2.3 Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices as dominating in Neil Gaiman’s horror comics-tale “Baby Cakes”

Neil Gaiman’s story “Babies” is a horror story about the dark side of the human personality. Despite the fact that the story is very short and represented in a form of comics, it highlights the terrible human nature and striving for “adaptation”. People who for some reason have lost their animals, decide that this is not a reason to change the way of life and start using babies for the same purposes as the animals: consume as a food, testing dangerous drugs and chemicals and dressing into their skin. After all, according to most, babies is not a conscious being, they can not speak and barely move. However, at the end of the story babies also disappear. The work ends with the words “But we’ll think of something. Humans are smart. It’s what makes us superior to the animals and the babies. We’ll figure something out”.

That story creates an oppressive atmosphere and makes a reader to muse upon the human attitude to animals, to people and upon the human’s ability to adjust. Because under favorable circumstances these fictional events can easily become a reality, a frightening reality.

The story is told in the first person, but instead of single “I” the author uses plural “we”, thereby showing himself as equal with the majority, not condemning, but simply stating. In the story there are no dates, historical events or other hints of time or place of the events described.

If we take a look at the manner of presentation, we can see that the situation described with short, unextended sentences. Most of the events, emotions, and descriptions shown by verbs: “We missed them”, “And we used them”, “ Some of them we tested”.

On this basis, we can say that syntactic stylistic means prevail in this story. The very first sentence is an example of inversion : “A few years back all of the animals went away”.

There are plenty of examples of hyperbole in the horror-comic tale “Baby Cakes” by Neil Gaiman:

“Some of us thought that the world had ended...”

“Babies can’t talk. They can hardly move. A baby is not a rational, thinking creature.”

“Humans are smart. It’s what makes us superior to the animals and the babies.”

Hyperbole is used to create a strong impression, emphasis and terrifying effect. Hyperboles make the point that the world can end, though it is endless; that babies can’t talk, move and are not thinking creatures, though they may do these actions and are thinking ones like the adults; that humans are smart, though they aren’t, they are not superior to animals and children as animals are closer to nature and children are true.

There are many cases of repetition in the text. The repetitions are used in the following fragments:

“We woke up one morning.... We never figured out quite where they’d gone. We missed them....We were all alone. We didn’t know what to do. We wandered around lost... And we used them....We flayed their skin and decorated ourselves in it....We taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, a drop at a time. We scarred them and scalded them. We burn them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze and we irradiated....We don’t know where they went. We didn’t even see them go. We don’t know what we’re going to do without them. But we’ll think of something....We’ll figure something out.”

“No cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies.”

“Baby flesh is tender and succulent.... Baby leather is soft and comfortable.”

“We don’t know where they went.... We don’t know what we’re going to do without them.”

Polysyndeton of the conjunction and is used in some cases to achieve a variety of effects: it increases the rhythm, slow its pace. Another use of polysyndeton in “Baby Cakes” is to create a sense of being overwhelmed or in fact directly overwhelms the reader by using conjunctions:

“We scarred them and scalded them. We burn them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze and we irradiated. The babies breathed our smoke, and the babies’ veins flowed with our medicines and drugs, until the stopped breathing or their blood ceased to flow.”

The asyndeton can be also found in some phrases:

“Babies can’t talk. They can hardly move. A baby is not a rational, thinking creature.”

Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more memorable.

The irony is represented in the contents. The author causes a character to speak erroneously ignoring some portion of the truth, which the audience is aware of. In other words, both a reader and a character know that the character is making a mistake doing something wrong, but he is still doing it:

“Humans are smart. It’s what makes us superior to the animals and the babies. We’ll figure something out”

In the following phrase we find the stylistic means of parcellation:

“They didn’t even leave us a note, or say goodbye. We never figured out quite where they’d gone.”

And these phrases show the functioning of stylistic means of detachment:

“Some of us thought that the world had ended, but it hadn’t.”

“A baby is not a rational, thinking creature. And we used them.”

“ After all, there were still babies.”

In the horror-comic tale there are examples of using the anaphoras by author:

“We woke up one morning.... We never figured out quite where they’d gone. We missed them....We were all alone. We didn’t know what to do. We wandered around lost... And we used them....We flayed their skin and decorated ourselves in it....We taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, a drop at a time. We scarred them and scalded them. We burn them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze and we irradiated....We don’t know where they went. We didn’t even see them go. We don’t know what we’re going to do without them. But we’ll think of something....We’ll figure something out.”

There also can be found a rhetorical question : “With the Animals gone, what else could we do?” and parenthesis : “It was hard, of course, but necessary”.

Anyway, the text is mostly full of parallel constructions. These stylistic means set out the facts by forcing the atmosphere and in a short and concise form. Thus we see that all animals have left humanity – “No cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies”. This technique is also used when describing the terrible attitude to babies: “We scarred them and scalded them. We burn them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze and we irradiated.”

Semasiological figures of speech are represented by epithets. Although, these are usually shown in the text as associative words. For instance: words “rational”, “thinking” concerning the babies or “soft”, “comfortable” – concerning the babies’ skin. Even though, such epithets can be hardly found in the text.

So, concluding this analysis it can be claimed, that the author used mostly syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices to reach the terrifying communicative effect on a reader. Moreover, personally I would presume that the horror element in this story is reached by making a reader to become thoughtful of how monstrous can a human be. This supports my idea that the author didn’t need to use a lot of colorful semasiological expressive means or stylistic devices, he expressed his idea through the contest and usage of syntactical figures of speech.