Ring Shout

In these two chapters, Clark incorporates science fiction, horror, and fantasy tropes to further develop the theme of the Exploration of Racism and White Supremacy in Speculative Fiction. He also fleshes out Maryse’s story to show the impact of unaddressed trauma in her life.

Clark expands the world of Ring Shout by introducing Butcher Clyde and his plot to overthrow the human order. Clark uses conventions of speculative fiction when he transforms Stone Mountain into the site of humanity’s greatest vulnerability to the Grand Cyclops because of its association with the Ku Klux Klan. His main point is that white supremacy makes humanity weak.

Clark also deploys the horror/science fiction trope of humans as meat. The idea of humans as meat for aliens is sometimes used to show the hubris of humanity in thinking that they are the center of the universe. White supremacists are guilty of this same thinking error. Butcher Clyde’s exposition on the greater vulnerability of white supremacists to his power helps Clark make the point that hatred and anti-Black racism are irrational responses to difference, ones that damage the white supremacists themselves. Butcher Clyde is merely leveraging distinctions of race and white supremacy to divide humans of different races from each other in the service of conquering Earth. The irony of his stance is that all humans, regardless of race, are fundamentally meat, but this equality degrades all humans.

This reality in the novella reflects how white supremacy works in this world: Namely, it allows even the most subordinated of white people to ignore their exploitation by the power structure and instead save their hatred for subordinated Black people. Such blindness helps maintain a status quo that keeps the powerful in power. The only difference is that in the novella, the power is an alien one. Clark does hint that Butcher Clyde may be underestimating humanity: The biggest villain is a Grand Cyclops—a large creature whose vision is too dispersed across many eyes to see humanity in all its fullness.

Opposing Butcher Clyde are the aunties, who serve the role of the seemingly benevolent guides who frequently appear in fantasy works. These guides may not be so benevolent, however. Clark uses physical description to raise suspicion about the aunties’ motivations. Their blood-red dresses echo the blood-red hair of Butcher Clyde. They look like foxes, which should be a warning to Maryse. In the Black folklore that shapes Maryse’s worldview, Brer Fox is the other major antagonist of the scrappy Brer Rabbit, and rabbits are almost always the prey of foxes. By integrating allusions to folkloristic tradition, Clark highlights the theme of The Use of Folklore and Cultural Heritage as Tools of Resistance and establishes the relevant role it plays in his characters’ conception of the world, particularly Maryse’s.

Their faces look like they are “stitched from what look like real brown skin” (72-73), with the implication that they, too, may see human beings as a kind of material to be manipulated. In telling the story of Truth and Lies, one of the aunties tips her hand that there is some form of deception going on. By highlighting that this story involves play with cutlasses, or large swords, the auntie indicates that this deception has something to do with the leaf-shaped sword and Maryse, its wielder. While the aunties may not entirely consume humans as do the Ku Kluxes, they are out for their own interests, ones that may not coincide with the good of Maryse and the people in her racial community. The entire episode with the aunties serves as foreshadowing of the scope of their manipulation of Maryse.

Maryse is particularly vulnerable to the manipulations of the aunties and Butcher Clyde, whom she goes to town to see despite the danger, because of her trauma. Maryse walks around with unaddressed trauma not only because of all she has experienced but also due to her hatred of those who have wronged her and the people she loves. Maryse receives multiple warnings that there is a risk in not examining her damage, but she ignores most of those warnings. Here, Clark explores the theme of The Role of Trauma and Healing in Resistance Narratives, establishing how Maryse as a character does not yet confront her trauma.

Using the conventions of speculative fiction, horror, and fantasy, Clark transforms Maryse’s psychological wounds into a universe-spanning opening through which destruction comes for her, her created family, and all of humanity. This choice allows Clark to show how unaddressed trauma and hatred are powerful, destructive forces that prevent traumatized individuals and communities from being resilient in the face of forces like white supremacy. This blind spot of Maryse comes into play to an even greater extent in subsequent chapters, further cementing the centrality of the role of trauma and healing in resistance narratives in the novella.