The new weird: The journey in “Silence”

• Main Author: De Leon, Maria Francheska Paola P
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Speculative fiction; Creative Writing; Fiction
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_lit/8; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=etdm_lit
• Institution: De La Salle University

According to Lisa Steinby’s Subject and Signifying Form: The Early Bakhtin and the Early Lukacs, the author, influenced by lived experiences, gives birth to their hero which searches for the “truth” which is influenced by what the author deems as true (Steinby 3). Lukacs’ Soul and Form (1911) highlights that authors create this form through their lived experiences (Steinby 5). I started to write the novel back in 2012 with the intention of writing about how it felt like to be silenced. I initially looked towards Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey,” the template widely used for most of the heroic stories that were uttered, published, and shown on screen. Although “The Hero’s Journey” by Campbell made significant contributions to the body of literature that exists today, there is a shift in the social dynamic, where readers/consumers/audiences are more interested in the Villain’s Journey. While working on the novel for close to a decade, I experienced a different kind of silence: the type that is borne out of isolation, when you are unable to articulate your thoughts, your emotions, and feel like no one understands you. From theory, being a villain became my lived experience and influenced the outcome of the novel. This work will attempt to explore the following themes: what is a villain? What is good and evil? How does one become a villain? I explored all these provocations and wrote a novel that reflected the Villain’s Journey through the “New Weird” genre in novel form. Keywords: New Weird, Silence, Speculative Fiction, Villain, Hero, Evil