s individual thought processes as they succumb to violent, murderous rage, killing
anyone that is unfortunate enough to be standing in front of them.
A common attribute of McDowell’s novels that I have had the pleasure of reading is that
they begin with a small preview of the violence to come later in the novel, usually incorporated
as exposition that pushes the narrative forward, and The Amulet is no exception. At the start of
this novel readers are brought to a rifle training camp for soldiers destined for combat and
introduced to Dean Howell as he proudly explains that the training rifle he is holding was
manufactured in his hometown. He further explains how that rifle is lucky, not just because of its
origin, but because of the chance that it was assembled in a factory of which his wife, Sarah
Howell works. In typical McDowell fashion, Dean says this right before accidentally blowing his
face to bits in a gun malfunction, forcing Dean to return home covered in bandages and in a
vegetative state. It is Dean’s homecoming that I believe is the catalyst of the novel, for it
kickstarts a sequence of events dominated by the amulet.
The real protagonist of the novel is Sarah, not Dean, a young factory worker resigned to
the fact that her life will be nothing more than the wife of a nonresponsive, wounded husband,
and daughter-in-law of a very spiteful, miserable woman, Jo Howell. Jo Howell is an interesting
character in that she is absolutely unbearable, lazy, and believes that her mediocre son is far too
good for Sarah and the whole town of Pine Cone. In fact, she believes Dean’s injury is not
simply a tragic accident, and that is why she chooses to give the amulet to the man she deems
most responsible, Larry Coppage. Jo’s logic is that if Larry had chosen to employ Dean as
opposed to Sarah at the factory, he would not have been drafted in the first place, therefore Larry
deserves what comes to him. To a rational person, this is absolutely insane; Dean’s accident is
just that- an accident.
But Jo Howell is a spiteful old woman, and sadly Larry and his family are the first to feel the wrath of the amulet’s power after he is given the amulet during a visit to pay his respects to the Howell family. Under the pretense of it being a harmless necklace she no longer wants, Jo passes the amulet to Larry as a gift to his wife. Not thinking anything nefarious would come from this random gift, he gives it to his wife that same afternoon, the day concluding with the entire family having died a rather horrific death. And the Coppage family is just the beginning.
McDowell’s death scenes in this book are quite violent, and he gets creative with their, no
pun intended, execution. McDowell has the point of view bounce around from different
characters, specifically when a character is unlucky enough to be wearing the amulet. Through
their eyes, readers follow the rationale of the wearer’s anger, understanding where their anger
ignites to the point when it explodes. Because readers get that point of view shift as the amulet
carves its way through Pine Cone, it makes this novel so perfectly grotesque in a couple of
different ways. Yes, the level of gore and brutality of each kill is amazing, satisfying the
splatter-punk-lover in each of us, but it is the build up through that point of view that left me
unsettled.
McDowell’s writing is sneaky in the sense that readers will find themselves fully
understanding the logic of the killer, even to the point of justifying their sudden rage, simply
because he uses normal people with normal lives as his characters- his violent murderers. The
normalcy of each character is relatable, as we have all been annoyed with our partner or a child
or a friend, sometimes not realizing the magnitude of that annoyance until we, too, have reached
a breaking point… but hopefully none of us will ever encounter something as destructive as
Michael McDowell’s amulet.
Kacee Cooper
As an English literature teacher obsessed with words and phrases and the delicacy of their combination, I grew up reading many Jane Austen novels whose protagonists are well-spoken and even better on the page. I remember these characters expressing their truest feelings in the most thoughtful manner, detailing their love and desire for each other. But then I discovered horror. Just like any other creature with an insatiable love for the dead (and all the scary parts before and after it), I have found that profound literature isn’t something that exists only in classic literature.
