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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zoob Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 43100 i . 5 74-3177 GLASS, Terrence L., 1946- MYTHS, DREAMS AND REALITY: CYCLES OF EXPERIENCE IN THE NOVELS OF JOHN HAWKES. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, A Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan i THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. H m s, DREAMS AND REALITY! CYCLES OF EXPERIENCE IN Tdfi NOVELS OF JCHN HAWKES DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio S tate University By Terrence L. Glass* B.A., M.A. * • • • • The Ohio S tate University 1973 Heading Committee! Approved By Dr. John Itusto Dr. Anthony Libby ^ Dr. Daniel Barnes t A/- Adviser Deportment of English AQQWWLEDGMafT I would lik e to thank Professors John Muste, Anthony Libby and Daniel fiaxnea of the Department of English, Chlo State University, and Professor Lee Brown of the Department of Philosophy* Ohio State Unlver- alty, for their helpful caanents during the preparation of this study. 11 v m September 8, 19**6 Bom—Dayton, Ohio 1968 .................... B.A., Central State University, W ilberforce, Ohio 1968-1970, 1971-1972 . NDEA Title IV Folic*, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1972 M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971-2, 1972-1973 Teaching Associate, Deportment of English, The Chlo State University, Columbus, Chlo FIELDS OF S1UD1 Major Field 1 Modem American and B ritish L ite ra tu re Studies 5n American Literature. Professor Alfred B, Ferguson Studies in Eighteenth Century EngllBh Literature. Professor A. E. W. Maurer Studies in Creative Writing. Professor Hebert Conzonerl Studies in Nineteenth Century English Literature. Professors Richard D. Altlok and Fbrd Stfotmo i n TAELS OP CQNTSNT9 Bage ACKNOWLEDGMENT.................................................................... 1 1 v r a ............................................................................................. 1 1 1 Chapter CNSi E'TERCDUCTICN.................................................. 1 TOOBiCTBS....................................................... 8 W O. TJffi: CANNIBALi THE FANTASY OF HISTORY . 9 FOOTNOTES................................................... 7k THHEEi THE BEETLE LBGi THE FANTASY OF TECHNOLOGY........................................... 75 POOONCTBS...................................... 135 FOUR. THE LIKE W IG . FANTASY AS GAME. 136 FOOTNOTES.................................................. 185 FIVE 1 SQOCND SKIN AND THE BLOOD ORANGES t THE NAlSATQa A3 EaZAKER, THE NARRATOR. AS DREAM............................................186 FOOTNOTES....................................................... 26k s i x . ccnojusicn ...............................................................265 footnotes, .............................................. 273 LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED................................................... 27** I t CHAPTER ONBi INTRODUCTION "Where all le obscure and unrealised the beat alnilltude la a dream." - - E. M. Fora ter John Hawkes's novels dramatize a paradoxical kinship between art and life. On the one hand, speaking for the literary tradition available to the contemporary writer, HaWkes says that "the liberating processes of the Imagination uay result in his discovery of characters closely resembling the heroes, benevolent guides, destructive demons, or awe inspiring gods that we find In myths, dreams, fantasies, and fa iry tales.HaWkes as artist consistently evokes these anolent Imaginative figures In his fiction, but always In monstrously Ironic ways. His "heroes" characteristically enact mythic or quasl-mythlc quests and ceremonies, Madame Stella Snow In The Gamlbal eats the meal ritually prepared from the Cuke's murderous sacrifice of her nephew, a ll In-the midst of her nation's regeneration of the myth of conquest. Skipper In Second Skin and Cyril In Use Blood Oranges both take part In Ironic regeneration ceremonies. There are also In Hawkes's novels such "benevolent guides" 1 2 as William Hencher and Sybllllne Who take Michael Bonks through the fantasy-fulfilling world of the Golden Bowl In Pie Lime Twig. Or there is cowboy Luke In The Beetle Leg Who heals Camper's son of a snake bite and guides the family out of the desert Into the town where the American Dream Is being enacted, blistered and poisonous and sterile. Or there are such other "benevolent guides" as Skipper and Cyril, narrators of Hawke a'a two most recent novels, who steer the reader through the dreams of their own destructive pasts towards pernicious vindication of themselves. And there are such "destructive demons" as the Red Devils In Pie Bpetlo Leg, or Larry in TJj§ Lime Twig, and such "awe inspiring gods" as Hugfc and Cyril In Pie Blood Oranges. But the paradox Is that all these characters, once operating within the dynamics of Hawkes's vision, themselves become artificers acting out battles of the Imagination. And the Imaginative material they are shaping consists of their own lives. They become "awe-inspiring gods" to the trapped substance of their selves. HaWkes In an artistic sense has dreamed his fiction, manipulating various mythic and archetypal patterns into the psyches and aspirations and defeats of his characters. Thereafter, the characters 3 actually begin to dream and to live out their Illusions of themselves. Thus, the artist, granted the miraculous 2 relief that "art deeds not with the real but with the conceivable," has his envisioned novels become the effective result of his Imagination! whereas Hawkes's characters, in creative repetition througi novel after novel, have their lives become the effective results of their Imaginations. We repeatedly confront In Hawkes's novels the character who In attempting to transcend Into Illusion tries to force reality to accompany him on his flights Into fancy. One of the most noticeable recurring Images throughout all of the novels is that of birds, of various types of winged creatures who persistently appear during the characters' trips Into the worlds of their Illusions, Hawkes's characters enact In a cyclic, ritualistic way the eternal tension between Illusion and reality implied In Northrop Frye's definition of the significance of the artistic Impulse i Now If we wish to see this [quest myth] as. a pattern of meaning. * ., we have to start with the workings of the subconscious where the epiphany originates, in other words In the dream. Ihe human cycle of Baking and dreaming corresponds closely to tho natural cycle of light and darkness, and it is perhaps in this corres pondence that all Imaginative life begins* The corres pondence Is largely an antithesis i it is In dayll&ht that nan Is really In the power of darkness, a prey to frustration and weakness) it is in tho darkness of nature that the "libido" or conquering heroic self awakes. Hence a r t, which Plato called a dream fo r awakened minds, seems to have os it s fin a l cause the resolution of the antithesis, the mingling of the sun and the hero, the realizing of a world in which the inner desire and the outward circumstance coincide* This is the same goal, of course, that the attempt to combine human and natural power In r itu a l has.3 As literal resolvers of this artistic antithesis, Hawkes's characters repeatedly enact what he himself has termed "the terrifying similarity between the unooneolous desires of the solitary nan and the disruptive needs of the visible world* "k The dream m aterials from which Hawlces has created them (deriving from "that nightly inner Bchlsa between the rational and the absuzd"^),

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