He has his father's eyes...
It’s all in the perspective. We all know the plot of Rosemary’s Baby. Even if we didn’t know how it ends, we’d be picking up the book, and getting some context from the cover. The title of mine is printed in a menacing green font with a pair of red inhuman eyes (that look nothing like Adrian/Andrew’s at the end of the book). The tagline reads “WHEN THE TRUTH IS MORE SINISTER THAN IMAGINATION” in all capital letters. From that context, we know something is going on. It’s so easy to read the book and think “She’s so stupid, how can she not see what’s going on?” I think, if this exact set of circumstances happened to any of us, we would behave just like Rosemary did.
In the beginning, the reader gets the first indication that things aren’t what they seem when Guy and Rosemary visit Mrs. Gardenia’s apartment. Levin refers many times to things that are dead, or dying (the herbs, Mrs. Gardenia herself). The secretary has been moved to block a closet. As readers who have picked up a horror novel, those things scream out as warnings. But to a real person in the real world? The apartment is available because the old lady dies. There isn’t anything (apparently) suspicious about her death, and if it were an average person looking at a new apartment, it wouldn’t jangle the warning bells. Rosemary noticed and acknowledged all of these things, including the scrawled note on the desk, as curious, but they don’t mean as much to her (at that point) as they do to the reader.
Guy’s kind of a jerk, there isn’t necessarily anything supernatural about that. Readers are more in tune to the nature of his transgressions than a wife would be. Rosemary at times wonders if there’s another girl, passes it off as him being an actor, and thus vain and self centered to begin with. It isn’t reasonable to assume that she would suspect her neighbors of anything more than just being obnoxious. The other night I heard a noise in my apartment, thought my roommate was in peril, and rushed out to check. Back in bed (everything was fine, I think I heard her getting up connected with a dream) I thought to myself what if someone had been breaking in? I would have charged right out to meet them? That scenario didn’t even present itself to me in the night.
Once Rosemary gets the book Hutch meant for her to have months ago, the pieces fall into place very quickly. Even once she pieces together Roman Castevet = Steven Marcato, she thinks they’re just religious loonies, harmless, but not people she wants around her or her family. Then more pieces drop into place. Donald Baumgart’s blindness. Guy rushing home, still in his makeup while Hutch was visiting. She noted each of these things, but they couldn’t fit together until she had the context Hutch provided with the book All of Them Witches.
Rosemary’s Baby is long tracts of telling blended with little scenes. I felt I should have been annoyed by the way Levin swept over pieces of information that could have been captivating scenes. It works, though, and it works beautifully, because in a lot of places it’s the only way to insert the necessary information, the clues, without forcing the characters to acknowledge them. We get lists of things Rosemary does, errands, home decorations, which keep the reader aware that this is what’s on her mind, normal life stuff, and not satanic cults. We get a sentence of her acknowledging the strange layout of the Castevets’s furniture, but not until later do we come back to it in detail. She isn’t thinking of it then, she notices it, then neatly files it away. It doesn’t seem to matter.
I think Rosemary’s Baby is the perfect horror novel. It starts slowly, and the tension builds as first the reader know something’s up, but Rosemary doesn’t, then Rosemary is aware that things aren’t right, but can’t put a name to them. Finally in the end, she is able to name her troubles, but has trouble even believing herself. “Now and then there are plots against people, aren’t there?” Rosemary asks Dr. Hill. I think it’s a delicious story, made even better by her motherly love overpowering her revulsion of the strange hybrid she has made. This is also one of the best book to movie adaptations I can think of.
In the beginning, the reader gets the first indication that things aren’t what they seem when Guy and Rosemary visit Mrs. Gardenia’s apartment. Levin refers many times to things that are dead, or dying (the herbs, Mrs. Gardenia herself). The secretary has been moved to block a closet. As readers who have picked up a horror novel, those things scream out as warnings. But to a real person in the real world? The apartment is available because the old lady dies. There isn’t anything (apparently) suspicious about her death, and if it were an average person looking at a new apartment, it wouldn’t jangle the warning bells. Rosemary noticed and acknowledged all of these things, including the scrawled note on the desk, as curious, but they don’t mean as much to her (at that point) as they do to the reader.
Guy’s kind of a jerk, there isn’t necessarily anything supernatural about that. Readers are more in tune to the nature of his transgressions than a wife would be. Rosemary at times wonders if there’s another girl, passes it off as him being an actor, and thus vain and self centered to begin with. It isn’t reasonable to assume that she would suspect her neighbors of anything more than just being obnoxious. The other night I heard a noise in my apartment, thought my roommate was in peril, and rushed out to check. Back in bed (everything was fine, I think I heard her getting up connected with a dream) I thought to myself what if someone had been breaking in? I would have charged right out to meet them? That scenario didn’t even present itself to me in the night.
Once Rosemary gets the book Hutch meant for her to have months ago, the pieces fall into place very quickly. Even once she pieces together Roman Castevet = Steven Marcato, she thinks they’re just religious loonies, harmless, but not people she wants around her or her family. Then more pieces drop into place. Donald Baumgart’s blindness. Guy rushing home, still in his makeup while Hutch was visiting. She noted each of these things, but they couldn’t fit together until she had the context Hutch provided with the book All of Them Witches.
Rosemary’s Baby is long tracts of telling blended with little scenes. I felt I should have been annoyed by the way Levin swept over pieces of information that could have been captivating scenes. It works, though, and it works beautifully, because in a lot of places it’s the only way to insert the necessary information, the clues, without forcing the characters to acknowledge them. We get lists of things Rosemary does, errands, home decorations, which keep the reader aware that this is what’s on her mind, normal life stuff, and not satanic cults. We get a sentence of her acknowledging the strange layout of the Castevets’s furniture, but not until later do we come back to it in detail. She isn’t thinking of it then, she notices it, then neatly files it away. It doesn’t seem to matter.
I think Rosemary’s Baby is the perfect horror novel. It starts slowly, and the tension builds as first the reader know something’s up, but Rosemary doesn’t, then Rosemary is aware that things aren’t right, but can’t put a name to them. Finally in the end, she is able to name her troubles, but has trouble even believing herself. “Now and then there are plots against people, aren’t there?” Rosemary asks Dr. Hill. I think it’s a delicious story, made even better by her motherly love overpowering her revulsion of the strange hybrid she has made. This is also one of the best book to movie adaptations I can think of.