Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
South Atlantic Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to South Atlantic Bulletin.
http://www.jstor.org
IN
DELMAEUGENEPRESLEY
38
Grotesque
39
the human body. Yet the tailor continues to use the mirror with no
problems because he remembers what it was before it was broken
and has confidence about what the whole man is supposed to resemble; the reflection gives him enough to work with. Miss O'Connor, functioning as an experienced and confident tailor, assures us
that, while we see distortion, we should also remember that the
proper understanding of the image is available to one who remembers the nature of the unbroken image. Let us finish with this
limited analogy by referring to the problems of the three views of
the grotesque presented earlier: William Van O'Connor attempts
to explain what broke the mirror-cultural dislocation. Lewis A.
Lawson, influenced by existential philosophy, sees beyond the distorted image only to suggest that some writers are now doing what
they should-their "existential professions of faith" signal that they
have accepted man's brokenness as an unavoidable absurdity. Mr.
Malin, confining himself to the surface appearances, accepts the
cracks as literal defects in the characters: They love themselves, hate
their families, and live as in a dream. Not one of the three scholars
explores the possibility that the mirror is itself imperfect and that
a proper interpretation must take into account an understanding
of what the mirror reflected when it was whole.
Flannery O'Connor's point is that grotesque literature exists
because writers are faced with the reality that they live in an age
whose distortions function as indicators of how far man has drifted
from his true image as a creature of God:
We are now living in an age which doubts both fact
and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and
judge. The novelist can no longer reflect a balance from
the world he sees around him; instead he has to try to create
one. It is the way of drama that with one stroke the writer
has both to mirror and to judge. When such a writer has a
freak for his hero, he is not simply showing us what we
are, but what we have been and what we could become....
In such a picture, grace, in the theological sense, is not
lacking.9
Miss O'Connor would not have us believe that Southern writers are
the only ones sensitive to an age of doubt. Neither does she imply
that the South is the last stronghold of the true gospel. She said,
"While the South is hardly Christ-minded, it is most certainly
Christ-haunted.
"She meant that the Southern experience is
of
those
elements necessary for an interpretation
capable
offering
of man which takes into account the theological concept that man
is a creature of God. Grotesque characters exist, therefore, to bear
40
Grotesque
41
and Anacleto. The first two couples, probably seen through the eye
of the watercolor peacock, engage in actions which reflect that,
despite their need for love, they are committed to nothing less than
distorted images of their own selfishness; this is not merely narcissism, as Malin suggests.11Alison and Anacleto, on the other hand,
want to leave this grotesque menagerie and begin a new life together
untainted by sexual contact. Alison's fatal heart attack prevents this,
yet an ideal exists in Reflections although doomed from the start.
The publication of "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" by Harper's
Bazaar in 1943 demonstrated that Mrs. McCullers' earlier story was
not as insignificant as both she and her most sympathetic critics
contended. Instead of expurgating her earlier fascination with the
grotesque, this effort clarifies and refines that fascination into a
piece of short fiction which many consider to be the best from her
pen. Carson McCullers' Ballad is an attempt to go beyond her
earlier tale and fashion her materials into an allegory embodying a
moral point of view. Her experimentation with allegorical technique
is precisely what Mark Schorer says all technical experimentations
are-a discovery of "intellectual and moral implications."12 After
telling the story of Miss Amelia Evans' unsuccessful search for love
with two kinds of men-the stud Marvin Macey and the queer Lymon Willis-Mrs. McCullers ends her story with a parable which
clarifies the issue presented so subtly in the preceding narrative.
The parable concerns "twelve mortal men," all prisoners and mem,
bers of the chain gang. They cannot avoid their task of breaking
the "clay earth" on sweltering August days. They are condemned
to an earthly hell-separated by the chains that bind them together.
Yet condemnation does not preclude human hopefulness:
And every day there is music. One dark voice will start
a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be
singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, and the
music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The
music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does
not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the
earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the
heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy
and fright.13
The hopefulness of this music, as Oliver Evans notes, is love:
"They
escape temporarily through their singing (love), which it is significant that they do together in an attempt to resolve, or rather dissolve, their individual identities."14
Even though one seldom finds examples of durable love
among
42
Grotesque
43
emerges from the body of Williams' works makes him more akin
to Flannery O'Connor. His works published since the mid-fifties
often tend to surpass Miss O'Connor's in terms of their obvious
theological meaning.
Williams' short story, "Desire and the Black Masseur," is perhaps the earliest and clearest example of his grotesque vision. A
small man, aged thirty, named "Burns," had "no idea of what his
real desires were." He had an "instinct for being included in things
that swallowed him up." He was engulfed by his relatives and employer. One day, while visiting a turkish bath, he discovers that his
masseur is a huge Negro man. The masseur goes about his work with
a strange violence which produces in Burns masochistic pleasure;
for this he returns regularly until the manager discovers one day the
bruised body of Burns. He shouts to the masseur: "Get the hell out
44
Grotesque
45
46
Grotesque