Carson McCullers Novels example essay topic

Fred Do rie Mr. Stinson ENG 4 U December 20, 2002 A Critical Composition on Carson McCullers Descriptive Literature Carson McCullers only writes to what she believes is grotesque and the inner spirit being displayed on the exterior of oneself. In her two novels, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e and Other Stories, she concentrates on the true meaning of people being born into life who over come death, experience loneliness of love, and encounters with suffering and death. The characters in both novels experience the three emotions, death, loneliness of love and suffering and death. McCullers demonstrates these emotions through her characters being deformed. Throughout the novels there were many incidents with humans having emotional problems because of their physical disabilities. She writes in such meaningful ways where only you can see with having great depth of thoughts.

Carson McCullers portrays the emotion of death throughout her novels. In her novels she does not directly show the character's emotions of death. The way she goes about showing the emotion is displayed in a way that seems hard for people to notice. She includes the slightest detail which accumulates with death and places facts in her novels that trigger a person's mind into feeling the emotion of death and to know that the emotion of death is there. The way she wants people to see death is explained by Jerry Bryant in a critic article that he has written about Carson McCullers. Bryant explains: Mrs. McCullers shows in her novels that there are nothing we can do to control our emotions of death, that life has its basic characteristics and that we must fulfill ourselves with the meaning of death and the peculiar freedom that accompanies that emotion.

(Bryant 248-249) What he is trying to explain is that no matter what anyone tries to do or say, no one can control our emotions of death. Wether or not it is a sad feeling or for some people a happy feeling, depending on what they believe, it is still an emotion towards death that we feel. He explains that when you have the emotion of death people should not be stuck with the emotion inside of them. She uses emotional thoughts as a way to portray death. She shows death as a result to the problems that occur in the lives of the characters and is shown as an opportunity for a new life. Carson McCullers also uses mythic imagination to reveal the emotion of death.

She uses the mythic aspect to show incidents that are ugly, absurd, and distasteful which convey the emotion of death. In another critic article written by Albert Griffith, he has written: The mythic aspect leading towards death, noticeable in both characters and the incidents, does not complete so much in the subject itself as in the author's attitude towards the subject. (Griffith 45) He explains that Carson McCullers does not show the mythic aspect in the story line, but shows it in the way her attitude complies towards the subject. She uses how she feels about that incident to write meaningful mythic thoughts which turn her novels to have a lot more meaning because the incident is coming through someone's thoughts, not knowledge. Throughout the two novels that she has written, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e and Other Stories, Carson McCullers has some incidents and characters that portray the emotion of death. In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, there is a character, named Frankie who is twelve years old, portrays the emotion of death throughout the story.

Frankie has a brother who lives in a different town and is getting married. Frankie is jealous of her brother because she misses him living with her and her father. Frankie wants to move with her brother and his future wife no matter what happens. She explains how if she cannot live with him she plans on killing herself.

This is the part in the novel which portrays the emotion of death the most and is the most visible. Carson McCullers shows the emotion of death the most here, because she makes Frankie, the character, go right into thinking about death. The way she makes Frankie think of death is making her believe that death is the only way that she can be happy. The facts in this situation make people's minds lead to the tragic emotional sense of death. In another novel that McCullers wrote, The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e, it portrays the emotion of death. It is about a girl who is married to a man for ten days and he threatens to kill her.

She leaves this man and marries another man who goes in on trying to kill this girl by poisoning her. This story is very ironic because the whole thing is related to death in a physical and emotional way. This story shows the grotesque in McCullers writing. She uses death as the theme is her whole story which is used as a conflicting charm towards death. In both of Carson McCullers novels she has portrayed the emotion of death by having characters who over come death. Carson McCullers uses loneliness of love as another one of her main themes in writing.

She portrays loneliness of love throughout her characters by having her characters being deformed. She likes to have people who are deformed so that readers can better understand how she feels about loneliness of love. She uses loneliness of love as the emotions that people experience when they are born into life. She tries to portray loneliness of love as romance, not so much as negative facts. In an article, Noel Polk, explains, in basic form, how she uses loneliness. Polk explains: Many of the characters she uses are lonely, disappointed people.

Carson McCullers was interested in children who learn the meaning of loneliness while appearing to be part of a close family. (Polk 335) He is trying to say that she makes her characters learn the meaning of loneliness, but, also being from a part of a close family. They are lonely because these characters have something special with their family, then something little will happen and this will cause the loneliness of love. In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers uses a twelve-year old girl experiencing the toughness of growing up. Her mother has died when she was younger and now her brother is getting married and he has moved far away from her and her father. Frankie, the character experiencing loneliness of love, is having problems because she wants to live with her brother who she was very close to when growing up.

