Searching For Solutions To Southern Predicaments

Carson Mc Cullers is among the most important American Southern writers in twentieth century who paid close attention to the social predicaments of the South.She believed that writers should take the responsibility of representing social reality as accurate as possible to awaken the reader’s consciousness and try to find a way out of the dilemma as Dostoevsky did.The Ballad of the Sad Café is one of the major works of hers.With the help of Georg Lukács’ theory of reification,this thesis studies the representation of the predicament of the South in Ballad of the Sad Café,arguing that the novel has exposed the influence of reification on the American South by representing the predicaments of the cheapness of human life and spiritual isolation,and by analyzing the solutions,namely,love and fellowship,and their failure,it concludes that influence of reification and ideologies of American dream,white supremacy and patriarchy are essential factors preventing the characters’ unity in The Ballad of the Sad Café.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part is a brief introduction to Mc Cullers’ controversial status in the literary arena,the literature review of The Ballad of the Sad Café at home and abroad,the theoretical framework and layout of this thesis.The second part is the main body of the thesis.It consists of four chapters.The first chapter analyzes the predicaments caused by reification in the South,which is the cheapness of human life and the spiritual isolation.In The Ballad of the Sad Café,characters live in poverty,overvalue the price of things,refuse to communicate,lack compassion and have distorted relationships.The second chapter analyzes the solutions to the predicaments of the South the characters in the novella attempt----love and fellowship: to save them from the predicaments caused by reification needs to re-build connections between them.Love,including romantic love between men and women,familial love and universal love,is expected to drawthe characters closer,meanwhile fellowship facilitates correct understanding,is infectious and helps the marginalized characters de-marginalize.The third chapter discusses the influence of reification on the characters in the novel whose selfishness leads to failure of their love and fellowship.Romantic love can not reform one’s evil nature,and when love turns to hatred it has the power to destroy love and causes more spiritual isolation.Familial and universal love are nothing compared with the characters’ personal desire.Fellowship is an illusion because Amelia’s café is opened and visited for the characters’ personal desire.Moreover,it does not exist between the characters who have strong racial discrimination.Therefore,Amelia’s café is destroyed at last,and the characters were plunged into deeper isolation and despair.Loneliness is inevitable.The fourth chapter is a reflection on the causes of failure:entrenched ideologies,such as the American dream,white supremacy and patriarchy,are closely related with reification,and they hinder the unity of the characters.Reification and American dream propagate financial success and rugged individualism and cover the truth of equal opportunities,which causes isolation between the rich and the poor.Reification and white supremacy reduce the characters to commodities and goods,which aggravates the racial conflict between the white and the black and between the white American southerners and immigrants in the novella.Reification and the patriarchy strengthen the subordination of women to men and debase the femininity,which is an important reason for Miss Amelia,Marvin Macy and Cousin Lymon’s tragedy and for the contradictions between the males and females.The third part is the conclusion of the thesis,pointing out that by representing the cheapness of human life and spiritual isolation,The Ballad of the Sad Café has revealed the bad effects of reification on the Southern society and showed Mc Cullers’ sympathy for the poor,the female and minority groups.