Line #3 Literature/TheElementals


1	[[quoteright:324:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_elementals.jpg]]
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3	''The Elementals'' is a 1981 SouthernGothic horror novel by Creator/MichaelMcDowell, most known today for writing the screenplay for ''Beetlejuice'' and two of the three segments of the ''Film/TalesFromTheDarkside'' movie.
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5	The matriarch of the wealthy Savage family, Mariam Savage, has died. Her son Dauphin and his wife Leigh, along with the family's lifelong African-American servant Odessa and Leigh's mother "Big" Barbara [=McCray=], brother Luker, and niece India, decide to spend some weeks after the funeral at Beldame, a vacation spot on the Gulf Coast owned jointly for generations by the Savage and [=McCray=] families that consists of three identical Victorian houses on an isolated beach that becomes an island at high tide.
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7	Of the houses, one is owned by the [=McCrays=], one by the Savages, and the third...well, that's something of a mystery. The third house has been seemingly unoccupied for as long as anyone remembers. Not only that, but it's slowly being swallowed up by a massive sand dune. ''Something'' does live there, though. And that something has long been involved in the tragic history of the Savage family, and it's not done with them yet...
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9	!! ''The Elementals'' contains examples of the following tropes:
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11	* TheAlcoholic: Big Barbara. In fact, one of the reasons for the joint family vacation at Beldame was a desperate attempt to isolate Big Barbara from any booze supplies.
12	* AmbiguouslyGay: Luker. He and India are keeping some kind of secret from his family, and it's implied he has feelings for Dauphin that go beyond just a lifelong friendship. There is also a line about him going to a bar to find someone to lead astray (gender specifically ''not'' specified).
13	* ArcWords: ''Savage mothers eat their children up.''
14	* AssholeVictim: Lawton [=McCray=] is emotionally abusive, cheats on Big Barbara, and [[spoiler:plans to burn down the Beldame houses so he can sell the land for oil.]] Therefore it's not really that sad when [[spoiler:he unwisely goes into the third house and gets murdered.]]
15	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:All of the family except Dauphin, Lawton, and Odessa make it out of Beldame alive and what's left of the houses will be destroyed to make way for oil excavation, but India knows that, even with Beldame gone, whatever curse is afflicting the Savage family will continue with Leigh's twin children.]]
16	* DeadpanSnarker: Luker, par excellence.
17	* EldritchAbomination: The Elementals are not ghosts, or elemental spirits, or demons. They're malicious and they like to toy with people for fun, but that's just about all it's possible for humans to really understand about them. Odessa explains that it's absolutely imperative to never even ''start'' to think you've got a handle on them, even a little bit, because that will only lead you into more danger.
18	* EvilMatriarch: The reader never meets her, but there's no doubt that Mariam Savage counted in her day.
19	* JustEatGilligan: Selling Beldame, or even just not going back in the third act, would probably fix many if not all of the problems the characters are having. Justified, however, as there seems to be some supernatural effect that makes everyone stop taking the Elementals seriously once they leave. There's also the fact that the Elementals actually attack fairly rarely--so, dead kids and murder attempts aside, more than half the time you can have a perfectly nice vacation there.
20	* MagicalNegro: Odessa is focused on helping the white characters, and has some natural mystical psychic powers that allow her to dispense some important exposition, and [[spoiler: passes on her power to India via having India eat her eyes after the Elementals murder her, which is what finally allows India to destroy the third house and help the survivors get out]]. Actually invoked; at one point she snaps that she doesn't understand why the Savages and [=McCrays=] think she understands ''everything'' that's going on, and she admits most of her rituals for keeping the Elementals at bay were ineffective all along.
21	* ShapeShifting: What the Elementals do and are. In particular, they like to take the forms of the dead or of extremely odd looking people. They can still be spotted because they have black eyes with white pupils and, when they try to talk, sand pours out of their mouths. It's not even clear how many of them there are or even if it's really a ''them'' or an ''it''.
22	* SouthernGothic: Like most of Michael [=McDowell's=] prose work, this certainly qualifies. Besides taking place in Alabama and involving the supernatural and family secrets, there is the element of decay. Although Beldame is still kept up (with the exception of the third house), it's clear that along with the third house being overtaken by a dune the very island the houses rest on is slowly giving way to erosion.
23	* TheUnfavorite: There's no doubt in Dauphin's mind that his mother preferred his late brother Darnley and sister Mary-Scot over him.

Context Literature / TheElementals