grotesque

In “Discourse in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin states, “But no living word relates to its object in a singular way: between the word and its object, between the word and the speaking subject, there exists an elastic environment of other, alien words about the same object, the same theme, and this is an environment that it is often difficult to penetrate” (1088). This “other” is a space occupied by the grotesque, an aesthetic that defies and defines any form of structure. It captures a specific potential for art, where universal notions such as life, death, or identity are rendered through the essence of struggle. This struggle is found in the works of William Faulkner that redefine this “elastic environment,” that Bhaktin underlines as a form that “cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue" (1088). William Faulkner participates in such dialogue in his epic, // Light in August. // His complex masterpiece identifies the tug and pull of cultural identity on an individual and captures the essence of art and ourselves through the affinity for the absurd.
 * Faulkner and the Grotesque**

The origins of the “grotesque” dates back to the times of the ancient Roman Emperor Nero, who was famed for his persecution of Christians. His reign was marked by excess and seen through the excavations of intricate drawings from his “pleasure palace.” The drawings were elaborate, hybrid sketches of animal, man, and nature along the palace’s walls. This particular style was adopted by the ornate drawings of Raphael who was later commissioned by the affluent religious dignitaries of his time (Campbell 1).

The theme of the elaborate, the extreme, and later, the distorted, shows how grotesqueness is an aesthetic form that has been in dialogue with sculpture, wall reliefs, myth and literature. This particular dialogue between grotesque art forms has, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, also been found in “nonclassic areas” characterized by hybrid figures of fertility, death and later on, images of amusement in sculpture and unglazed ceramics (Rabelais 31). Although the ancient cultures that used such images did not claim the word “grotesque,” its images and stories performed a cultural expression of that period. In his introduction to understand the classical Roman story //Rabelais,// Bakhtin contrasts the imagery of “carnival festivals,” and “the serious official, ecclestatical, feudal, and political cult forms and ceremonials” to underline the carnival's aesthetic purpose (5). The use of the carnival, or the grotesque, produces ambivalence for the audience where emotions are not fixed, but simultaneous. This trope of simultaneity acts as a form of rebellion against such serious tones that often go along with the notion of hegemony and order. The carnival in essence, depicts noble ceremony “‘for laughter’s sake’” (5). The aesthetic use of the grotesque, distinguishes strife, change, or anything serious, in universal forms. The English writer, G.K Chesterton defends this notion, where serious argument can only be tested if it can be tested grotesquely, “Unless a thing is dignified, it cannot be undignified” (Spiritualism 1). Therefore, the artistic rendition of a truth, or the argument for a philosophy is achieved wholly if it is given newer angles and perspectives, even if they are rendered through fantastical measures. Faulkner communicates with this notion in his novel // Light in August. //

Faulkner’s grotesque characters, not only entertain, but also enter a dialogue with Southern history and more importantly, identity. Just as the etymology of the word “grotesque” signifies transformation and interaction with the past, so does Faulkner’s //Light in August//. Faulkner finds a way to communicate, or “penetrate,” a time of transformation between the traditional and the material, trade and industry and thus, the modernization of America. This transformation of Southern identity is illustrated through the use of the grotesque and further translates not just a time period before and after the civil war, but also signifies the delicate nature of identity itself. The adjective and noun “Grotesque” signifies a figure that is both comedic and repulsively ugly or distorted (Grotesque 1). These extreme associations are found in the sympathetic qualities of Lena, Joe Christmas, and Joanna in //Light in August.//

Faulkner’s characters are made “distorted” or “ugly” when they are caught in between the past, and the future, or caught between the traditional and the new. This notion speaks to the South and its ideals imposed on the characters in Faulkner’s novel. The idea of the Southern belle existing solely as a piece of property to bear children was the crux to Southern patriarchy (Southern 1). This traditional, romantic notion of upholding virginity--purity-- is drawn out as something so extreme, it is absurd and comedic for the reader. The idea of a Southern belle--innocent, delicate, “pure”--upholding Southern society is satirized in Lena’s travel, “Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress”(LIA 8). Lena’s pregnancy and her quest to find her husband distort the space around her journey. It is clear that without a husband, systems cease to exist, or exist without any true meaning. From this initial scene, Faulkner distorts the reader’s view of what would be a simple, linear image of travel along a road. Instead, Lena’s travel is left suspended, without any real destination, and therefore, rendered both as a static and chaotic body. Contrasting the ordered innocence of a Southern Belle with the chaotic image of pregnancy without the sight of a husband signifies a grotesque depiction time and travel. From this image, Lena literally and figuratively embodies chaos and thus, underscores the (dys)function of social identities.

