Exploring Southern Writers: Faulkner, O'Connor, McCullers - Study of Two Works - Prof. Der, Apuntes de Literatura Americana

¡Descarga Exploring Southern Writers: Faulkner, O'Connor, McCullers - Study of Two Works - Prof. Der y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura Americana solo en Docsity! THE POSTWAR NOVEL The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the publication of some of the most popular works in American history such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The last few of the more realistic modernists along with the wildly Romantic beatniks largely dominated the period, while the direct respondents to America's involvement in World War II contributed in their notable influence. EUDORA WELTY (1909 – 2001) 1 We come back to Southern authors. 2 She had a very active life and was also a good photographer. 3 She was a prolific Southern writer, 3 of her best known titles: 3.1 A Curtain of Green (1941) 3.2 A Collection of stories (Petrified Man is part of this collection) 3.3 Delta Wedding (1946) 3.4 The Ponder Heart (1954) 4 Sometimes she is included with Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 64) and Carson McCullers (1917 – 67) as Southern writers. 5 They are also referred as writers of Southern Gothic → gothic fiction in the South early 19th c. The South was especially inclined to the Gothic → possible reason → slavery. 6 Gothic is about repressed feelings of guilt → very complicate emotion with lots of reasons and the South has a lot of guilty with slavery. 7 Faulkner and later: 8 Eudora born 12 years before but wrote 10 years before. All the writers wrote in the shadow of Faulkner. 9 Narrative voice and innovation 10 The idea of voice is extremely important. 1st person narrative and long speech to the reader. 11 She had a very sensitive hear; tone of voice, manner of speaking and regional dialect are very important in her. The speech patterns in the South are different from the North. 12 The Grotesque: in the South it has a very special place; gothic is very grotesque in many senses. It has to do with slavery because it was a very grotesque social institution; class structure in the South Social pretension → it’s a southern parody [the importance of maintaining the social appearance]. 30 Leota is a pretty silly person. The story is separated in 2 moments, 2 conversations → before Mrs. Pike discovers the Petrified Man and the 2nd is when Leota assumes she is superior, being very pretentious in her descriptions to Mrs. Pike. It gives the idea of being close friends. 31 Mrs. Pike sees something that the others are unable to see, but the magazine belongs to Leota; she feels insulted, ashamed and offended for the fact that Mrs. Pike is not giving her money. 32 Primary example of social pretension, low level. 33 Example of hypocrisy: Mrs. Fletcher is irritated because of the news she is pregnant as she has the option of abortion → the importance of social image. Final sentence: Billy Boy 34 1st conversation → happy // 2nd → irruption of violence *. 35 Leota bits Billy as she is so frustrated with herself because she wasn’t able to recognized the Petrified Man. Finally, all her frustration came out. 36 Need of feeling superior, reinforces the idea of social pretension, revelling a truth by accident. It’s typical in the South and social levels we are talking about. 37 Leota is superior to Fletcher because Mrs. Pike is her friend. 38 There’re 2 senses in the last sentence which point out truth and feel superior. F 0 D E 1 voice the next time → Why I Live at the P.O.? WHY I LIVE AT THE P.O. (1941) 39 This story has similarities with “The Sound and the Fury”, we have family dynamics told in 1st person mixing different points of view; we can have a reconstruction for everything characters are telling. The connection with Faulkner is clear. 40 It has a very important comic tone but the way Welty presents the story could be difficult for us because the humor is so complex. 41 This mentioned humor comes very much from the use of the language; the narrator is very funny, The narrator, tired of her younger sister, leaves the house and moves to the post office. She takes everything that belongs to her: electric fan, needlepoint pillow, radio, sewing machine motor, calendar, thermometer, canned goods, wall vases, and even a fern growing outside the house that she feels is rightfully hers because she watered it. 54 The family declares they will never go to the post office again. Finally, the sister is left alone in the post office, safe in her knowledge of whom in the town is for or against her. 55 Protesting loudly for her independence and happiness, she works her revenge by shutting her family off from the outside world. 