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An Alternative World to the World of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos

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An Alternative World to the World of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos Fantasy: An Alternative World to the World of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos Ms. S. Priyadharshini Assistant Professor of English Vels University, Chennai, -117 Tamil Nadu, India ABSTRACT Fantasy is not absolutely the connotative association of something that is deviated from the reality. It is the negation of reality and not the opposite. It stands between the phase of reality and the phase of unreality. Fantasy is used with the purpose of bringing the reality that lays hidden under the veil of unreality. Vonnegut has used two fantastical elements that state the formula of survival: Natural Selection and Ghost narrator. Vonnegut uses the concept of Natural Selection which stands as a foil to Darwin‟s Theory of Evolution to bring out the reality that the world ought to be. His Narrator stands as a pinnacle of fantasy as he has called a ghost to narrate a story that will happen a million years later. Fantasy is the most seductive subject both in literature and in others. Fantasy cannot be explained like any other terms in literature. Its connotative association with imagination and desire, indeed, has really made it a difficult area to explain and interpret. The word “Fantastic” is derived from Latin “phantasticus” which refers to all imaginary activities. Given such a scope, it has proved difficult to develop an adequate definition of fantasy as a literary kind. As a critical term, fantasy has been applied rather indiscriminately to any literature which does not give priority to realistic representation: myths, legends, folks and fairy tales. According to M. H. Abrams, fantasy literature is “deliberately designed by the author to leave the reader in a state of uncertainty whether the events are to be explained by reference to natural causes or to super natural causes” (237). The definition given by Abrams is very apt as it helps to explain the actual cause for the undefinable nature of fantasy. The fantasy in literature traces something which is very much unseen and unsaid in any work when it is read apparently. Fantasy literature, generally, refuse to observe the unities of time, place and action. The characters slide away from the chronological move of the story and the story fails to give a definite demarcation between animate and inanimate object. All these definite characteristic traits of fantasy literature make it an unexplicable subject to throw light on. Fantasy is unfit for denotative definition but it is generally associated with something that seems to be unreal. It is always claimed that the literature of fantasy transcends reality, escapes the human condition and constructs the alternate world. But this connotative meaning of fantasy in association with unreality and alternative world should be discarded because the world of fantasy is neither unreal nor a secondary world which is alternate to the real world of human beings. Thus, “fantasy is not to do with inventing another non-human world: it is not transcendental. It has to do with inverting elements of this world, re-combining its constitutive features in new relations to produce something strange, unfamiliar and apparently „new‟, absolutely „other‟ and different.” (Jackson 8) The ultimate aim and purpose of fantasy and realism are not very much different in literature. The realistic fiction is written to give the effect that it represents life and the social world as it seems to the common reader, evoking a feeling that its characters might exist. Fantasy literature also Ms. S. Priyadharshini 14 The Indian Review of World Literature in English Vol. 13 No .I January 2017 achieves the same end by representing ordinary events and details together with fantastic and dream like element. “The fantastic circumstances can be viewed as an economical and effective means of revealing characters‟ interests and emotions which would be disguised or modified in surroundings well ordered by comfort or customs” (Apter 1). From Apter‟s words, it is obvious that fantastic circumstances bring out the real emotions and feelings of the characters that are often under cover in the normal atmosphere. A realistic plot also attempts to bring the real interest of the character. In this way the fantastic literature have the same purpose of realist‟s plot of bringing the real interest of the character. For example, when GregorSamsa in Kafka‟s Metamorphosis (1915) wakes to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect, his behaviour and his family‟s subsequent behaviour reveals a great deal about Gregor‟s pre-insectile state. Thus, Kafka successfully brings out the character‟s real but hidden interest through implausible premise. Fantasy in literature is used by the author for various purposes, which must be understood not as an escape