They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths, gray members of a congregation of nightmare; hark! his long wavering howl . . . an aria of fear made audible. The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the haunting presence of fear and the inevitability of suffering.
Angela Carter's quote delves into the deep fears that linger within the human experience, suggesting that fear can become an all-consuming presence, likened to shadows and wraiths. It implies that the sounds of fear echo within us, manifesting as a consuming anguish, and highlights the dread that accompanies existential suffering.
In practice
In a discussion about horror literature, this quote could emphasize the psychological depth of fear.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.
No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures. No ascetic can be considered reliably sane.
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.
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