A Study Of The Carnivalized World In Carson McCullers’ The Ballad Of The Sad Café

Carson McCullers is an important writer in the mid-twentieth century American literature. The main body of her works includes five novels which are The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and Clock Without Hands. Among them, The Ballad of the Sad Café, a novella by her in 1943, is widely regarded as one of her best works and brings her numerous applause and praises.Previous studies on this novella have touched on the theme of loneliness and unrequited love, feminism, homosexual perspective, and so on. However, few critics have recognized that there is a carnivalized world in this novella. Therefore, this thesis will try to interpret The Ballad of the Sad Café from the perspective of Bakhtin’s carnival theory. It will mainly focus on the following three parts, the carnivalized characterization, the carnivalized plot, and the spiritual applications in this carnivalized world. On that basis, the thesis is devided into six chapters:Chapter one is a general introduction of the author and a brief summary of The Ballad of the Sad Café, a review of other critics’ studies on the novella, and the theme and organization of this thesis.Chapter two introduces Bakhtin’s carnival theory, the concepts and ideas which will be applied in the following interpretation of the novella. Chapter three, chapter four and chapter five are the focus of the thesis. A detailed analysis of the carnivalization in the novella will be done in these three chapters.Chapter three is an analysis of the carnivalized characterization, including Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy. Though a woman, Miss Amelia is actually a hermaphroditic character that has double characteristics of both a man and a woman. Cousin Lymon is a clown and at the same time a trickster while Marvin Macy is a rogue on the one hand and a deep lover on the other hand. All these three characters are in accord with Bakhtin’s ideas on the feasures of carnival participants: grotesque, incomplete and dualistic to some extent.Chapter four focuses on the carnivalized plot, including the metaphorical meaning of the café as the carnival square, the rituals of crowning and decrowning, and the effect of the liquor made by Miss Amelia. The café is the central image in this novella, where the whole story is unfolded. Its emergence changes people’s life and builds an ideal world where there is no difference in rank, age and no isolation between people. According to Bakhtin’s theory, the café is a variant of the carnival square. In the café, there are three turns of crowning and decrowning, from Miss Amelia to Cousin Lymon and then to Marvin Macy. Those rituals are in line with the establishment and the falling-down of the ideal world in the café. Another thing that contributes to the creation of the ideal world is the liquor sold in the café. The detailed analysis will also be given in this chapter.In Chapter five, there will be a deep exploration of the spiritual applications of the novella. The author of the thesis holds that firstly, through the novella, McCullers subverts the traditional understanding of love; she points out that love is not a similar experience to the two people involved and love is helpless in getting rid of loneliness; secondly in depicting the construction and the deconstruction of the ideal world in the café, McCullers is actually having a critical thinking over the main stream ideology and the value system of the American society: under the competitive capitalism, alienation and loneliness is inevitable.Chapter six is the conclusion part. A brief review of the main points of the thesis will be given in this chapter.