56 The monologue short story is somewhat of a comedy told with a natural Southern idiom flow. Her descriptive words plant vivid scenes and sounds. From the "gorgeous Add-a-Pearl Necklace," to the flesh-colored kimono "all cut on the bias," Welty makes this story a satirical portrait of a Mississippi family. "Why I live at the P.O.," tells the story of what jealousy will lead a person to do. J.D.SALINGER – The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 57 J. D. Salinger is one of those interesting cases in which an author avoids public exposure. 58 He was born in 1919 and he is still alive. During most of his life he has been interested in Zen Buddhism, a very religious oriental religion. One of the means of learning ZB is the koan. 59 People learn to be a master only staying with other masters. They are in a monastery, working with monks, there are no texts to learn, only the personal relationship with the master and he knows when people are prepared. 60 It consists on a paradoxical apprenticeship with the master, who asks to the student: What is the sound of a hand clapping? How looks like your face before you were born? Has a dog the Buda’s spirit? The master teaches to you the answer of these questions. The final answer is Wu! It could be a representation of the sound a dog makes or something else. 61 The apprenticeship was finished when the student realizes the answer to this question. The exercise is to expand the mind out of the boundaries. 62 - ‘The Dead Poet’s Society’ a very innovative teacher, John Keating (an echo of J Keats), who is inspiring his students. They are attending to the prestigious Welton Academy preparatory school, which is based on four principles: Tradition, Honor, Discipline and Excellence. The students are there to learn economy and subjects related with that; teachers are there to prepare them for university. But the new teacher encourages the imagination of those boys and they respond to him. He inspires their creativity, he represents a possibility for these boys, he created a new light for them but unfortunately he was defeated. 70 In the novel, the main protagonist is looking for somebody who helps him to found what he really needs. Somebody older who helps him to grow up. In the 2nd chapter he goes to visit his teacher Mr. Spencer, he respects him so much. He hopes that Mr. Spencer can tell him something very special but he doesn’t do it and he was very disappointed. 71 The only thing he finds in Mr. Spencer is one word that he uses a lot through the novel ‘phony’ (a slang term from American English), it means hypocritical, artificial, fake- false. This is the word that he uses to express disappointment, dissatisfaction with USA at that time. Nobody gives him what he really needs. 72 He is in Allison Wonderland (a mental hospital); he takes his pills and went into this world. He is 16 years old but he is more mature than the people who have the same age, he is an interesting character. 73 He is a wonderful conservationist, he talks with his parents, his friends, but when he encounters with a girl of his age he feels like a little boy and he wants someone that helps him to grow up and someone who helps him to pass from one world to the other. 74 All ‘phony’ adults he meet doesn’t help him, but sometimes he is really materialistic. 75 He said that he hates movies, but time after time he is talking about it. The book itself is an entire contradiction. 76 Both novels (The Catcher and Huckleberry) were written in omniscient voice, they use American English slang, told by two boys (one each), that’s another reason why the novels speaks so directly to the reader, cause its language is the language people use. 77 On the level of social commentary, the American speech pattern is very good; there were lots of similarities with Huckleberry, which is critical with the society before the war, when the slavery was legal. 78 ‘you’ through the whole novel could be someone in the mental hospital. 88 A literary analysis approximates to a kind of psychoanalysis. Understanding the events implies to know what is happening to Holden. It seems that he needs to tell this story to try to find a solution to the problem he is exposing, like in ‘Farewell’. 