A Study Of The Carnivalized World In John Barth's The End Of The Road

John (Simmons) Barth (1930-) is considered to be among the top novelists in20^th- century America, and the foremost practitioners of postmodernism andmetafiction. His second novel, The End of the Road (1958) , as one of therepresentative works in postmodern fiction, has been studied from differentperspectives.This thesis is an attempt to apply Mikhail Bakhtin's carnival theory to astudy of the carnivalized characterization, the carnivalized plot, and themulti-voicedness which reveal the carnivalistic nature in the novel. All theseelements form a carnivalized world in The End of the Road. In this world,hierarchy is overthrown, equality claims its position, time and space are redefined,and the feast of "becoming", "change", and "renewal" comes into being. All thesecoincide with the postmodern spirit which John Barth embodies by himself andhis works.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapterâ… is a brief introduction to theauthor and the book, a brief summary of the plot, a review of other critics' studieson the book, the objectives of the thesis, and a brief discussion of some keyconcepts of Bakhtin's carnival theory. Chapterâ…¡is a study of the carnivalizedcharacterization in The End of the Road. By analyzing clowns, fools, rogues, andtricksters in the novel, it attempts to prove that the images in the story reveal thecarnival sense of the world: "eccentricity" and "profanation". And the analysis ofthe "double images" reveals "carnivalistic misalliances". Chapterâ…¢analyses thecarnivalized plot within the book. In addition to the analysis of carnivalistic acts,"crowning and decrowning", the issues of carnivalistic concept of time and spaceare discussed.Chapterâ…£examines the multi-voicedness in the novel. With an analysis of the discourse here, it can be seen that the novel is a polyphonic one. In the novelevery character keeps his own voice, and at the same time these voices arecombined into a higher order. The story with a polyphonic characteristic closelyassociates itself with carnivalistic folklore. In this chapter, the interior dialogue,open dialogues and the author's intruding voice will be analyzed to illustrate themulti-voices in the novel. The last chapter is the conclusion that the essence of thecarnival coincides with Barth's major concern: nihilism and postmodernism.