George Miller’s 1979 movie Mad Max has turned into a cult classic film. Given a rather straightforward storyline, the Australian picture, however, features various innovative qualities and unprecedented achievements especially when considering the time of its release. Although Mad Max was a low-budget production, the film turned out to be a huge success and contributed to the worldwide recognition of the Australian cinema. Beside its breathtaking action sequences, innovative car designs and a high degree of explicit violence, the movie also transcended the boundaries between already established, traditional film genres such as action, road movies and science fiction. Moreover, the picture appeared to become the starting point for the highly successful career of its main actor, Mel Gibson. Consequently, Mad Max is writer and director George Miller’s and co-writer Byron Kennedy’s groundbreaking work that developed a blend between Australian and American elements of cinema. Its outstanding position becomes obvious in the movie’s success as well as in its two widely popular sequels, Mad Max 2: Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).
Inhaltsverzeichnis
1. Introduction
2. The Setting
2.1 The Location – A Small Town on the Borders of Siberia
2.2 The Atmosphere
3. The Characters
3.1 The Hungarian Mesmerizer – A Personification of the Devil?
3.2 The Shaman – A South Siberian Magician
3.3 The Child – Reincarnation?
4. The Plot – A Mysterious Tragedy
4.1 The Story’s Truthfulness and its Function
4.2 The Symbolic Cloud
4.3 The Mesmerization
4.4 Mr. Izvertzoff’s Mansion – A Place Accursed by the Devil?
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
1. Introduction
Helena Blavatsky’s “The Cave of the Echoes” is a vivid and colorful piece of occult fiction that features mysterious settings, some bizarre characters and supernatural happenings. But what exactly lies behind this occult story and how is the author and the story related to the supernatural? Is the story’s purpose simply to entertain its readers or does it serve other functions such as the promotion of the author’s theosophical ideas and ideology? How does a more complex knowledge of the occult help one to understand the meaning of “The Cave of the Echoes” more clearly?
This paper approaches these different questions by referring to the setting, three major characters and parts of the plot of “The Cave of the Echoes”. Concerning the setting, it regards the story’s rather vague location and analyzes its atmosphere. The following chapter studies those three major characters of the story that are most obviously related to occult practices and therefore demand special attention: the Hungarian mesmerizer, the Shaman and the child. The fourth chapter considers the truthfulness and the function of the story, the symbolic meaning of the cloud and the procedure of mesmerization. Moreover, it tries to answer the question if the mansion of Mr. Izvertzoff is accursed by the devil.
The questions mentioned above are approached by regarding both Blavatsky’s theoretical theosophical works and her fictional literature. Her wide range of publications allows one to gain detailed knowledge and permit a thorough analysis and interpretation of “The Cave of the Echoes”. Certainly, this paper does not attempt to fully explain occult practices and happenings as Blavatsky’s literature partly does. It rather collects fragments of Blavatsky’s thoughts and experiences in order to gain a better understanding of the story’s meaning and purpose.
2. The Setting
2.1 The Location
“The Cave of the Echoes” takes place in “one of the distant governments of the Russian empire, in a small town on the borders of Siberia” (Blavatsky 2005: 68). A further reference describes “the little town of P-----“ (Ibid.) to be known for its wild and beautiful scenery as well as for the prosperity of its residents who are mainly owners of mines and of casting foundries. This rather vague description of the story’s location refers to an area that the majority of the story’s contemporary American readers were not familiar with. Such unfamiliarity creates a mysterious atmosphere by addressing the reader’s natural fear of the unknown. This powerful tool of creating fright has been widely used in other major works of occult fiction and related genres of popular fiction as, for instance, the location of Transylvania (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) implies.
Beside the cave, Mr. Izvertzoff’s aristocratic mansion is the central location of the story. On the one hand, one could argue that Blavatsky chose this location in the tradition of the haunted castle widely used in occult and even more commonly in horror fiction. But on the other hand, Helena Blavatsky was born with an aristocratic background herself (Goodrick-Clarke 2004: 2-3) which could also explain her familiarity and the eventual choice of this location.
As mentioned above, the other main location of the story is the cave of the echoes itself. Almost hidden between a pine forest, rocky hills and flourishing plants, the cave has an enormously big cavern and a number of additional chambers with deep natural basins (Blavatsky 2005: 70-71). In her literary work, Blavatsky touched the topic of caves in another writing entitled “From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan”. In the translator’s preface of the book, she describes this work as a “romance of travel” and adds that she grouped, colored and dramatized the facts and incidents of the story. Nonetheless, Blavatsky claims most of it to be true (Blavatsky 2003: I). The thorough descriptions of the caves that she travels on her trip strikingly resemble the cave of the echoes in its enormity and variety of chambers. The Karli Caves are portrayed to consist of
two stories of caves, in each of which are wide open galleries formed by huge carved pillars, and from these galleries an opening leads to roomy cells and corridors, sometimes very long, but quite useless, as they invariably come to an abrupt termination at solid walls, without the trace of an issue of any kind. The guardians of the temple have either lost the secret of further caves, or conceal them jealously from Europeans. (Blavatsky 2003: 68 ).
