How Much Wurst Can it Get?

David Wong’s novel, John Dies at the End, reveals the importance of food within our

lives in both its glory and lowliness. John and David, rather than eating a salad in between their

outer world excursions, consistently consume fast food and beer at unreasonable hours. Food,

which was once just a necessity, now becomes an excuse and a common luxury. The focus on

deception and overindulgence of processed meals exposes society’s etched corruptness on an

everyday necessity and nature. This corruptness, which was previously unrecognizable to John

and David, becomes a hot topic of discussion as they encounter horrors previously unknown to

their world. Both the novel’s characters and audience believe that monsters are those that creep

and crawl out from the depths of hell and reign terror, but the monsters in the novel on the other

hand are disgusted at our natural oblivious attitude towards food. The inclination of satisfying

our stomachs and our minds prevents individuals within a society to clearly think about the

process and damage that is undergone. There is always a constant and bountiful supply of food

which helps veil the onslaught that occurs in the natural world. Wong’s inclusion of the horror of

food in his novel creates a growing sense of panic within our community. By mentioning the

downside of a variety of easily accessible fast foods and restaurant chains that people are

familiar with such as Chinese takeout, McDonald’s, Denny’s, frozen burritos, and bad beer, the

audience becomes much more emotionally affected because the drawbacks of these commodities

are common and popular within our society.

The horror of food begins as soon as David Wong steps foot in a restaurant called “They

China Food!”, and it becomes especially prevalent when the oddness of the restaurant is noted in

the name itself. Wong uses an unusual play of horror or rather the introduction of an unfamiliar

feeling. “They China Food!” is owned by two brothers from the Czech Republic who “…didn’t

know a whole lot about China or food” (Wong 24). The subtle contradiction of a Chinese fast

food restaurant which was previously a Mexican bar/grill and whose owners are Czech

Republicans immediately presents a strange feeling right from the beginning of the novel.

Wong’s horrifying depiction of food rips the protective layer of innocence right off many

fast food chains we might be accustomed with. McDonald’s, for instance, is alluded to often in

the novel as there are four franchises in Undisclosed. From donning a happy mascot and a joyful

slogan, the citizens living in Undisclosed and even we know that there is nothing to fear about

McDonald’s. David Wong, though, unmasks the food chain more than once to terrify both

himself and the audience. Ronald McDonald goes from the friendly and silly posed clown to

someone whose “…gut split raggedly open…cartoon eyes pulsed with a terror about to boil over

into madness…a man being forced to eat himself” (Wong 194). Because of the novel’s horrific

nature and the human priority of food, Wong’s twists on innocent images like the one mentioned

above invoke a sense of terror in both the audience and David creating an even greater emotional

reaction. What seems to be normal and common to us is being twisted into a frightening image.

The familiar slogan is also replaced by a terrifying arrangement of words containing David’s

surname. It is almost as if the vision of Ronald McDonald eating himself was not alarming

enough. Wong needs to intensify it even more by intentionally referring to one specific person,

David.

Although the first encounter of gut-eating Ronald McDonald had extremely frightened

David, the second look seemed to say otherwise. The first McDonald’s introduction was a scene

meant to terrify, but after David encounters the same McDonald’s again, he becomes composed

enough to even stare down at the poster while eating two bratwursts at the same time. The fact

that David is able to consume the restaurant’s food while watching its mascot clearly commit

self-cannibalism is an indication of facing society’s food industry horrors. Instead of shying

away from the horrors of food, Wong’s insertion of this is a confrontation that completely

contradicts David’s initial reaction of fear and shock.

The two McDonald’s incidents can also be considered one of the many important twists

on food in terms of horror. As Noel Carroll, a renowned professor of philosophy at Wesleyan

University, claims in his essay The Nature of Horror, “…the emotive responses of the audience

run parallel to the emotions of characters” (52). If indeed emotions do run parallel, then the

shock David undergo by witnessing such terror must also be the same shock the reader

experiences. Wong emphasizes these feelings by relating it to something that both parties, David

and the reader, are familiar with or hold a strong connection to within their lives. The second

reaction contrasts the fearful response of the first. It is more of a confrontation that relays to the

audience the knowledge and the understanding of the process of food consumption. Even so, the

reaction of the first McDonald’s encounter is the one that is seen quite often throughout the novel

and creates a bigger impact towards the audience. The story of Frank Campo’s Thanksgiving, for

instance, presents the vision of a turkey replaced by a human infant (Wong 29). This is one

prime example of a food horror in which Campo’s shock resembles our own because the image

of an infant cooked to golden brown is both unimaginable and terrifying.

Throughout the novel, there are a number of scattered food terrors, although not every

single one is equally as frightening as the others within the same context of fear. The prologue’s

meat man compared to the McDonald’s excerpt, for example, cannot relate as they are on

different levels of horror. Rather than the meat man being a scary monster, he exposes the

unknown horrors of providing food. Comprising of various red and white meats, which are

assembled to form that of a monster, disassembles him, and all we see are innocent animals slain

in order to feed society. The meat man is an example of horrors in a deeper cultural context

while the McDonald’s horror is an explicit fright scene used to parallel David’s fear to the

audience.

Besides simply exposing murder, the meat man also reveals to the audience the normality

of it. He is a monster that is born out of the slaughter of animals that Shelly’s father kept in a

freezer deep within the basement. In short, he is a living carcass of dead flesh. Is the true horror

of this scene similar to the fact that people hunt and preserve the meat like food trophies and

treasures? Upon discovery of the frozen stack of various meats, John and David progress like this

is no shocking discovery or disturbing truth. The truth of this reality is that John and David’s

indifferent reactions convey to the audience how immune we are to the butchering of animals.

