Psychological Profile of a Serial Killer (Based on the Novel “Silence” by Thomas Raab)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18662/po/13.4/520Keywords:
Genre hybridization, serial killer, becoming, silence, word, death, slippage, nomadism, identification, self-identification, death of authorAbstract
The research deals with the issue of genre hybridization in the novel “Silence – Chronicle of a Killer” written by a contemporary Austrian writer Thomas Raab. An examination of the novel's composition and structure, as a text in motion, has been accomplished in the article. The novel “Silence” is an excellent illustration of how the genre of adventure has been adapted to include elements of science fiction. This novel is a love tale, a rural life saga, a formation narrative, and a psychological thriller all in one. As a fictionalized account of the life of a serial murderer with hypersensitive hearing who became a legend for his mental torment and suffering, it serves both as a biography and a thriller. Novelist Raab uses elements from classic horror novels like Frankenstein, German romantics, in particular, G. Kleist, the tale of Casper Hauser, and detective novels like Friedrich Durrenmatt's "Promise" to tell the story of Casper Hauser's disappearance in his book. A new aesthetic experience may be formed at various degrees of identification ranging from naive perception to higher levels of literary reception. Concentration is required for poetic and philosophical substance. Michel Focalut's nomadism, marginality, and authoritarian power rhetoric have been discussed in this article. The novel's ultimate content has been disclosed as the aphesis torment, emotional sublimation, as the birth of an artwork and, at the same time, death of the author, who exposes discourses, accountable for creating texts that are allocated to him.
References
Biggs, L., & Downe, P. (2021). Gendered intersections - an introduction to women’s and gender studies: An introduction to women’s studies (L. Biggs & P. Downe, Eds.). Fernwood Publishing.
Borg, J. P., & Cauchi, C. (2015). World film locations: Malta (2nd ed.). Intellect Books.
Buss, D. M. (2021). The murderer next door: Why the mind is designed to kill. Tantor Audio.
Cachopo, J. P. (2014). Opera's screen metamorphosis: The survival of a genre or a matter of translation? The Opera Quarterly, 30(4), 315-329. https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/kbu013
Flame Tree Studio. (2021). Turquoise artisan sketch book (4th ed.). Flame Tree Gift.
Florvil, T., & Plumly, V. (2018). Rethinking Black German Studies. Peter Lang.
Gupta, M. (2010). Contemporary Issues in Mergers and Acquisitions. Himalaya Publishing House.
Hladchenko, S., Bilanych, H., Ivzhenko, I., Florko, L., Vakarchuk, K., & Davydova, Z. (2021). Modernization as a transition from a “traditional” to a postmodern society. Postmodern Openings, 12(4), 153–170. https://doi.org/10.18662/po/12.4/366
Keppel, R. D., & Birnes, W. J. (2003). Profiling the serial killer. In The Psychology of Serial Killer Investigations (pp. 129–168). Elsevier
Kimber, S. (2011). Henry: Portrait of a serial killer then. In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (pp. 1–27). Macmillan Education UK. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-34369-6_1
Kniesche, T. W. (Ed.). (2019). Contemporary German Crime Fiction: A Companion (Vol. 7). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Knox, S. L. (2013). ‘made-up and made-over’: Faking the serial killer and the serial killer fake. In Murders and Acquisitions. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781628928211.ch-002
Megela, I. (2018). Genre metamorphosis. Psychogram of serial killer (Based on Thomas raab novel "Silence”). Problems of semantic Pragmatics and Linguistics, 33(33), 60–71 https://doi.org/10.17721/2663-6530.2018.33.04
O’Grady, E., & Holland-Batt, S. (2019). Complicating the serial killer novel: the bystander narrator as genre disrupter. New Writing, 16(3), 363–373. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790726.2018.1531894
Poiarez, E. (2021, May). Sur les approches théoriques de la mémoire au cinéma: recyclage et réécriture des images. In Journée des doctorants: jeudi 06 et vendredi 07 mai 2021. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03698370
Raab, N. A. (2020). The humanities in transition from postmodernism into the digital age. Routledge.
Saulles, M. D. (2015). Information 2.0: New models of information production, distribution and consumption. Facet Publishing.
Simpson, P. L. (2010). Whither the serial killer movie? In American Horror Film (pp. 119–141). University Press of Mississippi. https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781604734539.003.0008
Skakalska, I., Panfilova, О., Sydun, I., Oriekhova, S., Zuziak, T., & Tatarko, I. (2021). The systematization and preservation of cultural heritage of national minorities in the context of the postmodern philosophy. Postmodern Openings, 12(4), 241–254. https://doi.org/10.18662/po/12.4/372
Raab, T. (2015). Die Chronik eines Mörders [The Chronicles of Murder]. Droemer. https://www.vorablesen.de/buecher/still-chronik-eines-moerders
Vanderbeke, D. (2021). 2 History, Formats, Genres. In S. Domsch, D. Hassler-Forest & D. Vanderbeke (Ed.), Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives (pp. 35-80). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110446968-003
Vargas Cervantes, S. (2019a). Framing the Serial Killer: El Mataviejitas. In The Little Old Lady Killer (pp. 25–62). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479876488.003.0002
Vargas Cervantes, S. (2019b). The look of the serial killer: El/La Mataviejitas. In The Little Old Lady Killer (pp. 63–110). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479876488.003.0003
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 The Authors & LUMEN Publishing House
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant this journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work, with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Postmodern Openings Journal has an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND
