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ABSTRACT ON MORALITY IN MINORITY FICTION: SUBTEXTS OF CLOSETING, COMMUNICATION, AND COMMUNITY IN BABEL-17 AND FLEDGLING Andrea Fryling, PhD Department of English Northern Illinois University, 2017 Ibis Gómez-Vega, Director In On Moral Fiction (1978), John Gardner claims that contemporary authors no longer write moral fiction. Gardner rightly advocates for moral fiction, but he was wrong—or at the very least working from a limited, white male perspective—when he made the rather blanket assertion that twentieth-century authors have abandoned moral fiction. The goal of this dissertation is to explore some of the moral literature that Gardner’s mainstream gaze overlooked and to examine how expanding the pool of authors may serve to provide relevant and important insights into modern society and its struggles. Specifically, this study will examine how Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler use closet imagery to grapple with cyclical prejudice in their science fiction novels Babel-17 (1966) and Fledgling (2005), respectively. These fantastic texts expose the marginalization imposed on those deemed “Other,” which seems appropriate to study given Gardner’s (and his society’s) privileging of white male art as the art of the age. These novels promote the analysis of societal hierarchies, leading readers to better understand how such privileging comes to occur and why it is so detrimental to society. The texts include characters who are Other in terms of race, sex, sexuality, socio-economic status, as well as other aspects of identity, and they frequently have to contend with identity- based prejudice. However, the traditionally mainstream characters must also combat prejudice as they interact with the traditionally marginalized, revealing prejudice’s multifold consequences. Through the fantastic genre of science fiction, Delany and Butler are able to create supernatural polyoids—characters who embody multiple seemingly-conflicting aspects of identity—whom society can neither neatly classify nor dichotomize; they fit all categories and yet none. Because they do not fit into a single social category, they do not have a prescribed community, and therefore, they must form new, nontraditional communities. These individuals have the potential to connect the various Others, but their society members’ deeply-ingrained fear and hatred of the Other present constant obstacles for the polyoids and their newly formed communities. Both Babel-17 and Fledgling urge readers to contemplate the influence of prejudice, fear, and hate and to envision a society in which communication and community are employed to combat them. NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DEKALB, ILLINOIS MAY 2017 ON MORALITY IN MINORITY FICTION: SUBTEXTS OF CLOSETING, COMMUNICATION, AND COMMUNITY IN BABEL-17 AND FLEDGLING BY ANDREA FRYLING © 2017 Andrea Fryling A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH Doctoral Director: Ibis Gómez-Vega ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Gómez-Vega, whose knowledge, guidance, and patience have been invaluable to me throughout this process and my graduate education as a whole. Thank you to Dr. Giles and Dr. Newman for also sharing their expertise with me and for their kindness along the way. I am grateful to each staff and faculty member, peer, friend, and family member who has shaped and encouraged me academically and personally; thank you all. DEDICATION You don’t have to agree with people’s politics, their religion, their sexual orientation; you don’t have to agree, but you can love them. It’s what Jesus did; it’s why he got in so much trouble […] We need to start loving people very different than us. – Chip Ingram, “Agenda #5: Perpetuate Prejudice” You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. –New International Version Bible, Matt. 5:43-4 To my mom: for her unconditional love, endless sacrifice, wisdom, encouragement, prayer, and friendship, and for teaching me that love and kindness know no margins. To my brother: for his limitless love for and faith in me, advice and encouragement, and devoted friendship. To each member of my family: for your love, brilliance, compassion for all, support of and belief in me and each other, and for inspiring me to love without borders and to strive for excellence like you: Mom and Dad, Jenny, Anthony and Grace, Becky and Brent, Alex, Parker, and Isabella, and little Jack. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter INTRODUCTION: A CRY FOR MORAL FICTION: LIMITS OF A WHITE GAZE………………………………………………………... 1 1. BABEL-17: (RE)DEFINING LANGUAGE AND BORDERS.......….. 25 2. FLEDGLING: A NOVEL: CLOSETING THE OTHER, OTHERING THE CLOSET………………………………………………………… 107 CONCLUSION: ON MINORITY MORAL FICTION: A CALL FOR THE POLYOID ARTIST …………………………………………….. 195 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………... 