A Reader-response Analysis Of The Loneliness In The Ballad Of Sad Cafe

Carson Mc Cullers(1917-1967) was considered to be one of the most outstanding writers of American literature in the 20 th century. She was famous for her novels, and her works mainly focused on those basis issues of daily life as the spiritual isolation, loneliness. The Ballad of Sad Cafe was one of Carson Mc Cullers’ most famous works. In this novel, Carson skillfully manipulated unique and exquisite narratives techniques and narrated a triangular love story between two men and a women, which happened in a lonely, melancholy and dreary southern town. The whole story saturated in a sense of desperate loneliness and the main characters of this novel all lived in isolation. Carson deliberately sketched the spiritual isolation of human beings through the deformed love relationship and distorted human souls, which let readers appreciate a sense of despair and depression of loneliness.Most of the domestic and foreign critics were focusing on the study of the theme of loneliness, the inability of love, the Gothic features, gender awareness and the narrative techniques of the text. Although this paper is also going to analyze the theme of loneliness, it is based on the theory of reader-response criticism. This paper is going to analyze the blank and indeterminacy of the text from the reader response criticism aspect, so as to dig out the profound meaning of the loneliness theme and the authorial intention. At the same time, this paper tries to prove that it is necessary to create proper blanks to attract and summon the readers’ reading and proper blanks in the text are necessary for a good excellent literary work. Through this way, can the interaction between reader and text and the meaning of the text be realized.The paper is composed of five chapters.Chapter 1 is the introduction part which briefly sketches Carson Mc Culers life and her major literary achievements, as well as the studies on The Ballad of Sad Cafe at home and abroad. In addition, the development of reader-response criticism will be reviewed and of which the blank, indeterminacy of text of Iser’ theory will be particularly introduced.Chapter 2 mainly discusses the shaping of the freaks and the grotesques town.While creating the loneliness and oddity of the residents and the southern town, a lot of information having been omitted thus creates a large number of blanks, which inspires readers to read continuously and to find out the profound reasons behind the tragic ending of the characters.Chapter 3 offers an illustration of the theme of loneliness in this text from the perspective of the narrative skills. The proper ellipsis of the characters’ psychological activities, as well as to show the character’s words and deeds from the external perspective of the spectator, make the characters more bizarre and unpredictable to readers. As for the circulative narration, a space of loneliness circle without future and ending has been created. Readers are completely immersed into the space of loneliness circle.Chapter 4 is based on the multiple interpretation of the last independent chapter to show that readers can make their own interpretations toward loneliness by taking the whole text as a foundation and combining their life experience, life philosophy and aesthetics. The pessimistic and desperate loneliness derives a positive way to against loneliness itself is the result of readers’ active participation into the interpretation of the text.Chapter 5 is a summary of this paper. It is believed that a good literary work has a lot to do with the creation of blank and the indeterminacy of text. Only with proper blank can readers be inspired to participate the interpretation of the text and through the interaction between readers and the text, will a literary work been finished. The theme of loneliness of The Ballad of Sad Cafe is realized and perfected through the readers positive interpretation.