The Exorcist

“Rats in the attic, for pete’s sake! Rats!”

As she reads a script in bed, Chris hears a scratching sound from Regan’s room. Investigating, she blames the noise on rats in the attic. The rats are a striking image: Rats are commonly regarded as carriers of the plague, a harbinger of death and suffering. The scratching sound foreshadows the nightmare that coming to the MacNeil house when the demon (an unseen contagion) takes over Regan’s body.

“Chris did not believe that Burke was either an alcoholic or a hopeless problem drinker, but rather than he drank because it was expected of him: he was living up to his legend.”

Burke seems to be an eloquent yet disruptive alcoholic who erupts into anger and destroys property. Chris sees that Burke drinks in order to live up to this reputation—and she is eager to thus absolve her friend of clear wrongdoing. Chris’s unwillingness to confront Burke foreshadows her inability to be face to face with the possessed Regan.

“No one now living had heard his laughter.”

Karras has sunk into a deep depression, trying to square his crisis of faith with his profession, while contending with the sickness of his impoverished mother. He feels nothing besides guilt and regret, so he no longer finds joy in the world.

“Well, I’d say her vocabulary’s rather extensive.”

Chris (and, by extension, the narrative perspective of the text) do not witness Regan’s “rather extensive” (42)—clearly obscene and abusive—vocabulary first hand. Instead, we only hear about it, allowing the readers and Chris to remain somewhat skeptical about Regan’s transformation. As the tension mounts and Regan’s condition deteriorates, however, the reality will penetrate doubt.

“Mother, what’s wrong with me?”

Regan’s question is haunting and filled with despair, imbuing Chris with the same parental guilt felt by many of the novel’s characters. Chris has no way to relieve her daughter’s suffering, and her inability to answer this question and to find a solution will haunt her throughout the book.

“The doctor shrugged ‘No one knows.’”

Dr. Klein is the embodiment of modern science in the novel. His role is to provide a logical, medical explanation for the bizarre situation in which Regan finds herself. But the more invasively and painfully Klein tests Regan, the less useful his knowledge and experience becomes. Here, it is reduced to a shrug—a concession that science cannot explain everything.

“She says it as if it means something, though, it’s got cadence.”

Dr. David is the first to note that the words Regan mumbles are not “nonsense syllables” (76), but have intent and rhythm. Peering beyond the realms of what he knows, the doctor sees that there is something at the edge of his understanding at work.

“Fingers in her lap started fumbling with the handkerchief, telling the stitches in the hem as if they were wrinkled linen rosary beads.”

Subconsciously, Chris begins to search for religious assistance as scientific and medical solutions exhaust themselves. As a psychiatrist lists the ways in which he is flummoxed by the condition, Chris’s hand instinctively wanders to the handkerchief and touches it as though she were in prayer. The religion that she rejects is subconsciously manifesting in her desperation.

“Cupped in the warm, green hollow of the campus, Damien Karras jogged alone around an oval, loamy track in khaki shorts and a cotton T-shirt drenched with the cling of healing sweat.”

Beset by grief and guilt following the death of his mother, Karras jogs around the campus in an attempt to mend himself. The use of the phrase “healing sweat” (102) suggests an element of punishment to his actions: He is punishing himself with exercise (just as he punished himself with drink and isolation) in order to atone for his failures as a son. This adds distinctly Catholic atonement to the grieving process even though Karras is a trained Jesuit.

“Mr. Newman is struggling to get out. Too crowded. Inside.”

Kinderman’s throwaway joke to Karras is an example of dramatic irony. While the two men joke about their resemblances to certain actors, the joke grimly echoes the condition of Regan, who literally is “too crowded inside” with demons.

“The detective stared at him mutely for a moment, then sighed and looked down as he turned off the monitor control that was tucked in the lining of his coat.”

Kinderman presents himself as a kindly, absent-minded bumbling man, while he is actually intelligent and calculating. Having orchestrated a conversation that destroys Karl’s alibi, he shows that it was no accident. He arranged to talk to Karl outside of the house, diligently fact-checked all of the details of Karl’s story, and came equipped with a tape recorder. Now he sighs because his pessimistic expectations about human frailty have been seemingly confirmed.

“Chris plunged down the hall and burst into the bedroom, gasped, stood rooted in paralyzing shock as the rappings boomed massively, shivering through the walls; as Karl lay unconscious on the floor near the bureau; as Regan, her legs propped up and spread wide on a bed that was violently bouncing and shaking, clutched the bone-white crucifix in raw knuckled hands; the bone-white crucifix poised at her vagina, the bone white crucifix she stared at with terror, eyes bulging in a face that was bloodied from the nose, the naso-gastric tubing ripped out.”