from reality but as an investigation of it. The fantasy that is used in modern and postmodern fiction is entirely different from the fairy tale, myth or saga. The fairy tales, myth and sagas are enacted in a world separated from the mundane world spatially and temporally. But in the postmodern fictions, the fantasy is applied to the practical materialistic world without giving a feeling of transcending the mundane world. Thus, Kafka‟s GregorSamsa in Metamorphosis transformed into a giant insect and that transformation obviously breaks the natural law but at the same time the tale occurs in the mundane world. Rosemary Jackson, in her book entitled Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, in an attempt to explain fantasy in terms of reality explains it by using a technical term employed in optics, “paraxis”. “A paraxial region is an area in which light rays seem to unite at a point after refraction. In this area, object and image seem to collide, but in fact neither object nor reconstituted image genuinely resides there: nothing does” (Jackson 19). Lens Image Object Paraxial region Thus she takes the paraxial area to represent the region of the fantastic whose imaginary world is neither entirely „real‟ (object), nor entirely „unreal‟ (image). But it is located somewhere between the two. Todorov, a structuralist, offers an account of the genre of the „fantastic‟ (le fantastique) which describes it as “bounded by the neighbouring genres of the uncanny (l`estrange) and the marvelous (le merveilleux) but never straying into either region, however much it may be drawn in one direction or the other, and indeed however much it may embody the tension that such a state creates” (Hawkes 81). Fantastic Uncanny Marvelou s Todorov also places fantastic between „real‟ and „unreal‟ element. Thus, the place of fantasy can be illustrated through the following diagram. Image/ Paraxial/ Marvelous/ Object/ Fantasy unreality uncanny/reality Ms. S. Priyadharshini 15 The Indian Review of World Literature in English Vol. 13 No .I January 2017 From the definitions of Rosemary Jackson and Todorov, it is very evident that fantasy is not the opposite of reality but it can be called a negation to reality: not the exact opposite of reality at the same time it cannot be equated with reality. If „B‟ is the opposite of „A‟, then „-A‟ is not the opposite of „A‟ but is the negation of „A‟. Similarly fantastic is the negation of reality but not the opposite. The exact opposite of „real‟ is „unreal‟ not „fantasy‟. Therefore, fantasy has nothing to do with unreality. The world of fantasy is not an unreal world but is just an inversion of the real world in which human live. The mundane world is inverted as a world of fantasy for a specific purpose. But the purpose of using fantasy differs from writer to writer. The purpose of using fantasy by Stevenson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is to bring out the psychological aspect of split personality; while the fantasy in Kafka‟s Metamorphosis is to bring out the hidden truth which otherwise is impossible to see under the normal circumstances. Dostoevsky frequently writes of a fantastic literature as being the only appropriate medium for suggesting a sense of estrangement and alienation from natural origins. Similarly, Vonnegut has also used fantasy with the purpose of bringing certain facts to the readers. He intensifies the reality in his novels and makes it fantastic to show the readers the reality that ought to be. Fantasy is also a means through which he reveals his humanistic vision. He successfully did this by infusing reality into the fantasy in his fictions. Hence the reality in his fiction remains unseen and unsaid covered by fantasy. According to Rosemary Jackson, fantasy can operate in two ways in expressing desire: it can manifest or show desire, or it can expel desire when the desire is a disturbing element which threatens cultural order and continuity. Vonnegut is a writer who belongs to the second type. By harping on fantasy, he tries to expel the desire for materialism and technology which destroys the „real‟ of the reality. But he hides the reality within the layers of fantasy. The portrayal of reality can be classified into two distinguished categories: the portrayal of present phenomenon as it is and the depiction of the reality that ought to be. Vonnegut magnifies the evil elements in the portrayal of the reality in present phenomenon and makes it appear fantastic. The evil elements in the novel which brings chaos and confusions are intensified by the fantasy of Vonnegut. This ultimately results in finding a solution to the problem. This solution turns out to be the reality that ought to be. Thus, Vonnegut seeks the help of fantasy to bring out the reality. In Galapagos, Vonnegut evidently uses fantastic elements to explore the hidden reality. Vonnegut reinforces the fact that fantastic world that is found in the popular work Galapagos is not the “other” world but is an alternative world.
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