The Light Of Harmony

Edwin H. Cady in The Light of Common Day: Realism in American Fiction proposes All the King's Men is"the first postmodern novel", which provides a new access to interpretation of the novel—to study the deconstructive and reconstructive tendencies of All the King's Men in postmodern context.The period, from All the King's Men taking shape in 1930s to its winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947, is the crucial time to turn to postmodern nonlinear mode of thinking for the United States, esp. the southern states. The continuous natural catastrophes and man-made disasters, such as the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the Second World War, make people change their way of understanding and thinking. The unitary and normative conceptions are challenged, and the postmodern nonlinear mode of thinking makes its first appearance in the US. The postmodern nonlinear mode of thinking emphasizes the coexistence and harmony of diversity, and is usually represented by the characteristics of deconstruction and reconstruction in literature.In the narrative structure of All the King's Men, the employment of broken time, fragmented space and montage technique deconstructs the traditional linear structures; meanwhile, the double-track narratives not only further deconstruct the deconstructed fragments of time, space and plot, but also reconstruct the fragments under the supervision of two protagonists, which endows the novel with not only the postmodern fragmentation tendency but also the readability.In the internal values of All the King's Men, the tragedies with loss and death illuminate the inevitability of deconstructing the internal binary opposition values between subject and object, between subjects and within subject; however, the feasibility of recovering spiritual renewal for the two protagonists reveals the necessity and inevitability of deconstructing the binary opposition values and reconstructing harmonious values. And Dante's verse Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde, the quotation from the"Purgatory"in The Divine Comedy, is written on the head page to shine upon the optimistic spirit in reconstruction, which is exactly the purpose of Warren—"so long as hope has anything of green".Therefore, the postmodern deconstructive and reconstructive tendencies in All the King's Men precisely represent the nihilistic and fragmented sense of American people and society after the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the Second World War, and show clearly by the genre of fiction: deconstructing the unitary and normative conceptions and the binary opposition values in the mind of Western people is the only way leading to balance and harmony. In addition, the necessity and feasibility of reconstruction after deconstruction supplies the spiritual encouragement and guidance for constructing harmony and coexistence of diversity.