89 Characters: - Holden Caulfield is the protagonist and narrator of the story. Holden is seventeen when he tells the story, but was sixteen years old when the events took place. His narration begins with his expulsion (for academic failure) from a school called Pency Prep. He is intelligent and sensitive, but Holden narrates in a cynical and exhausted voice. He finds the hypocrisy, “phoniness”, and ugliness of the world around him unbearable. - D.B. Caulfield is Holden’s older brother and lives in Hollywood. Holden professes to despise cinema for he believes it exemplifies his concept of “phoniness”, but throughout the book he offers thoughtful and in-depth commentaries on films he has seen. - Allie Caulfield was Holden’s younger brother, who died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen. Even though Allie was younger than Holden, Holden adored Allie. Holden even prays to his deceased brother for safety. The night of Allie’s death, Holden smashed all the windows in the family garage with his bare fists leading to permanent damage to his hand. Because of this injury, Holden can no longer make a tight fist with his right hand. It can also be speculated that Allie’s death damaged Holden mentally and is the cause of his behavior in the book. - Sally Hayes is a very attractive girl whom Holden has known and dated for a long time. Though Sally is well read, Holden claims that she is “stupid,” although it is difficult to tell whether this judgment is based in reality or merely in Holden’s ambivalence about being sexually attracted to her. She is certainly more conventional than Holden in her tastes and manners. - Phoebe Caulfield is Holden’s younger sister. She is in the fourth grade at the time Holden leaves Pency Prep. In some ways, she can be even more mature than him, even criticizing him for childishness. - Sunny The prostitute Holden hires through Maurice. She is one of a number of women in the book with whom Holden clumsily attempts to connect. It can also be related with one of the well-known poems of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, it would be almost impossible to understand. He finds a little boy and he is repeating the poem because is the first thing that comes to his mind, but the boy starts crying: coming through the rye’ but the little boy doesn’t know what it is about. 97 Holden inevitably imagines himself catching children, a person who is in the rye field. He would like to be the catcher in the rye, the person next to a cliff who catches children near to fall while they are playing. He likes to imagine he is that person. 98 It is important the transition and transformation that the poem suffers. The first possible sexual connotation acquires a different sense in the novel, where he manifests that he only wants to protect children from falling. 99 In another sense he is fascinated with sex; he is attracted to various girls, but he is afraid of sex. There is an episode in a hotel with a prostitute, he is in the hotel room with her all the night and nothing happens, they just talk. 100 He only wants to sit down and talk to somebody, but she isn’t happy because she just wants the money to give it to her procurer, Holden feels sorry for her. 101 The sexual experience means that he is becoming an adult and he isn’t prepared yet, he doesn’t want to grow up but his body is pushing forward into it. 102 The symbolic image of the book is the children falling in the rye, into adulthood, and he wants to be the catcher of this fall. In his mind he wishes to catch himself when falling over the cliff, but it is impossible. That’s one reason why falling is so important for him, he doesn’t want to grow up. 103 Another symbolic image is when he crosses the road, he feels the falling, a symbolic fall, every time he does it he is falling, and it provokes a terrible feeling. 104 He is also afraid of death, growing up implies a confrontation with death. There’s reminiscence to the death of Allie, his youngest brother who dies of leukemia. Moreover he also remembers James Castle, a boy who commits suicide when he was at school. All these important falls form part of his psychological complexity. 105 James Castle jumped to his death rather than deny a statement about an arrogant bully. When the body is in the ground, the only person who has enough courage to look at it was a teacher, Mr. Antolini. 106 117 When the conditions become difficult for ducks in winter they fly away. They emigrate to the south, they have a natural escape from difficulties and this is what Holden is looking for. 118 He wants to escape from reality, he wishes to fly away, that’s the reason why he runs in circles in Central Park; he uses Central Park as an escape. 119 It’s a 20th c version of Huckleberry, who could escape from the world that he didn’t like, but now Holden isn’t able to do it.. 120 Holden is a very sensitive person and he understands people. For instance, he feels sorry for the prostitute; he is sensitive with the ducks. Migration is an escape and he imagines him doing it. Avoiding adulthood and adolescence to continue being a child. 