Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of John Cheever Patrick Shannon A Thesis In The Department of English Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirernent For the Degree of Master of Arts at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada @ Patrick Shannon June 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*m of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellngton OttawaON KlAON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Yow hJe Votre relarence Our Me Notre retdrence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fïl.m, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othewise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of John Cheever Patrick Shannon John Cheever has been categorized by critics as an Amencan realist. This paper challenges that assumption through the use of Roman Jakobsen's distinction between rnetaphoric and rnetonymic wliting. In Jakobsen's poetics, the rnetonymic and metaphoric poles are opposed. The former describes discourse in wiiich the objective world is depiaed through contiguous phenomena, a mode of writing that Jakobsen amibes to reaiism. The metaphonc pole reveals "equivalencesn selected by the author to denote how phenomena are similar, not rnerely contiguous. Cheever's narratives show a gradual evolution away from metoriymic writing toward metaphoric. As David Lodge has explained, this evolution can have a muted impact on the realistic text if the author baws his figurative Ianguage from the field of contiguities, or context, of a sening; Cheever's fiction illustrates this process. This paper also points out that Cheever's adoption of metaphoric prose occurred more rapicily after publication of lis fmt novel, and that his use of metaphoric strategies dlowed hirn to bring order to, or aestheticize, the nanative predicaments of his charaaers. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 1 CWAPTER ONE: CHEEVER'S SHORT STORIES................................................................................. 9 REAL~SM................................................................................................................................................... 10 A KEY TO CHEEVER'S METAPHORS......................................................................................................... 23 FORMSOF METAPHORICD~SCOURSE ........................................................................................................ 26 MODERNISMAND POSTMODERNISM ......................................................................................................... 38 CHAPTER TWO: THE WAPSHOT NOVELS .......................................................................................46 PASTORALMETAPHORS AND THE "CONTROLOF CONTEXT"................................................................ 46 METONYMYM THE WAPSHOTCHRONKLE .............................................................................................. 55 THREESOURCES OF SATIRE .................................................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER THREE: CHEEVER'S LATER NOVELS.......................................................................... 75 BULLETPARK ......................................................................................................................................... 75 FALCONER ................................................................................................................................................ 84 OH WHAT A PARADISEIT SEEMS .............................................................................................................. 91 INTRODUCTION This paper discusses John Cheever's narrative evolution. 1 argue that his art evolved from traditiond realism in his early short stories and The Wapshot Chronicle to a hybrid of realism and antirealism thereafter. My chief goal here is not to amend existing biographical criticism but to decipher Cheever's fiction structurally. David Lodge has written in The Modes of Modern Writing that Jakobsen's paper "Two Aspects of Language And Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances" (1956) allowed him to conceptualize a way of discussing the forma1 properties of realist and anti-realist prose fiction. In Jakobsen's poetics the metaphoric and metonymic poles are opposed. The metaphoric pole represents discourse in which the writer selects "equivalences" between things real or figurative, the act of selection moving the discourse into an area of subjective impression. Conversely, metonymic writing is inherently suited to empirical description because it depicts not connections but combinations, duplicating reality as we encounter it outside of books. Lodge points out that "anywhere one touches down in the 20'~-centur-y"one joins the debate represented by Jakobsen's opposites - the quarrel over whether art should preoccupy itself with the so-called objective world or the subjective world of the artist. The appeal of Jakobsen's theory is that it provides a single optic by which ro measure narrative changes between Cheever's early and mature work. It also provides a vocabulary, wher: allied to Lodge's discussion of the typography of modern fiction, through which we can speculate about the uses and effects of metaphor and rnetonymy in Cheever's career. Specifically, Lodge points out that metonymic and rnetaphoric writing has corresponded to artistic worldviews in our century.' Modernisç fiction has exploited "the perception of similarity" - in symbolist or mythopoeic elements - to overlay some pattern, some aesthetic, on Our disorderly world. Metaphor "is overtly exploited as a comic or rnagic principle by which the anarchic flux of experience can be ordered and made tolerable" (Lodge 129). Cheever exploits comic and magic principles in his mature stories and novels to achieve this very goal. His characters reconstitute unpleasant experiences by imagining more cornfortable worlds, by dreaming of solutions. On a plot level, the stories and novels show a tendency toward happy endings that simple probability - that is, the chain of contiguities Our common sense recommends to us - would block. The working proposition in the coming argument is that satire and irony are species of metaphoric discourse because they juxtapose metonymies not found in nature. Satire is an illustration of the "principle of selenion" in language because it draws Our attention to contrasts. 1 point out below that these contrasts becorne more common in Cheever's mature prose. Assisting Our understanding of these unnatural combinations is the (often) non-mimetic narrator, loosely disguised as a prominent male character, who further underscores by his remarks the poignancy or humour of certain events, objeas or statements. In general, every depiction of the world in Cheever's fiction that mimics the natural contiguities of life works in the service of realism as Jakobsen defines it. Every artificial contiguity amounts, in effect, to a "selection," and works in the service of art. The insufficiency of this approach is obvious. Much of the charm of Cheever's writing is tonal, is the "reciprocity of differing tones" in his irony (as George Hunt has praised it)2, and Jakobsen's terms are not designed to explain such variations within metaphorical prose. The cornplex, often confusing nature of Cheever's later satire is evidenced by his varied critical reception. One reviewer, Cynthia Ozick, spoke eloquently for many critics (and readers, no doubt) when she said of The Wapshot Scanda1 that it is "al1 chiaroscuro, al1 febrile play; play derived from the hints and darts of fantasy, from a yearning for the brightness that precedes disillusionment" (Boscha 59). Seeking clarification in his life experiences, other critics have learned that Cheever seems ro have fiaionally reconstituted his memoirs to thwart biographical criticism, as though his letrers and journals were written with an eye on posterity. 1 discuss the hazards of biographical speculation in my chapter on the short stories. In sum, though Cheever's life seems to offer abundant opportunity for exegesis, no such exploration can satisfy a modern critic wary of the intentional fallacy. And Cheever himself warned that his fiction was not crypto-biography. A further problem besetting Jakobsen's structuralism is that the process by which we derive meaning from Cheever's stories - perhaps especially as North Americans - relies heavily on Our intuitions as readers, and specifically on Our understanding of the cultural iconography of his subject-matter. Jonathan Culler, in The Pursuit of Sipi.-$,points this out in a discussion of Donald Davison: Since we do not believe that responses to metaphors