Nightmare: "The Horla"

Have you ever had a nightmare where you were unable to move? to breathe? Did it feel like someone was sitting on your chest? If so, you were experiencing "Old Hag syndrome." Nightmare has been personified in many ways, but suffocation is a frequent one. In Guy de Maupassant's chilling short story "The Horla" (1887) the narrator believes that he is being choked in his sleep by an invisible creature. Is the Horla real? Or is it the personification of an illness?

Podcast Lecture: The Somniloquy

Reading:

Maupassant, "The Horla" (1887 version)

Questions:

1. What is the nature of the narrator's nighttime affliction? What are his nightmares about?

2. What is the significance of the Brazilian ship?

3. How does the narrator attempt to discover who is drinking his water while he sleeps?

4. What is the point of the hypnotist subplot that takes place in Paris?

5. What other supernatural or inexplainable events happen when the narrator returns home?

6. Who is the Horla, according to the narrator? How does he "see" him?

7. Explain the end: what happens?

Activities:

Visual Art Study-- Fuseli's "The Nightmare": Study Johann Fuseli's 18th century paintings of the nightmare. What do you make of the visual elements chosen to represent the experience? What is the attitude of the sleeper, the incubus, and the mare? How do they relate to one other visually in each of the versions?

1781 version. and 1782 version