121 He is so desperate that he calls his ex-girlfriend Sally Hayes and meets her in Manhattan; they go to the theater and talk. He irritates after a while wit her because they didn’t agree in anything. He wants to escape with her to the west. It was a 19th c idea transformed to the 20th c. 122 Chapter 17th → in this chapter appears the first of the two moments he has a fantasy with escape. He wishes to go to New England in the first fantasy, but this change at the end where he expresses his desire to go to the West. 123 It was totally unrealistic, living the city to go into nature like in the 19th c, no money, only nature. This idea links the novel with Transcendentalism. 124 The Hunting Cap → Holden buys a cap in Manhattan and he likes to wear it backwards. What’s its significance? Perhaps that the poet is looking backwards in the 19th c. 125 The cap suggests the idea of a hunter, reference to Natty Bumpoo from the ‘Leather-stocking Tales’. Maybe it can be a parody of the hero of the 19th c, pretending to be the killer. 126 He loves Phoebe because she represents the innocence that he doesn’t want to lose. He decides to say good bye to Phoebe and run away to the West. She wants to go with him but he says no, he doesn’t want to accept that responsibility because this means growing-up. So, he can’t do his fantasy and his breakdown comes (page 185). 127 Face to face with reality, he tries to avoid responsibility, beginning to be force to open his eyes to reality – end of the novel. CHAPTER 25 sister. 131 What he wants to do in his fantasy is stopping children growing up; so, why is he refusing that Phoebe goes with him? → Because he realises that he doesn’t know how to care about himself, so he will not be able to take care of him. 132 Both go to Central Park and she wants to ride on the carrousel → Circular movement (no going forwards). 133 “When a true love dies smoke gets in your eyes” – Music in the carrousel → It means accepting that it’s the end of his unreal fantasies. 134 He is sitting in the rain watching Phoebe going in circles → ambiguous, it didn’t go in any direction; she goes round and round and seems happy. 135 Idea of Phoebe falling off the horse (page 190): Taking a step back from being ‘the catcher in the rye’? He’s protecting her from the fall of the horse. 136 His fantasy of escape and his fantasy of being the catcher in the rye → both are impossible. 137 Phoebe is reaching the gold ring and she can fall (you can’t protect children from everything, you must let them try to reach the gold ring and if they fall, they fall). End of the novel → Short good bye. 138 Immediately, after this he has his breakdown and he is sent to California, near Hollywood where his brother lives, but we don’t know which kind of hospital it’s. 139 His growth → there are only suggestions → he is beginning to be able to accept reality. CHAPTER 26 140 1st paragraph: There’s an open question: novel of growth? story about a mental breakdown? Typical American → the novel is indefinite. It applies for himself → ready to move forward. 141 Novel of truncated growth: Huckleberry Finn → he grows and learns a lot, he doesn’t want to be into society [Irony usually we are educated to be into society] → it’s corrupted “she wants to civilized me” → growth away from the social norm. 142 There’s a similar issue here and in Farewell to Arms → afraid of the process of growth; it seems to e some kind of relative constant for American Novel. 143 The last paragraph is extremely inconclusive. 144 The novel ends in an expression of his sensibility, the people he didn’t see again, and he feels sorry divine grace. This ruled out a sentimental understanding of the stories' violence, as of her own illness. O'Connor wrote: "Grace changes us and change is painful." She also had a deeply sardonic sense of humor, often based in the disparity between her characters' limited perceptions and the awesome fate awaiting them. Another source of humor is frequently found in the attempt of well-meaning liberals to cope with the rural South on their own terms. O'Connor uses such characters' inability to come to terms with race, poverty, and fundamentalism, other than in sentimental illusions, as an example of the failure of the secular world in the twentieth century. However, several stories reveal that O'Connor was familiar with some of the most sensitive contemporary issues that her liberal and fundamentalist characters might encounter. Her best friend, Betty Hester, received a weekly letter from O'Connor for more than a decade. These letters provided the bulk of the correspondence collected in The Habit of Being, a selection of O'Connor's letters edited by Sally Fitzgerald. The reclusive Hester was given the pseudonym "A.," and her identity was not known until after she killed herself in 1998. Much of O'Connor's best-known writing on religion, writing, and the South is