Furthermore, the most mysterious feature of the cave in “The Cave of the Echoes” is, as the name implies, the echoes. Interestingly, this phenomenon is mentioned in “From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan”, as well. Entering the Caves of Bagh, Blavatsky writes, “at our first word we all shivered: a hollow, prolonged echoing howl, dying away in the distance, shook the ancient vaults and made us all lower our voices to a whisper” (Blavatsky 2003: 235 ). Although Blavatsky herself explicitly doubts the truthfulness of the description of these events, her travel experiences in the caves of India obviously seem to have served as a basis or at least an inspiration for writing “The Cave of the Echoes”. “From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan” had been written in 1879/1880 which is twelve years before the “Nightmare Tales” were published. This fact underlines the claim above.
2.2 The Atmosphere
The atmosphere used throughout the whole story of “The Cave of the Echoes” can simply be described as mysterious. The beginning of the story explicitly foreshadows “a mysterious tragedy” (Blavatsky 2004: 68) which is about to happen. At an early stage, the author creates this mystifying atmosphere by mentioning the cloud (Ibid.: 68-69). Literally, it carries the symbolic meaning of uncertainty and can promise odd happenings.
Nevertheless, the atmosphere develops to become most complex during the climax of the story which is the mesmerization in the cave of the echoes. During this procedure, the cavern is illuminated with lights of candles and torches that create shadows. Also, the noises of the guests awake “the sleeping echoes” (Blavatsky 2005: 74) which, as the mesmerization begins, gradually become louder and eventually develop into a thundering roar (Ibid.: 78). This part of the story shows how sound works as a powerful feature to create a particular atmosphere. The music of the drums accompanied by the chant serves as an additional element of sound that helps to produce a mysterious impression. As the drums cause the echoes to emerge and rise in volume, they follow a certain development as well. At first, the mesmerizer slowly starts drumming and generates muffled notes. But parallel to the mesmerization and the drums, the Hungarian begins with “a slow chant, low, impressive and solemn” (Blavatsky 2005: 77) and the drums eventually become louder causing the echo to awake.
The mysterious atmosphere of the actual mesmerization is also influenced by a smell consisting of a “perfume of spicy odours” (Blavatsky 2004: 77) resulting in a seemingly clearer atmosphere. Moreover, the chant and the drums of the mesmerizer seem to attract a cold wind that comes from beyond the watered corridors as well as “a sort of nebulous vapour” (Ibid.: 78). As a final effect of the music, the formerly smooth surface of the water abruptly becomes agitated.
Summing up, the atmosphere during the mesmerization has two functions: one is to help creating a mysterious, strange atmosphere that results in a more dramatic perception by the reader. The other function and probably the reason for its existence in its particular manner is that the causes of the atmosphere are traditional and obligatory parts of the mesmerization process. However, the effects, which are the cold wind, the nebulous vapor, the awakening of the echoes and the agitation of the water, usually cannot be created this way in reality. Hence, they basically serve to create a dramatizing effect.
3. The Characters
“The Cave of the Echoes” features numerous characters. The major characters of the story consist of Mr. Izvertzoff, Nicolas, Ivan, München, the child, the Hungarian mesmerizer and the Shaman. Minor characters are the police inspector Col. S-----, the Old German artist, Mr. Izvertzoff’s brother, the other inhabitants of the town and the guests of the mesmerizer’s evening entertainment in the cave. Due to the fact that this paper analyzes features of occult fiction and theosophical ideas in the story, it is useful to focus on the more complex characters that one generally associates with magic, occultism and mystery. The following aspects will therefore concentrate on the Hungarian mesmerizer, the Shaman and the child.
3.1 The Hungarian Mesmerizer – A Personification of the Devil?
The character of the Hungarian mesmerizer first appears in the story in the middle of July. He is described as a tall traveler who is “preceded by a great reputation for eccentricity, wealth and mysterious powers” (Blavatsky 2005: 74). Before he arrived at the town of P-----, he is said to have lived in the North for a long time. He regularly organizes dinners and parties at which he always shows his Shaman of whom he is especially proud. The mesmerizer rents the cave of the echoes for an evening entertainment, submits the Shaman to cross-examination and tries to unravel the mystery of Mr. Izvertzoff’s disappearance by using a method of native magic. Eventually, he disappears.
At the end of the story, it is mentioned that the Police Inspector Col. S----- stays entirely convinced until his death that the Hungarian was the devil. Hence, the question arises if such an assumption would make sense for the development of the story. Actually, the mesmerizer is the responsible person for solving the mystery of who murdered Mr. Izvertzoff and punishes the murderer in the end. Thus, he could be celebrated as the hero of the story and referring to him as the devil lacks evidence in this respect. However, the Hungarian uses magic powers, kills Nicolas as well as his child and might be the one who burned down the mansion of Mr. Izvertzoff. Considering these facts, the conviction of the Police Inspector would make sense. Either way, a closer look at Blavatsky’s theosophical concept of God in his cosmic reflection opens a completely new argument of interpretation
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- Nico Reiher (Autor), 2010, Mad Max – An Australian Cult Classic, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/154849