In a critic article, written by Jerry Bryant, he explains a few details about the character Frankie Addams. Bryant explains: Frankie, from the novel, The Member of the Wedding, has a connectedness between people which cannot explain, which indeed is beyond the human being to explain, and that connectedness is illustrated in the in the scene following the discussion about the capable loneliness of love. The scene dramatizes the sad fact of human existence, the impossibility of ever filling up consciousness without turning into something else, the necessity of sharing these human deprivations. (Bryant 248-249) He is explaining here that Frankie is experiencing loneliness of love and it is hurting her in a way that no one can explain. It is showed as her own attitude which people cannot understand because her feelings are torn apart and go somewhere inside of her which people cannot find.

An example why Frankie is lonely is because she believes she is deformed. Frankie is only twelve years old and her height is about 6 inches higher than everyone else her age. She believes that she is a freak and that no one loves her because of this. McCullers has made her like this so that people can see how people really feel inside of them and how life goes about the minute that you have been born.

In the novel, The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e, there are two characters that are deformed. There is a lady who is abnormally large and a little man who is a dwarf with a hunchback. The lady is upset because the only person that she could find was a man who was going to jail and who has threatened to kill her. She believes that this is the only man she could find because she is an abnormally large woman. This really upsets her and she experiences the loneliness of love because she does not really love this man she just wants to find someone that will love her and respect as the way she is. The lady then marries her cousin who is a dwarf and has a hunchback.

This also makes her experience the loneliness of love because again she feels that this guy is the only one that will be there for her. He also feels the same way about her because he is also physically deformed. When her cousin leaves her she becomes very upset. Even though he has tried to poison her she still waits up all night long waiting for him to come back. This makes her really emotional because she never leaves her house for anything.

In the two novels that she has written, she has had incidents and characters that have experienced loneliness of love. Carson McCullers portrays people who encounter with suffering and pain throughout her writing. She uses suffering and pain as a direct impulse towards the characters. The way she portrays death and loneliness of love, she leads them towards suffering and pain. For Carson McCullers, suffering and pain is a way for her to describe her true feelings in words that make up such beauty in her writing. Carson McCullers uses her dramatic sense of detail that was there from the beginning to enhance maturity in her stories.

In a critic article, written by Ihab Hassan, it is explained on her visions on her beliefs of suffering and pain. Hassan explains: The integrity of her vision depends on her guiding insight into the tension of the situation, caught between immersion of the self in a mass society and dissipation of the world leading to suffering and pain. The challenge of form is measure of insight; the formal tension between the self and the world in her novels corresponds to the thematic juxtaposition of the power of love and the presence of pain in the vision of Carson McCullers. (Hassan 222) He is explaining that Carson McCullers uses her vision of pain from the incidents happening around the world to write her stories. She uses the situations to proceed in such meaningful novels which are enjoyed by many people. The situations come from realistic facts and this is what makes people want to read her novels.

Hassan uses his mind to explain what he believes Carson McCullers is feeling. He explains: To love is to suffer, to intensify one's loneliness. Love needs no reciprocation; its quality is determined solely by the world. (Hassan 223) He is explaining how love in the world leads to suffering and pain. Both of her emotions, death and loneliness of love, lead to suffering and pain. This is why she uses these three emotions because they trigger to one another.

In her novels there are incidents and characters who encounter with suffering and pain, but these are lead from death and loneliness of love. In her novel, The Member of the Wedding, she has characters that portray these emotions. The character Frankie from the novel begins of feeling loneliness of love because her brother is getting married and she feels that now she will not be important in his life anymore. This leads to her wanting to kill herself and almost doing so. Frankie, because of the loneliness of love, she always threatens people with knives, and this is caused because she does not care any more what happens with anyone, all she wants is to live with her brother. She knows that she cannot, and this leads her to suffering and pain.

She runs away from home, hoping to find somewhere where she can live without anyone around who will not know her. Frankie does not actually want to do this but she believes that this is the only solution. This really emotionally hurts her because she is going through pain in her family and this leads to her suffering. This is how McCullers triggers each emotion to one another. Carson McCullers used characters in her novel who encountered with suffering and pain. Carson McCullers really knows how the three emotions can trigger one another.

She uses the emotions to explain her stories. With having her characters experience the three emotions, she makes stories more interesting. She has used characters with physical disabilities to show these emotions which make them even more interesting. Carson McCullers has written in such meaningful ways where only you can see with having great depth of thoughts, just how she has. Carson McCullers has only written to what she believes is grotesque and the inner spirit being displayed on the exterior of oneself. In the two novels that she has written, The Member of the Wedding, and The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e, she has concentrated on the true meaning of people being born into life who over come death, experience loneliness of love, and encounters with suffering and pain.

Work Cited Bryant, Jerry. The Open Decision. USA: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1970. pp 248-249. Griffith, Albert J. Carson McCullers, Myth of the Sad Caf'e. USA: Georgia Review, 1967. pp 45-46. Hassan, Ihab.

Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. USA: Princeton University Press, 1961. pp 205-228. McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. USA: Bantam Book, Inc., 1946. McCullers, Carson.

The Ballad of the Sad Caf'e. USA: Bantam Book, Inc., 1936. Polk, Noel. "Carson McCullers". The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book Inc., 1991. pp 335.