The television series Twin Peaks centered on a dead teen's corpse, and Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides focused on the deaths of five sisters with more aesthetic interest than emotional fallout. To insist that Darger's violent imagery discounts his value as an artist is akin to claiming David Cronenberg is a videodrone. Darger, like Dante before him, understood that without darkness and blood the victory of the Vivian sisters would not be as good. Children were his icons and he used them as spiritual vectors, as Catholics have long prayed to gory depictions of the saints. Little girls, whether supernatural or not, are enchanting, thinking as they do that leaves are a tree's hair and that you can grow up to be a bunny rabbit.
Little girls are delicious in their short skirts and hair barrettes.
A mosquito bite on their pink thigh is an object of worship. Darger had the sort of life that drives people into therapy, but instead of joining the culture of complaint he worked for 50 years on the story of seven brave little girls fighting injustice. Darger enlivened and mythologized the themes of his own life. By telling himself a story he made something miraculous out of his pain and loneliness. Some people say he was crazy, but as my father explained to me long ago, even crazy people get a chance to redeem themselves.