This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 67-2448 GRIFFITH, Malcolm Anstett, 1937- THE GROTESQUE IN AMERICAN FICTION. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1966 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE GROTESQUE IN AMERICAN FICTION! DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy lh the Graduate School of The Ohio S tate U n iversity Bjr Malcolm Anstett G riffith, A.B., M'.A. The Ohio S tate U n iversity D9663 Approved by nArfcU' Adviser Department of English VITA August 27, 1937 Born—Lima, Ohio 1958 . A.B., Oberlin College, Oberlln Ohio 1961^1966 . Teaching Assistant,. Department of E n glish ,, The Ohio S tate U n iversity, Columbus,. Ohio 1982 .. .. • M0A.,.The Ohio State University,, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Fields: American Literature and Fiction Studies in American Literature. Professors JUlian Markels and Roy Harvey Pearce Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature. Professor'Albert J,. Kuhn Studies in Nineteenth-Century English Literature., Professor Richard D. Altick Studies in Aesthetics., Professor Morris Weitz il ) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ........ 1 Chapter U .. DEFINING-' THE GROTESQUE . 16 • III.. BROWN- AND POE .................................................................43 I I I . THE GROTESQUE CHARACTER IN AMERICAN FICTION . 77 IV. THE COMIC GROTESQUE IN AMERICAN FICTION: . 140 V. GROTESQIE STRUCTURE IN AMERICAN FICTION . 173 CONCLUSION' ........................................ 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................ 210 H i INTRODUCTION Toward the end of Flannery O'Connor's -novel, Wise Blood, a very funny Incident occurs. To escape from the rain, Enoch Emery, a hoy of eighteen with yellow hair and a fox-shaped face, ducks-under the marquee of a movie house and finds himself in a line of children queued up to meet Gonga, the gorilla movie star. Soon Gonga arrives in the hack of a sound truck, hut before he w ill shake hands with the children, he insists on heing covered with a raincoat. When the line finally begins to move forward, Enoch desperately tries to think of an obscene remark with which to insult Gonga. At last Enoch reaches the head of the line and finds his hand in the warm, soft paw of the g o r illa : For a second he only stood there, clasping it. Then he began to stammer. "My name is Enoch Emery," he mumbled.. "I attended the Rodemill Boys' Bible Academy. I work at the city zoo. I seen two of your pictures. I'm only eighteen years old but I already work for the city.- My daddy made me com . ." and his voice cracked. The star leaned slightly forward and a change came in his eyes: an ugly pair of human ones moved closer and squinted at Enoch from behind the cell­ uloid pair.. "You go to hell," a surly voice inside the ape-suit said, low but distinctly, and the hand was Jerked away.l The scene speaks for itself. It is absurdly comic, and as such is representative of a number of similar incidents in Wise Blood. 3L 2 The equally remarkable sequel to this incident iB characteristic of another group of events which occur in Miss O’Connor's novel,, those which combine humor with violence. That night, when the truck carrying Gonga pulls away from another movie house,. Enoch slips out of the shadows and clim bs aboard*. He i s armed with a sharp metal rod fashioned out of the mainshaft of an umbrella,. As the truck speeds across the city,. Enoch k ills the man inside the ape-suit and strips him of his costume,. Near a pine grove he slips from the truck and quickly exchanges his clothes for the gorilla suit. After beating his arms vio­ lently against his chest and growling loudly, Enoch the gorilla returns to the highway where he encounters a man and woman sitting on a rock enjoying twilight: The young man turned his neck just in time to see the gorilla standing a few feet, away, hideous and black, with its hand extended. He eased his arms from around the woman and disappeared silently into the woods*.. She, as soon as she turned her ey es, fled screaming down the highway. The gorilla stood as though surprised and presently its arm fell to its side*. It sat down on the rock where they had been sitting and stared over the valley at the un­ even skyline of the city. (p. 198) If we are shocked by the murder which Enoch commits, we also laugh at the humorous picture of an adolescent boy finally achieving some kind of identity in the guise of a gorilla. The combination of violence and humor in the scene pro­ duces in us corresponding emotions. 