The Fury of the Damned

by Gigi 

Many people once believed that the stone gargoyles high atop old churches were the trapped souls of people who hadn't lived a virtuous life.

I'd look pretty furious, too, if I'd been trapped in stone.

The purpose of this interpretation of gargoyles was to convince people to attend church so that their souls wouldn't end up like the unfortunate tormented figures. 

Here are a few gargoyles I photographed that look furious and frightening enough that you can understand why people might have believed these creatures to be damned souls.

Gargoyle at Westminster Abbey in London whose eyes seem to follow you wherever you go.

Gargoyles at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. These fellows sit on a lower level than the most famous gargoyles of Notre Dame, and have a more unnerving appearance.

Martha Loves A Furious Franchise

The Fast And The Furious franchise has grossed nearly one billion dollars over four movies while costing 1/4 as much. I'm sure the impending release of the fifth on April 29th 2011 will push revenues over that mark, and I haven't even begun to count up DVD or merchandising sales.

How can you reconcile the film's success with its critically panned driftless characters and cheesy one-liner script?

Well, sure there's this:

(thanks Google Images)

But actually, the reason is more simple.

It's AWESOME.

People underestimate awesome. Me included. When I write, I get caught up in meaningful symbolism or character journeys or blah blah blah blah, but really, as a reader and a viewer, I want awesome. Lots of awesome. I want to jump out of my seat because of an unexpected or perverse twist. Because of a surprising stunt.

The filmmakers also seem determined to give fans exactly what they want, no matter how far fetched.

Seen the same car stunts? Throw in some drifting!
Miss the core character's hiatus? Bring them back!
Think the same characters keep doing the same thing? Add Dwayne The Rock Johnson to the mix!

When creating your own vision, your own story, it's worth stopping and thinking - what's the MOST AWESOME thing that could happen right now? Whatever you originally planned might be what the character needs, might be what the story deserves, but is it AWESOME????? If not, just consider throwing it in. For fun. A billion dollars is just around the corner.

A Quiet Fury

by Lisa Hughey

So I was driving along mentally composing ideas for this topic, thinking about the physiological effects of fury (I’ll get to that later) when I noticed the SUV in front of me had a rainbow shining over the back windshield.

Pretty.

But I continued to drive along, moving onto thinking about another aspect of fury which is the ability of small children to induce a certain level of fury in their mothers. And yet, if you threaten their child, that same mother will turn on you with a ferocity unmatched.

And then, I saw another rainbow on the windshield of a truck coming toward me. Pretty again. Before I can even move on to the next potential slant for my fury post, another rainbow!

Beautiful rainbow picture courtesy of www.climate.met.psu.edu

By now I’m completely distracted because it hasn’t rained here in days, the sun is shining, none of the vehicles are wet. So where are these rainbows coming from? I can’t figure it out. Then I decide I really don’t need to know, I just need to appreciate them. My point being, I’m more about rainbows than fury.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t ever get furious.

My kids have been the target of my fury, the red-faced, spittle spewing, so angry you feel like your brain is going to burst right through your skull and splatter all over the walls fury, when they drove me to think brink of craziness. It’s only happened a few times, but I’m here to tell you that I happened to glance in the mirror as I stalked toward my son, screaming, just in case he couldn’t hear my already off the charts decibel level (he’s usually the one inducing me to insaneness) and I looked scary.

My totally East Coast WASP-y upbringing leaves me nearly incapable of expressing fury most of the time. A quiet tightening of my chest until the effort to breathe is in peril and the thud of my pulse in my forehead as my brain struggles to hold in the rush of sheer emotion is usually accomplished with nary a word being uttered. But just because I don’t scream and shout doesn’t mean that underneath my cool, composed appearance I am not seething with fury.

I have a quiet fury. I don’t scream. I don’t throw things-even if I do feel like it. I don’t break things. I don’t cut with mean words. I just...disengage.

Overall, I’m a live and let live person. My first inclination if you do something I don’t like is to wonder why you are having a bad day. I might even ask if everything is okay. I think sometimes I get taken advantage of because I’m so easy going. And by focusing on what is really important (like rainbows), I let a lot of things go. But at some point, and the tip is never the same, I expect to be treated properly and if you’ve tipped over the edge. We’re done.

In the words of the mafia, “You’re dead to me.”

That doesn’t mean I won’t ever talk to you again. Far from it, I will be polite, smile, ask how you are, and as soon as I’ve met my social obligation, I will walk away. And you will never, never, never be my friend again.

Lisa

Furious

L.G.C. Smith

Unlike all the nice Pens, I was born with ready access to fury. Anger, too, its more selfish cousin, but injustice has always brought me roaring to my feet with fire shooting from my eyes as I wield my tongue like a blade. Fortunately, I was born into a family of yellers, somewhat anomalous amongst the ethnically British, so furious self-expression, if not precisely encouraged, wasn’t actively discouraged, either.

Thus it took me longer than most to understand that channeling the Furies wasn’t going to win me any popularity points with my peers. I was taught that an open and straightforward statement of anything was the most respectful way of dealing with conflict negotiation and emotional complication. Communicate clearly. Treat people with respect. It’s okay to be furious if the situation warrants it, such as on behalf of underdogs or the downtrodden.

Fits of temper were not okay. Being mean to people because I was mad was not okay. Being selfish was not okay. But if there was bullying? It was okay, possibly even required, to defend the bullied, even against adults. Injustice was to be pointed out with the assumption that it was clear to all. Once identified, it could be stamped out.

