Full Screen View

INITIATION MOTIFS IN ROBERT CORMIER'S NOVELS by Ruth Wilson Witten A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December, 1987 INITIATION MOTIFS IN ROBERT CORMIER'S NOVELS by Ruth Wilson Witten This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. William Coyle, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Ar ts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Thesis Advisor Chairperson, Department of English Dean, College of Humanities ~::z:f:tff~::G::r::a:=u::a;¢:2-t-e&-s-~....::~:....d_.-e,_s __ _.../ i i ABSTRACT Author: Ruth Wilson Witten Title: Initiation Motifs in Robert Cormier's Novels Institution: Florida Atlantic University Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1987 A central theme in the novels of Robert Cormier is the confrontation between the individual and society. Because the protagonists are teenagers, this encounter represents a form of initiation or rite of passage into the adult world. Numerous symbolic images relate the initiation experiences of Cormier's characters to the initiation rituals and practices of primitive tribes. Because the images reveal perversions of modern initiation ordeals - and corruption of the mentors who guide them, aberrant values are transmitted. The abundance of symbolic imagery elevates Cormier's work to a significant voice in contemporary mythology. Instead of mystical monsters, Cormier's novices must face the institutional evils found in religion, education, government, the military, international terrorism, and experimental medicine. Most of the youthful heroes fail to complete the passage satisfactorily; some are annihilated by it. Cormier warns that the implacable establishment can corrupt and destroy both individuals and itself. i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i i i Introduction 1 Primitive Ritual Images 6 Mentors' Twisted Motives 38 Aberrant Passages 53 Conclusion 7 0 Works Cited 73 Works Consulted 75 iv INTRODUCTION To dismiss Robert Cormier as just a currently controversial novelist for young adults would be a mistake. His three early adult novels and five more recent young adult novels constitute a rich addition to American literature, especially to those works which deal with initiation or rite of passage themes. Cormier's biographer Patricia J. Campbell defines his central theme in the question "How can we confront the utterly Implacable and still remain human?"(32> Cormier himself has said that he explores "the plight of the individual versus the system" <Campbell 30). How the emerging individual discovers himself in relation to society is at the core of initiation literature. Ihab Hassan in Radical Innocence points out that whether the individual completes the initiation or becomes its victim is the concern of initiation fiction: Our concern is the encounter between the self and the world in .fiction, that confrontation of the "hero" with experience which may assume the form of initiation or victimization. Now initiation may be understood as a process leading 1 2 through right action and consecrated knowledge to a viable mode of life in the world. (34-35) In Cormier's work a mythology of initiation evolves through many images and symbols that relate these "confrontations with experience" of Cormier's youthful protagonists to primitive initiation rites. While modern society is so complex, and adolescence is so varied, contemporary initiation cannot match exactly the rituals of a primitive culture. The resemblance, however, is significant. As these rites are perverted by individuals who would further their own power or by the power of some contemporary institution, society is corrupted. In the religious practices of primitive societies, rituals of initiation for youth passing into adult membership in the society follow consistent patterns. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and religious historian Mircea Eliade provide extensive catalogs of examples of the patterns of initiation. Many others have done the same. Because such events are usually perceived symbolically in literature, it becomes necessary to discover possible symbolic images that express the contemporary equivalents of such rites and rituals. Such imagery is abundant in Cormier's works. Because cultural and spiritual values are passed to the emerging individual via these rituals, a sort of mythology evolves from the literature where their symbolic images appear. 3 Robert Cormier the man seems to present an enigmatic picture to those who have written about him. His dark central vision is at odds with the mild-mannered, quiet- spoken family man. Because of Cormier's long career as a newspaperman, biographer Campbell draws an obvious parallel with Clark Kent<8). Like Kent, Cormier enters his phonebooth-like study and becomes a literary Superman. His novels for young adults are a contemporary publishing phenomenon. The first of these, The Chocolate War <1974), has sold almost half a million copies <Campbell 23>. Cormier's other novels- After The First Death (1979>, I Am The Cheese <1977>, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (1983>, and Beyond The Chocolate War <1985) -create a world not unlike Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County - fictional, autobiographical, mythological. The town of Monument both is and is not Cormier's own hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts. The early adult novels - Now And At The Hour (1960), A Little Raw On Monday Mornings <1963), and Take Me Where The Good Times Are <1965) -establish the world of French Hill, a neighborhood of working-class French Canadian immigrants. Cormier himself is the san of just such an immigrant father and an Irish Catholic mother. These early works reveal Cormier's own Roman Ca~~licism, ----··--.. an element in his life that he admits has been ambivalent. Biographer Campbell discusses at length the misery in young Cormier's life at the hands of tyrannical nuns, 4 contrasted with the "theology of love" Cormier feels as a result of the changes during the era of Pope John XXIII <Campbell 33). The town of Monument and the origin of its name are lovingly described in Take Me Where The Go o d T i mes Are: The name of this town is Monument, like I probably mentioned, and the people here are crazy about monuments, feeling maybe that they have to live up to the name of the place. (73> Cormier's Catholic attitude in this early work is revealed in a description of Monument's main street: Mechanic Street is long and it stretches all the way from the town line at the dump to the business district uptown where you'll find the fancy stores and City Hall and the public library and the Common full of monuments where I used to sit on summer evenings, watching the people going by. But the part that was really Mechanic Street, the part you thought of when anybody mentioned the name, was a small section, maybe three bloc ks long, with St. Jude's Church at one end and Lu ' s Place at the other. It's funny that the church and the saloon should be located that way. My mother always said that God was at one end of Mechanic Street and the Devil at the other. (85) 5 While there is little overtly religious language in Cormier's later works, and in fact The Chocolate War and Beyond The Chocolate War confront the Catholic educational institution, it is clear that Cormier believes in the existence of evil. Campbell confirms this belief in absolute wrong by introducing her biography of Cormier with an excerpt from the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in which he warns of the danger of telling lies to the young. In Cormier's young adult novels, these lies, seen as distorted, even perverted rites and rituals of initiation directed by corrupted mentors, result in aberrant passages,· some of which are never completed. These rituals, the mentors who guide them, and the inevitable results are the focus of this thesis. 6 CHAPTER ONE: PRIMITIVE RITUAL IMAGES In order to understand the leitmotif of recurring initiation rituals in Cormier's work, it is necessary to look first at what initiation rituals are or have been in human history, what purpose they have served, how and why historic rituals become literary symbols, and how their abundance elevates the entire body of Cormier's work to the level of a significant contemporary mythology. A brief look at the works of two scholars will help define what initiation rituals are in primitive societies. As early in this century as 1906 Arnold van Gennep in his The Rites of Passage described a pattern of trials or ordeals that a young man had to undergo in order tG be considered an adult or a fully-privileged member of society <74-76). The pattern of the rite involved three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. In his study of several primitive tribes, anthropologist van Gennep documented many examples of specific tests and ordeals that followed this pattern. Although the details of the rituals varied, there was remarkable similarity in their adherence to the pattern. A young man was separated from 7 the world of his childhood, instructed in the ways of the adult world, then marked with some physical sign of his having completed the course. Religious historian Mircea Eliade, half a century later, in his Rites and Symbols of Initiation, refined vanGennep's formula slightly. Eliade describes the basic initiation ritual pattern as symbolic death, followed by rebirth in an existentially altered state: In philosophical terms, initiation is equivalent to a basic change in existential condition; the novice emerges from his ordeal endowed with a totally different being from that which he possessed before his initiation; he has become another.

Load more