Julia Kristeva's concept of the abject as noted in her essay Powers of Horror focuses on that which 'does not respect boundaries, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite', with specific attention to the fact that the abject refers to the human reaction to a threatened breakdown of meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. William Burroughs's Naked Lunch and Angela Carter's collection of reworked fairy tales in The Blood Chamber both exude the concept of the abject by forcing the reader to question their own response. These texts focus on the abject notion of sex, that which is non-consensual, violent, and invites a sense of moral judgment. There is a distinct representation of the liminal state between self and other and between life and death in the two texts, specifically in the destruction of identity through the excretion and exchange of bodily fluids, which forces the reader to feel embarrassed or disgust for the characters. The concept of addiction largely presents itself as an aspect of the abject, ignoring the boundaries of identity in gambling with people's lives and the lack of respect for positions in society in the Naked Lunch drug culture. The notion of the abject is created in these two texts through carefully constructed images and language that force the reader to evaluate their own moral compass and react accordingly with a suggestion from the author through the narrative as to how they should react. was so routinely hushed up, that Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch could only be seen as a pornographic and invasive depiction of an act that people of the 1950s believed should remain behind closed doors. Burroughs' graphic descriptions of sexual acts...... middle of paper ...... explore readers' morality by inviting them to judge the author, the characters, and even themselves based on their reactions to the vivid images and to the disgusting reality introduced by the language of Carter and Burroughs. The different readership compared to the initial readers of these two texts arguably makes The Bloody Chamber more abject in that it represents what is believed to be a contemporary attitude, whereas Burroughs' was a representative of beat culture who served to portray the underclass and the disgust. surrounding this civilization and the way it was received by a conservative society. Despite the years that separate the two texts, both authors agree on the notion of abject by illustrating what disgusts and violates both the reader and the characters of the texts, inviting each individual reader to decide whether he is abject through his own reactions..