THE ASSAULT ON CHARACTER IN THE NOVELS OF THOMAS PYNCHON, JOHN BARTH, JOHN HAWKES, AND WILLIAM GADDIS

JOHN ZBIGNIEW GUZLOWSKI, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the ways the characters created by Pynchon, Barth, Hawkes, and Gaddis differ from traditional characters. The first chapter explores the traditional concept of man and, by extension, of character. This concept is based on three assumptions: that the inner self can be known; that the external world is also knowable; and that the inner and outer elements interact to form a full, round individual. Accepting these assumptions, the traditional novelist relies on various devices to convey these inner and outer elements. As this study argues, however, these assumptions are being challenged and rejected by Pynchon, Barth, Hawkes, Gaddis, and others. Chapter Two examines the sources of this challenge. Modern science, religion, psychology, and sociology deny the possibility that the inner self or the external world can be known. R. D. Laing offers an extensive analysis of this condition. This psychologist argues that man is ontologically insecure, isolated from his inner self and his world. What man takes to be his true self is a mask or a series of masks that he either assumes or has imposed on him by others. Chapters Three and Four discuss varieties of ontological insecurity and masking in representative works by Pynchon, Barth, Hawkes, and Gaddis. Barth's Sot-Weed Factor contains a character isolated from his inner self. Hawkes's Blood Oranges features a character isolated from the external world. Gaddis' Recognitions and Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 offer characters isolated from both. Estranged from their true selves, such characters believe that the masks they wear are their true selves. Self-induced masks are a central concern of Hawkes's Death, Sleep and the Traveler and Barth's Giles Goat-Boy. Gaddis' JR and Pynchon's V. examine the effects of masks induced by others. Barth's End of the Road and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow contain characters who wear multiple masks. Chapters Five and Six analyze the ways these novelists use traditional devices for presenting character to reflect the ontological insecurity of their characters. These novelists rely on the devices for revealing a character's inner self either to reveal the diminution of the inner self or to parody the traditional concept of the inner self. Hawkes uses psycho-narration and quoted and narrated monologue in Goose on the Grave in such a way as to suggest the reduced inner lives of his characters. By applying these same devices to animals and objects, Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow points to the artificiality of the inner self. In Floating Opera, Barth offers an "I"-narrator who is more concerned with revealing his craft than his inner world. And while Goose on the Grave reveals the inner triad of motivation, conflict, and change in ruins, Floating Opera parodies this triad. The devices for presenting the outer world are treated similarly. Action in Sot-Weed Factor is insignificant. Dialogue in JR is noisy. Details in Hawkes's Beetle Leg either fragment the narrative or obscure it. And in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon parodies the objective third-person narrator by making him as deluded as the characters he speaks of. The concluding chapter places the characters of these four novelists in perspective. Although traditional novelists of the past and the present have fashioned insecure characters, these characters differ from those of these four novelists in that the traditional characters either overcome their ontological insecurity or are shown to exist in worlds in which it can be overcome. The characters created by these four novelists and writers like them live in worlds where no one ever overcomes his ontological insecurity.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

American literature

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