| Three of Walker Percy's novels--Love in the Ruins, Lancelot, and The Second Coming--focus on language play as a device for concealment and revelation. These novels' protagonists are characterized by their examination and exploitation of the binary properties of language, a process that isolates them from other characters, the objects of Percy's satire.;The drafts of Percy's novels demonstrate that much of the richly subtle language play in his novels is deliberate. Percy's language play demands that the reader perceive words as signs and see language as an image.;In Love in the Ruins, Dr. Tom More's lapsometer is a device to measure spiritual splits. Ironically, More himself is a split person: institutionalized in a hospital where he is a physician because of unbalanced behavior, he is isolated from others. Percy's drafts show that the world of Love in the Ruins is split by opposing forces that ought to heal spiritual divisions. Percy's language play not only emphasizes these divisions, but also bridges More's split self.;Lancelot Lamar, in Lancelot, condescendingly satirizes other characters' weaknesses, through his exploration of their duplicity in language. However, just as Lance analyzes language to probe the dissembling of other characters, the reader must solve the mystery of Lance's counterfeiting through language analysis.;In The Second Coming, Allison Huger and Will Barrett explore the complexities of language. Allie, a schizophrenic, appears to use language very illogically, but her language endears her to Will, another isolated person. Both Allie and Will use language to make plain the hidden, deceptive qualities in "normal" speech. Allie and Will are transformed by their understanding of language as a medium for love and trust into a new, second life founded on a congruence between language and reality.;The split in human individuals and relationships is the fundamental theme of Percy's fiction, and language play is the device through which the author first establishes and then merges opposites. The division between sign and signifier makes language play possible. Through his fiction, Percy's reader, who is aware of this fundamental multivalence of language, experiences the transcendence of his own divided existence as Percy transcends the polarities of language. |
