grotesque can be found in the characters and situations in the works of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849, Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O’Connor, Eugene Ionesco,
Mervyn Peake, and Joseph Heller, among many others.
2.2 Grotesque Characteristics
Grotesque represents forms melting into one another. Like Roman’s ornaments or paintings, which flowers, genii, men and beast, buildings, etc are
mingled together, literary work should combine grotesque characteristics with the intention that the literary work could be called grotesque.
O’Connor presents many grotesque characteristics in Wise Blood, but I will analyze seven characteristics only, namely: monster, violence, absurd,
mystery, comic, symbol, and irony.
2.2.1 Monster The grotesque is the literary means of portraying the human condition in
such an unsure universe. Grotesque is an ancient mode with a long history and life of its own. It has some special characteristics; and the monster is one of them. All
grotesque figures have some connections with human world. A ghost is a spirit from the dead, a vampire is in origin the human victim of another vampire, even
an animal figure is performed grotesque by being given human perceptions and superhuman powers, not simply brute force. Consequently, when figures of the
grotesque appear as nonhuman, supernatural beings, they still make the sense human evil darker and less optimistic.
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The characters with monster quality tend to be demonic. The figures of grotesque monsters, such as vampires, ghosts, and the figure of animal, as well as
deformed human beings such as dwarfed and hunchbacked figures to make life seem uncertain and directionless. Monster is a pejorative term for a grossly
deformed individual. These severely deformed humans rarely survive. Michael Foucault 1926-1984 in his book Abnormal explains the idea of
the monster in the following way: the monster is essentially a mixture . . . of two realms: the animal and the human, as example, a man with the head of an ox or
the man with a bird’s feet monsters. It is the blending, the mixture of two species: the pig with a sheep’s head is a monster. It is the mixture of two individuals: the
person who has two heads and one body or two bodies and one head is a monster. It is the mixture of two sexes: the person who is both male and female is a
monster. It is a mixture of life and death: the fetus born with a morphology that means it will not be able to live but that nonetheless survives for some minutes or
days is a monster. Finally, it is a mixture of forms: the person who has neither arms nor legs, like a snake, is a monster.
2.2.2 Violence Violence is very significant in literature. It could refer to physical force,
abusive language or harassing action. Without violence, there would be nothing in the world but goodness, and literature is not mainly about goodness: it is mainly
about badness. Violence is much used in grotesque for the reason that it gives the shock-effect to the readers.
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Eric Bentley 1916- says that Charlie Chaplin is the best example in violence Corrigan, 1981:203. Audiences love Charlie because he is less violent.
He seems less violent because he put the violence in the other characters. The violence is done to him, not by him. In The Kid, Charlie finds himself literally
holding the baby. By all means, he is going to become a charming and sentimental foster-father, but as he sits there with his feet in the gutter he notices an open
drain, and he has almost thrown the baby sown it before sentiment comes again into his own.
2.2.3 Absurd Grotesque is a decorative style in which animal, human, and vegetative
forms are interwoven and deformed to the point of absurdity. Grotesque refers to something ridiculous, unnatural, and absurd. Absurd is from Latin word absurdus.
It means specifically “away from the right sound,” but the general modern usage is broader: away from ‘all reason or right sense; laughable foolish or false.’ For
the purposes of this work, a slight modification of the contemporary definition will serve well: ‘away from ordinary reason and right sense; laughably foolish and
true.’ There are some characteristics of absurdity: first, a ‘going away from’ a norm; second, a questioning of validity of human reason itself, from which our
perceptions of natural laws arise; third, absurd hero’s sense of isolation from God, from humanity, and from love; fourth, pervasive element of absurdity may simply
be termed the gross coincidence, or prank of fate.
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2.2.4 Mystery The central of all human being has been to deal with the mysteries of life,
with those aspects of the numinous which haunt our experience. There are certain abiding mysteries in human life that we can never totally understand or explain in
rational terms no matter how hard we might try to do so. No matter how boldly each of us may assert that: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my
soul,” we are nonetheless haunted by a nagging sense that there are unseen, undefined, or unknowable forces which shape our lives; that there is a script of
someone else’s making which directs what happens to us. Corrigan, 1981: 1 Mystery has always been O’Connor important element in creating her
grotesque novel. O’Connor’s grotesque always relates to God’s will which cannot be explained by natural determinable event or behavior because God cannot be
judged by human knowledge Fitzgerald, 1988: 954. O’Connor’s essential mystery of religious experience is suggested by pointing toward it rather than
trying to describe it from inside.
2.2.5 Comic As Sigmund Freud writes:
Thus a uniform explanation is provided of the fact that a person appears comic to us if in comparison with ourselves, he makes to
great an expenditure that in both these cases our laughter expresses a pleasure sense of the superiority which we feel in relation to him.
Corrigan, 1981: 168
Comic element in grotesque has a function of defensive laughter. The
laughter exists because we find a figure that is laughable and we could consider him as a fool. Laughter is the consequence in man of the idea of his own
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superiority Corrigan, 1981: 316. There is a feeling of superiority when we compare ourselves to a laughable comic figure. The comic figure is the fool
Corrigan, 1981: 39. Being isolated, he serves as a “center of indifference,” from which position the rest of us may, if we will, look through his eyes and appraise
the meaning of our daily life. All the theorists of comic are based on some notions of incongruity,
conflict, and contradictory. Incongruity is effectively used in all dramatic forms: serious and comic. It can produce dire emotion as well as side splitting laughter.
Conflict is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of need, values, and interest between people. And contradictory means deny the truth of
something said or written.
2.2.6 Symbol According to Ruskin “a fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a
series of symbol is thrown together in a bold and fearless connection, of truths which it would have taken a long time to haste of the imagination, forming the
grotesque character.” When we have experience something too great or too difficult to grasp fully and most truths are beyond human being, we encounter the
grotesque. For example, paintings, in which we can find grotesque element such as Hieronymus Bosch’s painting is called symbolic for it stands for or represents
something that is difficult to be understood by the audience.
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2.2.7 Irony Irony is very significant in grotesque. Irony is an implied discrepancy
between what is said and what is meant. Three kinds of irony: a. Verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something.
b. Dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
c. Situational of situation is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.
2.3 The Southern Grotesque