contained in these and other letters, including letters written to her friends Brainard Cheney and Samuel Ashley Brown. The complete collection of the unedited letters between O'Connor and Hester was unveiled by Emory University on May 12, 2007; the letters were given to the university in 1987 with the stipulation that they not be released to the public for 20 years. THE ARTIFICIAL NIGGER SUMMARY It tells the story of Mr. Head, a white southern redneck, and his grandson, Nelson. Everything starts on a train ride to the city to teach Nelson to be content with life in the country which is free of Negroes. The trip is going to be full of incidents due to their little contact with urban environment. For the very beginning Mr. Head shows his lack of politeness by speaking too loud on the train waking up the other passengers and provoking shame on Nelson. Mr. Head criticizes and contradicts everything his grandson says, showing to everybody how ignorant he is. When they finally arrive at the city they lose their way, finding themselves wandering about the black part of the city. Then, they notice that their lunch is lost and afraid of black people, they run as much as they can to leave that neighbourhood. Thus, hungry, lost and tired, they stop for a break. Nelson falls asleep and his grandfather decides to teach him a lesson: Mr. Head hides behind a garbage can 20 feet a way from Nelson to see his reaction after waking up alone there. His grandson’s reaction is running away in fear and desperation. As a consequence, an incident occurs: a group of women accuse the boy of having made another woman fall and break her ankle. When Mr. Head approaches to the scene Nelson hold him but Mr. Head denied any relation with him. After this, Nelson started to be a bit fed up with his grandfather due to his childish behaviour all day long. Now estranged from his grandson, Mr. Head gets back to the white section of town where he and Nelson see a Negro figure with an eye entirely white. The “Artificial Nigger” dissolves the tension between them. Consequently, the grandson learns the lesson Mr. Head wanted to teach him: to hate the city and to remain in the countryside. Moreover, Mr. Head has shown his supremacy as a wise man to his grandson. COMMENTARY • There is one main characteristic that the 2 protagonist of the story have in common: they both have a very low self-esteem, and that is the main reason why they hate colour people. They feel insignificant, inferior; they belong to the poor white trash, and to feel superior they need to make other people feel inferior. • For Mr. Head that other people includes his grandson. During the whole story he calls him “ignorant” several times. The word ignorant is used here in an ironic way, because by the time the story was written that word was closely related to the word nigger, so in calling him ignorant he is also calling him black in a pejorative way. • Mr. Head has a contradictory feeling because he is humiliating Nelson the whole time, but he also has the need of being indispensable for him, and he is trying to make Nelson think like that the whole time, for example when they are trying to visit the kitchen in the train and Mr. Head makes a puny joke, so Nelson is proud of him; or when Nelson fells asleep on the street and Mr. Head hides, so Nelson will find himself alone when he gets up. • Some people argue that racism came after the war, after political and social changes. Blacks were no longer slaves and many people were afraid of them because then they weren’t under control. • The real image is that blacks were afraid of everything they were surrounded with. • What we see in Nelson, the boy, is the birth of that racism, which is wonderful in O’Connor, an accurate observation of sadness. They need somebody to feel superior to. • Humiliation: Mutual humiliation: Mr. Head, who is stupid and insensitive, denies Nelson; and Nelson mirrors the image of Mr. Head. • The real climax comes when Mr. Head denies Nelson. He lies because he is afraid, panic, but everybody knows he is lying as they look like the same; this shows the kind of person he is. • Nelson is a reflection of his grandfather at the end; the first good characteristics disappear, he’s a 9 years old boy, so he’s easy influenced and adopts his grandfather’s opinion about black people. • There’s not only humiliation, but also a terrible feel of failure, a great defeat for both of them. They don’t have anybody else, and being in the city Nelson gets anger with Mr. Head but Nelson needs him. • When they see the Artificial Nigger, they have something in common to feel superior, if not they will be absolutely nothing. It could be an explanation for racism. • Nelson knows nothing about blacks, he has never