202 INTRODUCTION A CRY FOR MORAL FICTION: LIMITS OF A WHITE GAZE Nobody calls mainstream writers ‘mainstream’ except for those of us in the ghetto of the fantastic. –James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology In 1978, John Gardner wrote On Moral Fiction, a book-length critical essay in which he bemoans the state of contemporary literature and criticism, and he attempts to convince his colleagues of the need for art with a purpose. He reminds both authors and readers that the purpose of art is to better society, not merely to exist as art: not “art for art’s sake.” Gardner explains that postmodern artists have lost sight of art’s true purpose: “True art, by specific technical means now commonly forgotten, clarifies life, establishes models of human action, casts nets toward the future, carefully judges our right and wrong directions, celebrates, and mourns” (100). Gardner laments that popular authors such as Barth and Barthelme have lost sight of art’s purpose, resulting “in an age of mediocre art” (56). Gardner claims artists focus too much on “texture,” or art forms and moves for the sake of artistic forms and moves, and on preaching different causes that do not have any real “moral fiber” (66). According to Gardner, modern authors move “to mere language—puns, rhymes, tortuously constructed barrages of verbiage with the words so crushed together that they do indeed become opaque as stones, not windows that allow us to see thoughts or events but walls where windows ought to be, richly textured impediments to light” (68). These authors, Gardner states, have become so preoccupied with doing something new or with words themselves that their fiction no longer benefits audiences. 2 Even when contemporary authors attempt to include a message instead of merely compiling impressive words into a decorative but meaningless tapestry, they still fail to create the kind of moral art for which Gardner calls. Gardner writes, “Too often we find in contemporary fiction not true morality, which requires sympathy and responsible judgment, but some fierce ethic which, under closer inspection, turns out to be some parochial group’s manners and habitual prejudices elevated to the status of ethical imperatives, axioms for which bigotry or hate, not love, is the premise” (74). Gardner’s criticisms come together to suggest that postmodern authors have become elitist and careless, creating work that “goes not for the profound but for the clever” (81). Gardner believes that art should contribute to society by providing insight into humanity and ideas for improving the world, which he feels his contemporaries fail to do: Focusing on ‘message’ and indifferent to real human beings, as represented by their characters, they take either no position or else smug, slogany positions. In place of wisdom and careful analysis, products of the artist’s will and compassion, they offer, if anything, cant, cynicism, or dramatic gimmickry—interesting and arresting infernal entertainment, but nothing that will hold, nothing that will help. (91) Their characters, Gardner implies, fall flat because they lack purpose, and consequently, “Insofar as we’re unable to care about the characters, we can work up no interest in the issues” (73). In Gardner’s view, contemporary artists have ceased to fulfill their social responsibilities with their art and lack a “clear image of, or interest in, how things ought to be” (80). According to Gardner, true art must have purpose, must inspire, must create. Gardner writes, “[A]rt is essentially and primarily moral—that is, life-giving—moral in its process of creation and moral in what it says” (15). Gardner firmly believes, “Art is as original and important as it is precisely because it does not start out with clear knowledge of what it means to 3 say” (13). Art is moral and life-giving because it does have an agenda; it discovers while exploring beliefs and behaviors; “moral art tests and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and worse in human action” (19). Upon hearing “moral fiction,” people often assume Gardner advocates for didactic literature with a singular, black-and-white, bold-faced moral-of-the-story, but he acknowledges that at “times the moral model may be indirect […] leave[s] true morality at least partly to implication or at best in the hands of some minor character” (106). In other words, readers must develop the moral: their opinion on the characters and events presented. Further, Gardner adds, “[H]ealthy society is pluralistic, allowing every man his opinion as long as the opinion does not infringe on the rights of others” (135). In contrast to the moral fiction of old, Gardner does not advocate for a one-size-fits-all, universal command but encourages diverse opinions governed by mutual respect and awareness. Gardner often describes moral fiction in terms of artists’ creative processes as much as in terms of the final product. He explains, “[W]hat I am describing as true moral fiction, the ‘art’ is not merely ornamental: it controls the argument and gives it its rigor, forces the writer to intense yet dispassionate and unprejudiced watchfulness, drives him […] to unexpected discoveries and, frequently, a change of mind” (108).
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