It’s not always obvious, but fury can be idealistic. Even naïve. Ever notice the purity of a five-year-old’s fury? There are no shadows for a furious child, no grey corners where one interrogates ambiguity or other people’s perspectives. If she is betrayed, if she or someone she loves is wronged…fury flies.

It can be difficult to distinguish between anger and fury so most people never try. Anger is so strongly stigmatized, and so threatening to most of us that we don’t cope well with it in many ways. We’ve turned the responsibilities personified by the Furies of old, justice, judgment, and punishment, over to the state, which puts individual expressions of fury in potentially murky legal waters. That’s not a bad thing. But it shifts defining fury into the realms of personality and away from any sense of it as having social or communal relevance.

This is hard because fury is personal and visceral. It demands action from us. From our bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits. Western cultures fear furious individuals for good reasons, and most of the time, we tamp down fury and move on. But sometimes, as Sophie so articulately showed us in her post last week, we use that force in constructive ways. We see clearly. We up our commitment. We don’t give up.

Maybe, as a society, we need to be talking more about how fury might not be synonymous with anger, perhaps starting with our five-year-olds. We might seek to come to better terms with the consequences and uses of judgment, generally considered the opposite of tolerance, when sometimes, that may not quite be true. Can we make tolerant and compassionate judgments? Can we be furious in tolerant and compassionate ways?

Culturally, we have, for the most part, abandoned fury to cranks and abusers. To the unstable and the unwell. To high histrionics and inappropriate expression. To hormonal shifts and futile rage. It is then left to us as individuals to cope with figuring out what constructive purposes fury might serve in our own lives, and that is no small challenge.

The Messy Business of Being Human

-Adrienne Miller


There’s an amazing moment at the end of Macbeth, just after he has learned about his wife’s death and just before he is about to learn of his own imminent defeat. He’s a changed man at this point in the play, so different than the one we met in Act one. He is a man who has given in to his ambition, and it has wrecked him. He has forfeited the last flicker of light inside his soul to be king. And none of it mattered.

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing

It’s the soliloquy of a defeated man. One who can look back and see the events that have led him to this bitter, violent end. 

The writer in me loves this scene. I love it because it’s a heartbreakingly elegant culmination of all that has come before. I love how, like cogs meshed in opposite gears, each dark emotion brings about dark action until Macbeth is pulled to his inevitable demise. And I love that we, the audience, get to watch it all unfold so neatly. Cause in real life, we don’t.

It’s one of the most appealing aspects of being a writer. We get to loom high above these worlds we create like omniscient gods, knowing where every angry word or loving touch will lead, but in real life we stumble around as blind as anyone.

What we can see so clearly in other people’s lives, we can only see shadows of in our own lives. How fear leads to isolation. How anger turns to regret. How joy can bring about resiliency. These were the themes and lessons I found so attractive when I started to read fiction.

Each book told a different story, but the core was the same, being human is a messy business. We love and hate, strive and fail. That shiny widget you thought you wanted, turns out to mean nothing. Meanwhile, the one you threw away to make room is the one you miss. We all get an hour to strut and fret. We create our own sound and fury, but in the end what it signifies is up to us. 

The Furies, Plural

The Furies, winged and with serpents for hair

(Author's Note: Blogger had one of those exciting, late night, "let's jettison the entire essay" moments last night, so the following was dredged up from a very sleepy memory. Apologies in advance if it seems a bit lacking...the original was much better. Feeling furious about it...)

Long before Dirty Harry, Billy Jack, Harry Brown or any of the other (mostly male) vigilantes went around shooting people on screen, there were the original pissed-off avengers...the Furies.

The Furies were three sisters, Greek goddesses of righteous vengeance: Tisiphone (avenger of murder), Megaera (envious wrath), and Alecto (unceasing anger).

Permit me to call them The Awesome Sisters.

The Furies were especially prone to avenging the rape and murder of women, children, and gay men. Violence within families was of special interest, so the father who molests his child will feel their wrath, as will the man who rapes his wife, or the mother who murders her children. They will be pursued, and haunted, and persecuted...forever.

The sisters also had a soft spot for the most vulnerable in society, like beggars and strangers. And they reserved special horrors for those cruel to animals.

The Furies were said to be relentless and without mercy. Once they have been summoned they will persecute their victim until he either commits suicide or succumbs to madness. Terminator-like, the Furies never give up, never go home. Their prey will lose everything, all their possessions, their loved ones, their health. Hunted criminals are even wary of sleep, for fear of nightmares. And nations or communities that harbor these criminals are themselves at risk from the wrath of the vengeful trio.

From these truly awesome, vengeful beings we derive the words fury, furious, and infuriated.

In typical Greek fashion, the Furies were said to be horrific to look at, with snakes for hair and blood dripping from their eyes. But later, more romantic-minded painters portrayed them with grimaces, but with rockin' bods:

Orestes, being punished for killing his mother

After they showed a little mercy to Orestes, the Furies were changed into the Eumenides, or "the kindly ones", by Athena. Apparently they had tempered their rage just a tad, so that rather than pursue a criminal forever they might relent once he showed true remorse and repentance.

Barbara Stanwyk, looking awesome and furious, in The Furies, 1950

It is said the Furies will never die, so long as sin exists in this world. I expect they're in for the long haul. But in my book, they're the most entertaining vigilantes around...except for Stella Hardesty, that is.