The world of Carson McCullers

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Dorothy Jean Kirk (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Donald Darnell

Abstract: The fiction of Carson McCullers depicts a distinct, unique world characterized by its emphasis on the bizarre and grotesque. It is a world inhabited by freaks and outcasts whose experiences, removed from the realm of the ordinary, are violent, abrupt, and terrible. Her heroes, unacceptable and alienated by their freakishness, live in a world made unendurably lonely by the failure of love and communication. The horrible spiritual isolation inevitable in a world where love fails and dialogue ends in frustration is one of Carson McCullers' favorite themes, and she persistently develops it in all her writing. It is the nature of this theme that governs her choice of the unusual and grotesque. Throughout all her work Carson McCullers, trying to teach about the nature of love and the attendant loneliness and pain, depends extensively on the use of symbolism. It is because the expression of her major themes is predominantly symbolic that the freaks and outcasts and their experiences have a meaning beyond the realistic, narrative level of the novel.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 1969
Subjects
McCullers, Carson, $d 1917-1967 $x Criticism and interpretation
McCullers, Carson, $d 1917-1967 $x Characters

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