The paragraph-length sentence uses syntax and form to convey the horror that greets Chris when she enters Regan’s bedroom. The use of commas and semi-colons creates a breathless run-on sentence, piling up one horrific image after another in an endless montage of profanity. The “bone-white crucifix” (129) contrasts with the red blood coming from Regan’s nose—and soon to come from her vagina. The demon has entirely taken over and Regan is helpless against it.

“The Regan-thing broke off its laughter and fixed him with taunting eyes.”

The subtle change in word choice reflects Karras’s growing belief that Regan is legitimately possessed. When he first enters the room, he considers the being in the bed to be Regan. But when he believes that the child’s body has been possessed, the narrative reflects this, referring to the being as “the Regan-thing” (140). Eventually, the ‘thing’ in the bed will completely replace Regan—belief in the demon means the dehumanization of the girl.

“Karras breathed deeply, exhausted. Then exhaled. Dropped his head. No way. Doesn’t cut it.”

Karras grows more and more obsessed with the case: He isn’t sleeping, he skips meals, and the prose reflect his increasingly ragged and frenetic thoughts. Sentences are shorter, sometimes consisting of just two or three words, conveying his exhaustion through staccato syntax.

“Just a poor struggling demon. A devil. A subtle distinction, but one not entirely lost upon Our Father who is in Hell.”

The demon makes a distinction between itself—a “poor struggling demon” (157)—and the devil, suggesting that there are hierarchies in hell. This changes the stakes of the battle for Regan’s life: Rather than fighting evil for the future of the world, Karras must deal with only a minor, small scale demon. At the same time, if what Regan is undergoing is only a small battle on the fringe of a larger supernatural conflict, the larger conflict is unimaginably grim.

“In the shadowy hall, in the carpeted tomb of his expectations, Karl stared mutely for a moment at the door, and then lowered his head into quiet grief.”

Karl’s personality is reserved and stoic; throughout the book, he has refused to entertain frivolous accusations and jokes. But the revelation of his heroin addict daughter, whom he keeps secret but clearly cares for, adds a new dimension to his character. Karl’s stoicism breaks down as he pleads with her to visit a rehabilitation facility. Willie believes that their daughter is dead, but Karl feels the pain of losing her every time she refuses help, beset by the “quiet grief” (167) which defines his existence.

“He did it herself, brooded Karras.”

The fight for faith within Karras mirrors the fight between Regan and the demon. Karras struggles to resolve his belief that Regan is truly possessed by a demon and his desire to explain things in a rational manner. Though he worries about trying to convince the church authorities, the burden of proof he places on himself is equally high.

““Get some rest,” he advised her.”

There is a frequent disconnect between the advice Karras gives others and the way he lives. He does not follow the suggestions, advice, and prescriptions he gives others—for example, in his position as priest and psychiatrist, telling a desperate Chris to rest. Karras’s inner conflicts make him a sympathetic figure.

“Karras felt an instant dismay as his certainty crumbled, felt tantalized and frustrated by the nagging doubt now planted in his brain.”

The demon awakens Karras to the existence of his doubts about faith, his actions, and the existence of the demon and the reality of the possession. Karras has had most of these doubts for a long time, but has been unable to voice them. Now, the demon’s gloating is actually a small victory for Karras: Acknowledging his doubts is the first step toward overcoming them.

“He continued his farewells.”

At the end of the third part of the book, the priest who featured in the Prologue returns. The brief narrative moment in Iraq set the tone for the narrative and, just as the Prologue has lingered at the periphery of the story, Father Merrin now finds himself relevant again. But his reemergence is marked with finality: Merrin is already making his farewells, giving ominous foreboding to his final confrontation with the demon.

“Black raincoat and hat and a battered valise.”

Kinderman’s obsession with the cinema here casts Merrin, the savior priest who will help Regan, as a film noir villain. Emerging in the middle of a rainy night from a taxi, clad all in black, Merrin is no longer a powerless old man, but a portentous backlit figure. Seeing him like this after last encountering him broken in Iraq, we know that he can do battle with a demon. Merrin stares up at the house, knowing that this is the place that he will die, exuding a presence that makes his importance clear.

“An elation thrilled up through his being.”

Karras watches the bed lift a foot from the floor and feels a rush rather than fear. The amazing supernatural sight leads him to rediscover his faith. Even though that means that the demonic possession is real, Karras realizes that it also means that—by extension—God is real. The moment of revelation for Karras lays the foundations of his eventual redemption.

“Though he did not move, he seemed to be uncoiling, the sinews of his neck pulling taut like cables.”

Standing over the dead body of Father Merrin, Karras feels the tension and guilt that has come to define his life slowly unwind. As he understands the true scope of the demon’s powers, he knows what he must do to defeat it. This imbues Karras with the strength to win against the demon.