3 Finally, there is a third class of events in Wise Blood, the ones which are completely violent. To illu s­ trate, let me discuss the murder of Solace Layfield by Hazel Motes. While busy preaching in the streets of Taulkinham, Hazel finds himself receiving competition from Hoover Shoats, alias Onnie Jay Holy, and his hired prophet, Solace Layfield. The two competitors attempt to recruit members for their church, The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ. Hazel is angered by the two men whom he considers false prophets.. So after the three men have ended their preaching, he follows Solace's car into the country and forces it to stop. After a brief argument in which Hazel insists that Solace take off the suit of clothes given him by Shoats, Layfield attempts to escape: The Prophet began to run in earnest. He tore off his shirt and unbuckled his belt and ran out of his trousers. He began grabbing for his feet as if he would take off his shoes too, but before he could get at them, the Essex knocked him flat and ran over him. Haze drove about twenty feet and stopped the car and then began to back it., He backed it over the body and then stopped and got out.. The Essex stood half over the other Prophet as if it were pleased to guard what it had finally brought down. The man didn't look so much like Haze, lying on the ground on his face without his hat or suit on. A lo t o f blood was coming out o f him and forming a puddle around his head. He was motionless all but for one finger that moved up and down in front of his face as if he were marking time with it.. Haze poked his toe in his side and he wheezed for a second and then was quiet. "Two things I can't stand," Haze sa id , "—a man. that a in 't tru e and one that mocks what is. You shouldn't ever have tamp­ ered with me if you didn't want what you got." (p . 204) 4 This is a shocking incident.. We are repulsed by Haze's violence, for certainly Layfield's behavior in no way provokes such an extreme reaction. And we are amazed at Haze’s justification of his act: his explanation of things he can't stand bears little logical relation to what he has just done. The incidents in Wise Blood, then, fall into three groups: the absurdly comic ones, ones which combine humor and violence, and ones which are solely violent. As characteristic of the incidents, I have discussed the two encounters between Enoch Emery and Gonga the gorilla, and the murder of Solace.. The most suitable word which I know for describing them is the adjective "grotesque." It is the only word that includes at once the concepts of absurd humor, gratuitous violence, and perverted logic.. It is, in short, an omnibus word, useful for discussing matters which are bizarre, eccentric, perverted, fantastic, absurd, morbid, mfenstrous, gruesome, ugly, or illogical. If we examine only the incidents in Wise Blood, we in no way realize just how grotesque the novel is. Every character in the novel further enhances the grotesqueness of the book. Take, first, their names: Hazel Motes, Mrs* Wally Bee Hitchcock, Enoch Emery, Sabbath and Asa Hawks, Hoover Shoats, Solace L a y field , and Leora W atts. None o f these names is- common, and everyone suggests something other than a human being’. "Hazel Motes," for example 5 makes us think o f nuts and d u st, sev era l o f the names bring to mind animals, and "Leora Watts" suggests some­ thing electric.. As unusual as the characters' names are their obsessions'. Hazel Motes' world, for instance, rer volves around his ancient rat-colored Essex and a religion which denies the existence of sin by wallowing in if.. And the center of the world for Enoch Emery is a shrunken mummy, in that part of the zoo labeled MVSEVM, which he finally steals as the "new Jesus" for Haze's Church Without Christ1., Wise Blood,, thus, deals with a group of humans who constitute a very odd fictional gallery, who are all gro­ tesque in some way. The grotesque in the novel goes even beyond the characters and in cid en ts1. As Lewis Lawson has re ce n tly pointed out, "if the content of Wise Blood seems bizarre and ludicrous, the rhetoric only reinforces that appear- p ance." In the first place, comparisons are frequently incongruous: drugstore chairs are like toad stools, cows are like housewives, houses are like ugly dogs, tree trunks are like ankle socks, a woman's hair is like ham gravy or like a stack of sausages, and windshield wipers are like two idiots clapping in church.