Caught between the old and the new, Faulkner’s protagonist, Joe Christmas, produces a grotesqueness, a mechanical breakdown, a “split” of the individual that renders his conscience with an existential crisis. Faulkner achieves this through Joe’s fragmented and distorted sense of belief and memory, all of which seem to rely on social constructs. Throwing the reader into the subjective experience of Joe’s sense of time and identity, Faulkner wittily makes a mark on racial identity and the reader’s own grotesque reaction to chaos. The critic Britney R. Powell notes in her critical essay “Don Quijote De Yoknapatawpha: Cervantine Comedy and Bakhtinian Grotesque in William Faulkner’s Snopes Trilogy,” that the grotesque characters, like those in Don Quijote, reveal a modernist trope--the transformative and transmogrifying effects of society on the protagonist. The effects of society on the protagonist is a point of “ambivalent laughter,” often achieved through “grotesque realism”(483). According to Bakhtin, “grotesque realism” is defined by a repetitive, unfinished change in a character. Joe Christmas is such a character, whose inability to fully construct an identity, order, and more importantly his own sense of memory and time, leads to his tragic wandering throughout the novel. The unfinished change in Joe is underlined by Faulkner’s constant allusion to an endless journey one that is “[...] doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred”(226). It is this paradoxical journey that defines the chaos and the grotesque in Joe. Likened to an animal, Joe is figure that driven without a conscience, a body torn asunder by the ebb and flow of the fates.

“Chivalry” further defines the “Bakhtinian model of comedy,” that ultimately leads to a metaphysical split in a protagonist’s personality. For Powell, it is through the forms of extreme gains and losses in a hero’s sense of beliefs that makes him grotesque (485). Joe’s belief, or code of honor resides in his own hybrid identity, one that is bound by his own helpless ego. Because Joe’s identity, or “quest” occupies a liminal space, one that is neither black nor white, it is made into a grotesque thing. Thus, it is this non-ego, this non-self that instills a sense of order in his life and a form of laughable chaos for the reader. His constant wandering throughout the novel renders a sense of power and agency for the moment, yet it marks his own convoluted past and fate. Powell cites George Ann Huck, where Faulkner’s characters embody a sympathy for the reader because his “heroes move ‘from reality to illusion, then back to reality where a choice must be made’”(493). In these dark moments, Faulkner captures the struggle to form identity as the essence of human nature, and something so extreme, it entertains.

Powell also underlines the quest for identity as a remark on Southern society. More specifically, Powell focuses on Faulkner’s unique ability to translate a woman’s relationship and her identity to her society through the Bakhtinian notion of the “material bodily principle,” where “the death of an ideal results in its rebirth among the community”(488). Moreover, it is achieved through the dichotomous images of the lower stratum, such as defecation and intercourse. These opposites assert the paradox of regeneration through death and produce a form of ambiguity and laughter for the audience (Rabelais 20). This grotesque imagery is achieved through both the theme of travel and the relationship between Joe and Joanna in //Light in August//.

The theme of travel in //Light in August// speaks to this form of rebirth and is echoed by the critic Leigh Anne Duck’s dissection of the critical dialogue in metropolitan modernism. Duck asserts that the pastoral mode of wandering and communication decenters the system that defines race and gender (Duck 256). The random intercourse between the urban and the rural defines the grotesque nature to Faulkner’s work because any blurring of a binary is a grotesque theme. Because the traditional “static hinterland” interacts with the “dynamic modern metropolis,” dichotomy itself is blurred (Peripatetic 256). Faulkner adopts the material bodily principle through the imagery of sex and the exchange of material goods, as Duck states, “thus, even as classes, races, and geographic regions are divided, they are repeatedly brought together, not only through capitalist production, but also through the consumptions of cheap goods; these are often procured in the hope of sex irrespective of social boundaries, the results [...] often destructive”(265). Formation and destruction through intercourse is made grotesque as trade transforms into a modern form of barter. As regions are brought together, so are notions of the modern and the traditional. Thus, binaries cease to exist. Because both parties have a motive, the traditional form of barter becomes something modern. Therefore, as their interaction morphs into a chaotic episode, the reader witnesses an antithesis to modernity and tradition. This grotesque image of the death and rebirth of culture is found at the junction between the modern and the traditional.

The image of the modern Southern woman is a grotesque splitting point for the novel as Joanna communicates with the North, “[...] the volume of mail which she received and sent[...] with fifty different postmarks and that what she sent were replies--advice, business, financial and religious to the presidents and faculties[...]” (LIA 232). Here, Joanna is likened to a modern woman, externalizing her own thoughts to the rest of the world. But, this progressive imagery of Joanna is quickly obscured by her racist and power driven tendency towards Joe, seen in her “wild” state, “Negro! Negro! Negro!”(260). Joanna represents both the power and the dying traditions of the South. Because she holds sexually racist tendencies through her dominion over Joe, Joanna is a character who obscures the binary between the traditional and the progressive. Hybridizing any system is a “degradation of pastoral and chivalric myths” (Powell 483). This image of death and rebirth of identity, myth, or order is underlined as something extreme and comedic for the reader because they such constructions are insecure. Through the characterization of Joanna, any social construction, whether it is that of the progressive yankee, or the innocent virgin is depicted as a myth. Through the grotesque, Faulkner satirizes any notion of identity as unstable myth, or masks that are swept away once there is any opposite interaction.

