The Carnival Song Of Grotesque

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is acclaimed today as the best fiction writer after William Faulkner in the Southern Literature of America. Her gifted keen ear, unique voice and a fertile poetic imagination amplify in the peculiar mix of her fiction, which make her different from other southern writers. However, O'Connor's unique writing style has provoked a wide controversy in 1950s when her first edition of Wise Blood came out to the public.Set in fictional Taulkinham, Tennessee, during the mid-twentieth century, Wise Blood focuses on the tragicomic spiritual odyssey of Hazel Motes, who unsuccessfully attempts to eradicate the influence of Jesus Christ from his life. O'Connor's extensive use of violence and death in this novel has got her work a label as"Gothic grotesque". O'Connor's special identity of being a Southern Catholic religiously colored Wise Blood, through which the grotesque is enhanced in a mysterious atmosphere.In the light of Bakhtin's theory of carnivalization, the grotesque feature in Wise Blood is explored on the analysis of carnivalized elements saturated with carnival sense in terms of characterization, plot structure, and themes of this novel. According to Bakhtin, the grotesque genre belonged to the carnivalistic. The essence of grotesque in the novel is further explored in three chapters to follow. The carnivalistic nature is ascertained in characterization taking the clown, the fool, and the trickster into concern; the grotesque plot structure with the carnival ritual of crowning/decrowning; the carnival spirit of subversion, renewal and the blend of comedy and tragedy. All these have corroborated that O'Connor's grotesque is highly carnivalized. Her grotesque in Wise Blood is of unifying, transforming, and subversive forces. This thesis endeavors to view O'Connor's novel through a new angel, which would shed light on the growing attention of this author and her works.