This horror of food is not explicitly scary in a way that is similar to witnessing a decomposing

zombie, but rather, it is scary in a way that emphasizes our desensitized nature towards murder.

The use of food reveals to us the unknown. Otherworldly creatures berate the human

horrifying process of sucking the life out of innocent animals in order to increase their lifespan.

To these creatures, that is true horror, the fear of death which in turn provokes one to exhaust the

world’s resources and drive the extinction of everybody and everything (Wong 135). To them,

Earth is not a rational and fearless place to live in, but rather it is a “Deadworld, man, it’s

alternate layers of rot and shit and rot and shit” (Wong 135). The portrayal of Earth full of

horrors similar to hell where the monsters emerged from sends a cold feeling of fear down the

audience because it is not something expected or conventional. This Earthly horror, of course,

revolves around our advantageous way we use to obtain food in order to extend life.

To further emphasize the otherworldly monsters’ belittlement of humans and human

activities, Wong inserts a comparison between the common unwanted cockroach and people: “A

cockroach has no soul. Yet it runs and eats and shits and fucks and breeds. It has no soul yet lives

a full life. Just like you” (218). Cockroaches exist to simply reproduce in abundance and occupy

space. There is no important reason for their existence. To us, they are excessive, annoying, and

undesirable scavengers. Ironically, this comparison also means that we are excessive and

undesirable scavengers to the monsters. This is important as it helps expand on the topic of lowly

human consumption. Identifying humans as cockroaches is the same as calling them insignificant

and unimportant who exist by eating the rot that accumulates the Earth and live for no clear

purpose. By using a conventional monster whose whole being is just a disgusting and unnatural

creature and having them compare humans to the scum of the Earth creates a horror filled with

shock that is being conveyed to the audience.

The monsters find horror in our behavior towards food because we consume innocent

creatures in order to prolong our lives, but this can also parallel Korrok’s actions in his world.

He, who acts like God, consumes citizens who are born with a special wisdom and intelligence

from their own dimension in order to gain knowledge and become even greater in order to

continue his role as the overseer of both worlds. John and David are disgusted by this fact. The

image of Korrok ingesting innocent creatures in order to intellectually benefit is just like humans

ingesting innocent creatures in order to delay oncoming death. As Magistrale and Morrison, both

PhD professors from respected universities, claim in the introduction of Dark Night, “Americans

spend vast amounts and money and spiritual energy insulating themselves against the random

intrusiveness of violence…” (2). There is no desire to know that the food on one’s plate comes

from butchering a pig in the most inhumanly way possible. As a result, this encourages the food

industry to forever hide their murder in the dark. Because it is difficult for one to comprehend the

acts of evil that occur in their own world, Korrok is necessary. Wong’s reference to this alternate

world allows the reader to make the connection and completely understand the horrors of food

within their own society by looking at the wholeness of another society’s evils.

If one was to look at the knowledge society has pertaining to the origins of their meals, it

would be severely lacking. As stated before, many consumers do not truly acknowledge the

origin of the beef patty that is wedged in between the buns of their burgers or the process that the

chickens undergo to become nuggets. As Kentucky farmer and economic critic Wendell Berry

addresses in his essay The Pleasures of Eating, “…food is pretty much an abstract idea until it

appears on the grocery shelf or on the table” (324). This truth is accentuated in Wong’s novel.

John and David both do not think about where their bad beer or tacos and burritos come from,

instead, they just consume it as food with a mysterious origin.

As the world grows and continues to develop into something greater, the need for a larger

quantity of food becomes an urgent concern. The dirty secrets that go about in order to obtain

food is kept quiet, and many people do not attempt to discover them. David Wong’s focus on the

horror of food in his novel opens the eyes of these people who are oblivious to their

surroundings. The similarities of our worldly consumption to Korrok’s are the primary evidences

supporting this horror of food basis. The novel’s horror context helps to reveal the truth about

food as it “prefers to see reality flushed out into the open” (Magistrale Morrison 2). Rather than

hide the truth, Wong attends to the things we take for granted and changes them into horrifying

pictures in order to remove the sugar coated blanket and expose right there, plain to see, real fear.

Works Cited

Berry, Wendell. "The Pleasures of Eating." 1990. What I Eat. Napa, CA: Material World, 2010.

324-25. Print.

Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer and critic challenges the idea of processed foods and

the food industry in order to promote the idea of a healthier lifestyle and appreciation towards the

Earth for providing our meals. Many of Berry’s arguments take the form of written essays,

novels, poems, and lectures for a variety of health and food related topics. To prove his thesis,

Berry relies on many types of evidence depending on the medium used, for example, pathos for

poetry, ethos for novels, and statistics for lectures and essays. The works of Wendell Berry are

aimed particularly towards an older audience, people with an old fashioned mindset; those who

are looking to change their dietary habits or become more “green”. The central purpose of his

works is to persuade the intended audience to accept and agree with his viewpoint on natural

sustenance and to value the Earth’s production of food.

Carroll, Noel. "The Nature of Horror." Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46.1 (1987): 51-59. Print.

Magistrale, Tony, and Michael A. Morrison. "Introduction." Introduction. A Dark Night's

Dreaming: Contemporary American Horror Fiction. Columbia: University of South

Carolina, 1996. 1-7. Print.

Wong, David. John Dies at the End. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2009. Print.