On The Grotesque In Carson McCullers’s Novels

Carson McCullers is one of the most excellent women writers in the20th American Literature. With the unique artistic charm, she enjoyed a high reputation in the Southern writers. In her short life, the writer created a group of disabled people to symbolize the pain and hopelessness. Also, she used grotesque to describe the complicated feelings of southern Americans during their modernization process. In China, the studies of McCullers and her works are still limited and mainly focused on the two prominent themes, spiritual isolation and incapability of love.This thesis is a study of the grotesque feature of the four main works of Carson McCullers:The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad cafe, Reflections In a Golden Eye, and The Member of the Wedding. After close reading these novels, McCullers’s biography, and comments of her works, the author of this thesis tries to discuss the characters and their passions in the novels by using the historical methods and psychoanalytic theory. Social backgrounds and psychoanalytic theory are two main tools which can help us to obtain a better understanding of McCullers’s initial motivation and psychological state of her writing.Through a careful analysis, this thesis tries to touch the soul of McCullers’s writing, her self-identification and strong skepticism toward the traditional gender norms. Behind the grotesque writing, McCullers shows her deep sympathy and concern for the characters. By means of developing the value of McCullers’s works, this thesis can not only make us understand the American Southern Literature’s themes such as sadness, nostalgia, and loneliness, but also help us to concern about the mental state of people in the process of modernization, and a further understanding of alienation, spiritual isolation, moral criticism, self-rescue and other modern themes.