THE CLAUSE OF CONGRUENCY: A POSSIBLE WORLDS READING OF THREE NOVELSOFRAYBRADBURY by Nicole Adamo A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 2002 Copyright by Nicole Adamo 2002 11 TIIE CLAUSE OF CONGRUENCY: A POSSIBLE WORLDS READING OF THREENOVELSOFRAYBRADBURY by Nicole Adamo This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Thomas L. Martin, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree ofMaster of Arts. Mary E. Fa ci, Committee Member Date 111 ABSTRACT Author: Nicole Adamo Title: The Clause of Congruency: A Possible Worlds Reading of Three Novels by Ray Bradbury Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Thomas L. Martin Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2002 Using Marie-Laure Ryan' s definition of the law of minimal departure, I propose an important addendum, the clause of congruency. It is necessary to delve deeper into the connection a reader makes with a textual possible world and its relation to the actual world. The textual world, with all its various rules and mores, becomes just as accessible to the reader as the world he currently resides in, so long as it flows along in a logical manner. It is only when something appears that is incongruent with the reader's understanding of the textual world, the reader is forced to dissemble his current textual world and build a new one. Ray Bradbury utilizes the clause of congruence to reveal meaning in three of his novels. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS The Clause of Congruency: A Brief Theoretical Background ............ .. .... .. .. ......................... ...... ... 1 When Worlds Collide: Bradbury's Textual Worlds in The Martian Chronicles ......................... .... .. ................. .. ... ................. ... .. .. .. ......... .. ... ....... ............. II Mere Reflections: The Clause of Congruency and The Characters of Fahrenheit 451 ... ..... .... ................. ... .. .... ..... ....................... .......... ................ ... .. 18 The Yin and the Yang: Bradbury Balances Textual Worlds in Something Wicked This Way Comes ............................................................................. 28 Purposeful Inconsistencies: The Need for The Clause of Congruence ......................... .................. .............. .. ...... ................................................... 3 7 Notes .... ....................... ................. ..... ... ..... .... .... ... ................. .. ............. .... .... ... .... .... .................. .. ... 40 Works Cited .............. .. .. ............ ...................... ..... ..... ... ... ... ... ..... .. ...... .. ..... ..... .... ......... ... ...... .. ...... .. 41 The Clause of Congruency: A BriefTheoretical Background When literary theorists discuss the "possibility" and "impossibility" of fictional worlds, they inevitably turn to the discussion of intertextuality and minimal departure. Their claim is that a reader grasps the textual world via a linguistical mimetic interplay of the textual world and the actual world. If the textual world closely resembles the actual world, then the reader is not forced to "leave" behind the trappings of the actual world in order to construct the textures, mores, and atmosphere of the textual world. If the textual world, however, is a completely alien landscape, it will be necessary for the reader to stretch their assumptions of the possible in order to understand the text. Marie­ Lame Ryan defines this concept in no uncertain terms: "This law - to which I shall refer to as the principle of minimal departure - states that we (readers) reconstrue the central world of a textual universe in the same way we reconstrue the alternate possible worlds of nonfactual statements: as conforming as far as possible to our representation of the A W (actual world)" (51). She goes on to illuminate that this idea has difficulty standing on its own. The theory of minimal departure must exist, not independently of intertextuality, but in a symbiotic relationship as a reader builds a possible world through textual clues and prior reading experience. "Intertextuality," she explains, "replaces the world (actual world) with the written word as a frame of reference of the reading process" (54). This would allow the textual world authenticity even were it far removed from the actual world of the reader. I wish to contend that Ryan 's law reaches closure too quickly, and minimal and maximal departure in a linear fashion is too easily achieved by fictional texts. To better understand Ryan's law of minimal departure, it is important to consider how she defines a fictional text. Ryan positions her argument in a gray area fashioned by a combination of other critical approaches. She begins her discussion with an explanation ofthe referential discourse ofGottlob Frege. The Fregean approach to fiction can be established, according to Ryan, in three distinct points. (1 ) Reference can only be made to that which exists; (2) To exist is synonymous with 'to occur in the real world' and (3) Only one world exists, the world we regard as real" (14). The Fregean mode has obvious limitations, especially concerninll fantastical elements of fiction that are non-referential in the FreQean ~ ~ "real world". Because of this limited scope, Ryan contends the Fregean critical approach "turns any attempt at interpretive fiction into a ludicrous activity." (14) Events, people, and places that arise in textual worlds may occur only in said textual world and, therefore, would not exist according to the Fregean mode. It would also be impossible to distinguish true statements about the text from false ones. Think of the following example concerning the text of The Wizard of Oz. According to the text, Dorothy Gale lived in the state ofKansas. Baum is capable of writing about "Kansas" because, referentially speaking, it exists in the Fregean "real world." If Dorothy Gale lives in this "real" place, then is she also real? Or, if she does not exist, what is stopping a reader from making the statement that Dorothy Gale lived in the state of New Mexico? Felix Martinez-Bonati states that literary language is not linguistical at 2 all. He contends there is an absolute distinction between "literary poetic and other fonns of discourse" (77). In other words, literary discourse is imaginary and, by being so, it is not constrained by linguistical "rules" that define other types of discourse. Frege, according to Martinez-Bonati, can set up distinctions between the referential "real" and the unreal because fiction is outside the rhetorical circles. "Because poetic discourse is fictitious, it can be now similar to ordinary discourse, now entirely dissimilar from any real utterance. The distinctive potentialities of poetic discourse reside in the freedom of the imagination" (78). Narrative sentences are imitations of linguistical actual sentences. Martinez-Bonati describes this phenomenon as ordinary sentences being real but a poetic sentence being imaginary (83 ). These imaginary poetic sentences are given the title of"pseudo-sentences." But changing the referentially capable sentences into "pseudo-sentences" still does little to safeguard a textual world from being changed arbitrarily. Is Dorothy Gale from Kansas or New Mexico? If the statements concerning Miss Gale's home are not sentences in the linguistical sense, can one say whether they are true or false? At this point Ryan adds Thomas Pavel's ontological argument to the mix. Martinez-Bonati and Pavel seem to converge on similar ideas but Pavel allows fiction to be actual, not imaeinarv..., "' . Pavel decides errors and lies are false statements about "real" entities (occurring in the Fregean "real world"), while presenting fiction as truths about imaginary beings (Ryan 15 ). This way fictional texts can remain linguistically sound and still discuss things beyond the actual world. Pavel seems to have found an opening for literary critics to study fiction according to its own "imaginary" merits. But Ryan, once again, points out the inadequacies in this definition of fiction. Where do the 3 onto logically hybrid worlds belong? Returning to the previous example of fictitious Dorothy Gale living in the referentially real place called Kansas, how can a reader reconcile the two? The text of The Wizard of Oz only fits comfortably into Pavel's definition of fiction when Dorothy Gale, a fictitious girl, land in the imaginary world of Oz. Ryan proposes the concept of"possible worlds" or textual reference points built through the synthesis oftextual clues and the reader's understanding of the actual world. Because possible worlds exist on a plane between the reader's actual world and the "semantic domain of the fictional text," there now exists "the possibility of making truth-functional statements about a fictional universe" (16). Ryan now begs the question, wherein resides the difference between the actual world and the merely possible ones? Here she utilizes David Lewis' proposal that "our actual world is only one world among others. Actual, he continues, is indexical. Every possible world is actual but these terms are not interchangeable. 'To be actual' means