There would be a big difference between a piece titled “The Book of Job as Horror” and “The Book of Job is Horror”. One would present a horror hermeneutic, a way of reading, the other would claim to uncover something innate in the book. Roger Schlobin’s 1992 article, “Prototypic Horror: The Genre of the Book of Job”, is the latter. It uses horror theory not to read into, but to uncover what's there.
Schlobin lists three critical elements of horror:
1) A distortion of cosmology;
2) A “dark inversion of signs, symbols, processes, and expectations” (p. 24);
3) A monster-victim relationship.
Already we can see that Schlobin’s horror taxonomy blends cosmic horror and entity-based horror. I think Schlobin writes about horror, not specifically cosmic horror, because he treats the entire book in his genre analysis, rather than focusing on parts of the book, and a broader genre more easily encompasses more of the book. My own position is, first, that the Book of Job is a mess of genres, horror and cosmic horror among them, and second, that entity-based horror can participate in cosmic horror by using the techniques of cosmic horror, and perhaps through embedded-ness in a cosmic horror tale. But all of that is a discussion for another day. For the moment, let us accept Schlobin's taxonomy.
Citing H.P. Lovecraft and Northrop Frye, Schlobin makes the bold claim that in “all of horror’s refractions, the aberrant world or distorted cosmology” is a necessary characteristic (p. 24). [Uh oh! A caveat. Be careful not to equate the distorted world of horror with a distorted cosmology, and thereby allow the distinct cosmic horror genre to be swallowed by the blob of 'ordinary' horror.] The world must begin normally, as it does in Job, and morph into something distorted and chaotic. In addition, there “must be the futile hope of success, triumph, and/or escape” (p. 24). Though there are cries for justice and spots of hope offered throughout the Book of Job, these are crushed and discredited, and Job remains trapped within an incomprehensible world, a distorted cosmology.
Schlobin identifies evil as cosmic inversion, also necessary for horror. Job presents the inversion of love and friendship, and the inversion of the principle of retribution, punishment for wrongdoers. Job’s relationship with divinity is inverted, from covenant to betrayal. Nothing Job hears from his friends or from the whirlwind “present him any clarification, direction, or explanation” (p. 26). In Job and in the horror genre, all expectations of the normal world are violated; there is a corruption of meaning. Rosemary Jackson says horror empties the real of its meaning. In Job, not only is ordinary meaning inverted, it is replaced by new meaning, meaning that is “repugnant to the victims and attractive to the monsters” (p. 27). Moral order is replaced by no moral order, justice by an absence of justice, a rational God by an irrational God, comforting friends by those who enjoy watching us suffer.
Like a modern horror audience, Job’s friends “gloat over the agonies of the privileged” Job as he is destroyed by the monster (p. 29). The monster of the piece is Job’s God, who, like the monsters of horror, is “blatantly oblivious to any human sense of order, ethics, or morality” (p. 30). Beyond monstrous, the God of Job is alien, wholly impersonal, wholly other, and inexplicable. Job is helpless in the face of the monster’s invasion, lacking any control or freedom. His suffering is compounded as he cannot understand anything that is happening. He has knowledge but not comprehension.
Schlobin argues that the reading of Job as “wisdom through suffering” comes from the commentaries that “encrust” the book, not from the book itself (p. 35). The Book of Job reveals to us the “non-human”, “the void”, the “truly hideous”, nihilism and the violation of “all sanctuaries and sensibilities” (p. 35). Readings of the book that assume rationality, order, and benevolence “slap layers of insulation and disguise over it” (p. 35). Like the more horrible of horror, there is no happy ending for Job. There is no meaning in his suffering; divinity is an invading alien.
Reference
Schlobin, Roger. (1992). “Prototypic Horror: The Genre of the Book of Job.” Semeia 60, 23-38.
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