Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

The Inarticulate Body: Demonic Conflicts in The Exorcist 151body and the “lower stratum” also have their ample expression in The Exorcist.The particular interpretation given to the demonic in The Exorcist combinesthe ambivalent and abject dimensions of the liminal in subjectivity toreligious thematics. All the wrongs and imperfections of the world are assembledtogether in Karras’s stream-of-consciousness, until his mother’spoverty, stinking socks and thalidomide babies lead in their random, carnivalesquelogic to the expression of extreme evil: the cruel killing of “a youngaltar boy.” Here, as well as in the last of the initial epigraphs, the religiousinterpretation of violence is suggested by its object. It is the violence towardsan innocent child, and especially a Christian child that The Exorcist ishighlighting. The implied reader should here pick up the cue, complete thesuggested connection and come up with the religious answer to the problemsof our existence – the spiritual, the Christian, the Good and the Godare the implied opposites of the manifest reality (the material, the anti-Christian, the Evil, the devil). This is certainly what the protagonist, FatherKarras, seems to be looking for. The actual reader is, of course, free to situatethis answer in a wider interpretational context, and to “read against” theways The Exorcist offers itself to be read. For a demonic text, such tensionsin reading might even be imperative.The demonic figures powerfully in the world of The Exorcist, and thereare but few chances to overcome its dominion. It is the hellish world of theconcentration camps’ smoking furnaces that stands in the background ofthis drama. The continuous, unjustified suffering of the innocent is a centraltheme; in the sequel, Legion (1983), Blatty uses the same motif – a youngblack (and mute) Christian boy is crucified with extreme cruelty. DetectiveKinderman (Kinder-Man, “children’s-man”: name suggesting a sympatheticcharacter) is ready to pursue his search for the source of evil to the highestlevels, literally: “I will find your murderer, Thomas Kintry [Kindermanthought]. Even if it were God.” 26 This will open up another possibility forinterpreting the transgressive excesses Regan’s demonic possession willreach; the repressed anger towards God, the Father. Freud applied his theoryof the Oedipal complex to the case of “demonological neurosis” topoint out, firstly, that God is a father-substitute – “he is a copy of a father ashe is seen and experienced in childhood” – and, secondly, that the Evil Demonpersonifies the corresponding feelings of fear and anger towards the father.27 Father Damien Karras is a deeply demonic figure also under Freudiananalysis: his thoughts reveal a male psyche torn between idealised childhoodlove towards God the Father, and the rage and humiliation evoked by theimperfections and evils that actual life turned out to be. A psychological interpretationat the level of character psychology would suggest that Karras’sanger needs an outlet, and that the demon would offer a particularly suitable26Blatty 1983, 20-21.27 Freud SE 19, 85 (Freud 1923/1978). Ernest Jones discusses the Devil from theFreudian perspective in his On the Nightmare (1931/1959, 154-189).