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

168Demonic Texts and Textual DemonsThe cathartic ending of The Exorcist as a demonic text is necessarilyalso tragic. Karras faces in the end his daimonic impulses and dares to confrontthem, and to recognise the demonic conflict as his own. This particulartragedy does not end in eudaimonia; the power of the daimonic is representedas too destructive for integration into Karras’s conflicted identity as aman and as a Christian. His spiritual integrity is salvaged, but only in thedeath of his body. The dualistic conflict is represented as a fundamental riftin the ground of the self; full self-recognition also means self-destruction.My analysis of The Exorcist has focused on the role of Father Karras, and onthe ambiguous “textual self” that this novel constructs. Like Karras, who istrying to find faith in the love of God, but is continuously possessed by disgustand hatred towards the body and the material world, The Exorcist attemptsto “make a positive statement about the God” but ends up demonisingthe human condition.The demon possessing young Regan effectively articulates conflicts inidentity, but not Regan’s. She is a medium for the anxiety towards the feminineand the corporeal to burst out. It is the abject relationship of an insecurelymale and religious self to his own, rejected and repressed desires that,in the final analysis, possesses the pages of The Exorcist.The next chapter analyses Anne Rice’s vampire novels and changes thepoint of view to the “other side” – that of the monsters themselves.