The critic Heinz Ickstadt echoes the fundamental use of the grotesque, where the Southern patriarchal notions of order--gender and race-- are subverted. Ickstadt states that this subversion is a key trope in Modernism, and is consequently metaphorical for the Modernist movement (532). Abandoning not only Southern patriarchy, but any sense of order is found in the grotesque characters and the frame of the novel. Ickstadt cites the critic Snead to prove that //Light in August// is a novel that pinpoints the discourse of race because Jefferson’s natives cannot “tolerate anything that does not signify” (533-4). This critique is also found in discourse on gender, or any notion of something foreign.

As a virgin for forty years, Joanna signifies the traditional, romantic notion of upholding virginity--purity. This idea is drawn out as something absurd and extreme, providing the careful reader with a comedic rendition of history and the notion of a socially constructed identity. For instance, the town is comforted by Joanna’s gender in light of her progressive principles,“But it still lingers about her and about the place: something dark [...] even though she is but a woman [...]” (47). Faulkner satirizes cultural identity because anything opposing it is “something dark” and mysterious. The only comfort for the town of Jefferson is the thought of Joanna as a “woman,” and therefore proves Joanna as a grotesque figure for the reader, where any form of structure, whether it is gender or race, is dismantled and put back together by the reader.

Because J oe embodies the tug and pull of racial identity, Faulkner is able to enlighten his readers through his death, and ultimately his rebirth, “Then his face, body, all seemed to collapse, to fall in upon itself, and from out slashed garments about his hips and loins the pent black blood seemed to rush like a released breath”(465). Here, Joe’s death is likened to a cosmic explosion, a form of both chaos and order. What follows the galactic implosion of Joe is a grotesque image of “black blood.” This extreme and distorted perception is reconciled with a “released breath,” an image that parallels an emotion for the grotesque reader. Witnessing the death of Joe Christmas distinguishes his tragedy as something comedic because the reader has witnessed the death of racial identity itself. Joe is resurrected as his black blood is released, and therefore, symbolizes a a timeless beacon of freedom. For instance, “it will be there, musing, quiet, itself alone and serene, of itself alone triumphant”(465). Faulkner places Joe back to his organic and original state. Suspended, “alone” and “musing” gives the reader a sense of grotesque closure for Joe and identity. Structure is therefore proven as something constructed by society and illustrated as a repressive force for an individual. W hen identity is ultimately destructed, the reader has an ironic sense of defined order in the suspended and chaotic world that follows. Joe’s last image in the novel is sympatheteic for the reader because their sense of order is full of pity and shame. It is therefore clear that Faulkner is in dialogue not only with the literary aesthetic of the grotesque, but also the essence of man, the space between the speaker and the spoken word. Because the reader can relate to the grotesque, he is further enlightened from witnessing the very serious matter of identity in a laughable, and ironically, in a more intense light.

Upon reading Faulkner’s //Light in August//, the reader himself is relaxed by tension. Caught between a sympathy for a protagonist’s chaotic sense of identity and our own delight in chaos, the reader is left with a naked image of his own grotesqueness. The grotesque reveals our sources for identity. This revelation seems disheartening. But, it is empowering to understand and laugh at the supposed order that defines the protagonist, and the reader. Bakhtin states that the grotesque is metonymic for freedom, where “Man returns unto himself”(Rabelais 48). Because a true grotesque endures the struggle to live in a physical body, masked and puppeted by some “alien,” “id” force, the audience can dwell and revel in the face of powerlessness. While Bakhtin underlines the theme of entropy as the order to the grotesque--life in death and death in life-- laughter provides the audience with a sense of freedom over a sense of hopelessness (49). Such is the ideal of the “real grotesque.” Laughter at the supposedly humorless--a quest for a husband or the fate of the helpless--simultaneously breaks and relates culture to an audience.

The grotesque is a timeless aesthetic found from Rome to Faulkner. There is a reason for this. In Faulkner’s famous Nobel prize speech, he claims his success not for himself, but for the collective and timeless essence of man and art, “He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance”(Banquet 1). The eternal voice Faulkner speaks of is found in the grotesque. While it degrades and distinguishes a collective conscience and culture, it also expresses a higher order. We delight in the mirror image of ourselves, whether it is in literature from the renaissance or the 20th century. We read Faulkner because we are still enchanted with the notion of the grotesque. On the surface, the grotesque deforms any sense of order in the world, yet it still impresses an audience. It is this struggle for identity, or order that makes it a timeless impression for an audience. The grotesque reveals that the chaotic order of the cosmos and the seasons trickles down into culture and the identity of the individual. We read Faulkner because his novels are in dialogue with history, culture, society and the stars. From his aesthetic use of the grotesque, Faulkner echoes the struggle of the artist to communicate, the struggle of the individual to reflect and refine his disposition, and distinguishes the endless journey towards an ideal. The grotesque makes us laugh at such a serious task. If we cannot laugh at such gravity, then surely no progress would be made in the arts or our existence.

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