A Study On The Spatial Narrative Of The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe

As an important American Southern female writer of the20thcentury, CarsonMcCullers, who was born in a small town in Georgia State and suffered much fromillnesses through her whole life, is distinguished for depicting grotesque characters and thespiritual isolation of the modern people, which are typically embodied in her novella TheBallad of the Sad Café. The transitions of the space element-the main character’s housenot only greatly advance the plot development, but also vividly depict three differentcharacter images, and thereby human’s loneliness and the frustration of love in the modernindustrialized society are incisively presented between the lines. Moreover, the impliedauthor McCullers’ wish expecting the modern industrialization can change the socialpresence of southern town is reflected in the novella as well but her wish is proved to be adisillusion consequently. Nevertheless the literature reviews on The Ballad of the Sad Caféat home and abroad indicate that the research concerns are focused on the grotesquefigures, the writing techniques and the alienation theme of this novella, the author’s socialconcerns reflected in this novella are rarely touched, let alone to interpret the social spaces,the author’s psychological space from the perspective of spatial narrative theory.Based on the above understanding, this thesis adopts Long’s spatial narrative theoryas research strategy and analyzes the material space, the social space, and the author’spsychological space in the light of Lefebvre’s social space theory, hereby to explore theimplied author McCullers’ attitude toward different social civilizations in The Ballad ofthe Sad Café. To be more specific, this thesis firstly divides the novella into three phasesaccording to the periodical functions of the core space element: the phase of the store, thephase of the café, and the phase of the living grave. Then the thesis respectively analyzesthe narrative function of the different material spaces and the corresponding social spacesreflected by them: the store—agrarian civilization, the café—industrialization, the livinggrave—the late-stage industrial civilization. And on this basis the thesis further combines the author’s personal experience and the historical background to interpret the author’spsychological space, in order to reveal McCullers’ attitudes toward different socialcivilizations. The above analysis indicates that, compared with the critical attitude towardthe industrial civilization of the older southern writers like William Faulkner, McCullersholds a more thorough and resolute attitude toward the industrialization; although she hasnostalgic attachment about the traditional agrarian society, she is conscious of itsbackwardness. Therefore originally she is holding a positive attitude toward theindustrialization and hoping it could bring a new look to the south. Consequently moresocial problems brought by the industrialization demonstrate it could not mend theagrarian society; instead the human is drawn into a more desperate dystopia world.To be brief, the thesis studies the narrative function of the material spaces in TheBallad of the Sad Café and the corresponding social spaces reflected by them so as toappropriately comprehend Carson McCullers’ psychological space implied in this work,hence expecting to broaden and deepen the study of The Ballad of the Sad Café and offer anew perspective to study McCullers’ works and creative thoughts. Meanwhile, throughadopting spatial narrative theory to interpret the different spaces and the deeper meaningsindicated by them, the thesis also anticipates developing the application of the spatialnarrative theory in the literature study.