CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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Yes, you make some good points… I personally love that Blatty created more Exorcist material in Legion book/Legion novel.
Interesting, too, since in the film, Morning is mostly incapacitated, Kinderman takes on the role of exorcist – sort of. He has come to “faith” in believing in the demon’s reality, and in the end he sets Karras “free”. True, it’s Morning’s “fight him, Damien, fight!” That weakens the demon and strengthens Karras, but it is Kinderman’s bullets that kill Karras’s body at the key moment, liberating him from possession – in a loose sense, an exorcism…
Captain, I think your ideas are very explanatory. Just as the demon attacked Merrin’s pride, so too the demon suffers from his own kind of “damned” (unrepentant) pride.
At first, the demon thinks that it is Merrin he needs to defeat. When Karras enters the scene before Merrin does, the demon cackles, “they sent YOU?!”, as if Karras was a mere unworthy “morsel” whose damnation was virtually certain vis a vis his loss of faith and treatment of his mother.
Yet as the exorcism proceeds, it becomes clear that for all the power of the ritual, and for all of Merrin’s saintliness, it’s not working. Only when Karras offers himself does the demon deign to put himself at real risk.
There is definitely something at stake when Karras offers himself. Plausibly part of what’s at stake is an issue of pride. Surely the demon can defeat this “faithless scum”, this mere morsel of a priest. Merrin died before the demon could defeat him. Karras was the only priest left for the demon to vanquish.
As you said, the temptation was just too much to resist, and plausibly Pazuzu’s pride led him to what turned out to be a fatal error: taking on this angry priest with the chipped boxer’s face.
The demon is cautious/taunting… up to a point. When its pride is challenged, the demon is willing to put itself at risk (losing its cautiousness), and speaking objectively (modifying somewhat the effects of its tauntingness). Hence the demon tells Merrin without artifice, “This time you are going to lose.” And after Merrin dies before the demon can defeat him, the demon complains that he, the demon, _would_ have won had Merrin not dropped dead.
Throughout the story the demon has a habit of letting the witnesses come bit-by-bit closer to himself and his own truth. He would be nowhere without his audience. In order to keep them around – though he “mixes lies with the truth” to confuse them – he must dangle some hints about his power and his identity. Although the bait he offers them is, as you say, couched in taunts, there is a core authenticity in some of the taunts – they are the demon’s self-revelations. And part of its self-revelation is its hubris, its vaulting pride, which ultimately is its downfall.
Iamnoone – some good thoughts there, but questions linger:
If this was the demon’s plan all along, why was the demon surprised when Karras, not Merrin, took up the case? Blatty clearly presents Merrin as the demon’s target, based on their past confrontation. He also presents the exorcism as the crucible of Karras’s redemption, but that is another matter.
Karras, in contrast to Merrin, is much lower on the demon’s “possibles” list – the demon is dimly aware of Karras’s faith-doubts and mother-guilt, but these don’t figure in the possession at all, and quite incidentally, until Karras actually enters the case. From the demon’s perspective, Karras is a tempting morsel, nothing more; from Blaty’s and implicitly “God’s” perspective, the exorcism itself will “bring us together” – not Karras and the demon, but Karras and God.
The demon’s motivation – and the explicative purpose of the whole Prologue in Iraq – is the luring Merrin into another fight – one that he may lose. This is why, when permission for an exorcism is given, the demon groans “Merrin…” not “Karras…” Naturally, the demon would be pleased to snare Karras – that’s his nature as a demon. But the target is Merrin.
Ditto the demon’s fury over Merrin’s premature death – if the demon wanted Karras to act according to “plan” (i.e., sacrifice himself to the demon’s advantage), then Merrin’s death would be _good_ news for the demon – because it got rid of a useless pawn and left Karras as the last surviving priest to defeat. But on the contrary, the demon roars that it has been cheated by the death of Merrin, against whom he has an ancient grudge. The demon has no grudge against Karras. He despises Karras and wants him to “lose”, but as a secondary victim who more or less stumbled onto the scene. (Again, this is the demon’s point of view – he does not know that may see Karras’s entry into the case as a divine intrusion.)
You write, “as we learn later in Legion”… but a crucial question remains – namely, if Legion can really be considered anything but a tack-on to the original novel.
The huge inconsistencies between the Legion book and The Exorcist book – plus the inconsistencies between the Legion book and the Legion film, argue strongly for the tack-on theory. The Exorcist stands by itself as whole without the need for further explication or development.
Moreover, what we “learn” from Legion depends entirely on what version we follow: the novel or the film. In the Legion novel, Blatty – true to his intent in the original Exorcist novel – presents Karras as having deservedly passed on to glory. In the Legion book, it is only Karras’s re-animated _body_ that appears – his true self, spirit, soul, has gone to God. The glint of triumph Dyer sees in the dying Karras’s eyes is, in Legion, affirmed as a true and justifiable interpretation. Karras has saved Regan, cast out the demon, and merged with the God he has been seeking throughout the story.
In the Legion film, on the other hand, Blatty breaks faith with his own premise.
In the film, Karras has not deservedly passed on to glory. On the contrary, foul demons have seized him, taken him to hell, mercilessly tormenting him. He is not with his God. He has not been rewarded for his self-sacrifice. The beauty of his redemption has been trashed for schlock-filmmaking and studio capitulation. Therefore I believe that it is unhelpful to view The Exorcist in the light – or better, the shadow – of Legion.
I agree with most of your reasons – but for me the main reason is that Blatty himself gives no indication that BD is a molester or has any aggressive feelings or intents toward Regan. Blatty’s presentation is that BD’s death is an unmitigated tragedy. No one, including Regan, is the better for his death.
However, in real life we know of myriad examples of “smart”, famous people who do egregiously stupid things, from shoplifting to drunk driving to child abuse. If – and only, theoretically IF – BD was molesting Regan, he would have been one of those “smart”, famous alcoholic imbeciles who put everything at risk because of their obsessions. But having said that, I reiterate, BD did NOT molest Regan.
Thanks for the tip! Parenthetically, I wonder why they changed the cross in the film from the cross in the novel. The novel’s crucifix was “bone-white”, while the one used in the film was a much more standard black-with-metal-corpus – which was the kind most usually used by nuns and exhibited in Catholic schools…
Thanks for letting us know, Captain. Good luck with the move, and many happy years in your new domicile.
Aw, shucks, Blizzi… If I had a really creative streak I would have attempted a true haiku.
Yeah, lunuso, I always thought the excrement was deposited via a bag, for sheer handiness and stealth and swiftness!
Blizzi, I think you spelled Sufi correctly! I need to explore Rumi’s poetry some time, I think he was a Sufi mystic.
Magus, yes, she would be motivated to put the clay on the statue quickly. That is why I said she would have carried packaged excrement into the church to save time – especially, as I noted, if the statue desecration, the pornographic altar card, and the altar dung incidents all occurred on the same night. You may be picturing the overdone phallus and breasts from the film, which presumably would have taken a significant amount of time to do. However, the book does not specify that the clay alterations to the statue were anything as elaborate as shown in the film. Stealth, secrecy, and timing all point to a quickly done job. Moreover, had Regan been away from the MacNeil house for any great amount of time, surely she knew she would be missed – another factor arguing toward stealth, secrecy… and speed.
pseudo-haiku…
southwest wind demon
blowing through russet child
lurking in dark church
dropping poop plops!