been in the city before and has never seen a black man, so in the train was pointed out his reaction when his grandfather asks him for the black man. • On an emotional level they are very similar as they look like because Mr. Head pretends to be a nice, well-headed man, but he isn’t. He’ very immature and feels superior to blacks. • Irony, Mirror images → in the train, they both look at the window, a mirror, when they look each other is through a mirror, and they see their faces which are almost the same. When they look each other they see the same but Mr. Head sees a young boy and Nelson an old one > but only physically because they way they act is almost the same. • Unexpected social environment to feel so inferior; at the end, rather than going into different directions, they get closer. • The use of irony is wonderful; it’s one of the strongest themes of Flannery O’Connor. She is a narrative voice in the story; this narrative voice is looking from outside but its speaking from the point of view of the characters → richness implication of the narrator, 3rd omniscient narrator. • 1st paragraph: The narrator’s voice communicates the psychological condition of characters, it speaks from their vision. • A VIEW OF THE WOODS • Mr. Pitt & his wife lot/lawn Mr. Fortune’s Mum (Mrs. F.) Pittses (children) Mary Mr. Fortune (Mary’s grandfather) • Southern writer, grace, grotesque, black humour, plain narrative style, catholic vision without omissions... • Violence, paternal conflict with children. • The woods represent Christ image; Gardens of Eden. • Numbers, colours, trees... mean something. • There’s a parallelism between the names, the character’s personality, and the relationship between grandfather – granddaughter / grandson (Artificial Nigger). The use of names is ironic. • Mystery: is one of the reasons to be so interesting, through the inexplicable; it has to do with the action of grace, ambiguity. • Mr. Fortune was very proud of Mary; she’s the only Fortune among the Pitts. • Her defence of the land is a defence of the Pitts. • T. J. Eckleburg → The Great Gatsby • There’s something particular about this piece of lot. • The pride of his family is the only thing that made him to resist. • He hates the fact that she lets her father beat her [Irony] because a Pitt would never act like that. • What kills him? Irony, when they are fighting. He dies of a heart attack; looking a mirror, she is attacking him. • When he kills her he is killing his family. • Materialism vs. spirituality → Old American conflict. • It could be a simple interpretation of materialism. • It’s very clear the Christian representation on the story. • She never mentions Christ; some attention to spiritual values upon materialism. • He has the opportunity for something else, but he refuses it and he becomes simply materialistic. • The last thing he sees is the bulldozer grasping the land when he dies. • Last vision → mechanic and materialistic. • Revelation has a lot to do with is. REVELATION (1956) SUPERIORITY: - Black people (because she is white) - Her position in the world (home and land owner) • How she considers herself (good religious person, she goes to heaven…sure) POLARITY (metaphorical): black and white, good and evil, rich and poor, ugly and good-looking, two viewpoints of reality (the real truth for her is the Christian truth) and two levels of meaning. • Irony reflected in Mrs. Turpin conservation; she is proud of being a good Christian, so the righteousness is connected with religious belief. • She is independent and intelligent and with this meaningless she can’t stand up. • The language used includes lot of irony and sarcasm. • Mrs. Turpin shows: self-esteem, self-satisfaction, self righteousness, complacency, holier-than-thou (I’m better than you). • Self-righteous: puritan by definition, they are better, so they never go to the preterit. • Mary Grace accumulates years of frustration and she exploits listening to her mother talking to Mrs. Turpin. • Maybe Mary Grace is looking to Mrs. Turpin because she is transmitting a message. • Humility, because she is really blind and in her opinion; she is a bit overweight, she thinks she is better than anybody else. • She loves to imagine speaking with Christ; she loves to think about social stratification, so as soon as she enters in the office she is locating people where she thinks they belong to: poor whites and blacks almost at the same level. • There are things that do not fit in her social stratification, on many levels she is blind and needs to take off blindness. • She hates the level of Mary Grace even she has got a message. • Does Mrs. Turpin learn something in this story, or not? Mary Grace is the action of Grace in this story and Mrs. Turpin