| This thesis will focus on Katherine Anne Porter's "Noon Wine," Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter , and Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person." In each work, the author constructs dynamics between the native, white Southerner and the white foreigner (of Swedish, Grecian, and Polish descent, respectively). I propose that the Southerner's perception of the foreigner may be understood in terms of three criteria: the foreigner's physical appearance, ritualized behavior, and communicative attempts. The Southerner's conception of these three characteristics allows him or her to view the foreigner abstractly; in the native white Southerner's mind, the foreigner, or "outsider," is only made safe after being filtered through his or her "Southern" consciousness. In this act of projection, I argue, the foreigner becomes temporarily assimilated; however, upon the death of the foreigner, the Southerner is confronted with the traumatic realization that he or she has constructed the foreigner both as "outsider" and assimilated neighbor.;While the authors of these texts, and the texts themselves, have been extensively considered by previous scholars, the three texts have rarely been put into conversation together; furthermore, when the works are discussed, they are largely studied for different purposes than those undertaken in this thesis. The American South has had a history of the fear of the Other, so rather than proposing any relationship between the characters and their historical time period, I consider how the foreigner is portrayed narratively. With this thesis, I hope to enter the existing discussion surrounding the native white Southerner's projection onto the foreigner, but with an eye to the complex factors that allow for this projection; moreover, I stress that the native white Southerner denies the agency and autonomy of the foreigner's body as a means of suppressing his or her own Otherness. In my thesis, I hope to answer the following questions: to what extent is the relationship between the native white Southerner and the foreigner emblematic of the "bonds of whiteness"? When does mutual "whiteness" become a source of anxiety? How is the foreigner psychologically victimized and how is this projection harmful to both parties?... |
