LIT 365: Morrison
Terms/Cultural
Particularities/Etc.
Review the following. Add to the list
as you see fit.
1. Doppelgänger: “double walker”
in German; a double or second-self. In literature, dream analysis, or
archetypal symbolism, the Doppelgänger is often figured as a twin, shadow, or
mirror-image of the protagonist. The Doppelgänger characteristically appears as
identical to (or closely resembling) the protagonist; sometimes the protagonist
and Doppelgänger have the same name. Prominent literary examples of Doppelgängers
include Poe’s “William Wilson,” Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Conrad’s
“The Secret Sharer,” and the novel and movie “The Fight Club.” […] In Freudian
terms, the Doppelgänger represents hidden or repressed aspects of the
protagonist’s personality, and the arrival of the double represents the “return
of the repressed.” The protagonist must acknowledge what the double represents,
and at the same time struggle against it. Characteristically, a Doppelgänger
story climaxes with a confrontation of the two, usually a fight to the death.
The death of the Doppelgänger represents the successful repression of the
dangerous impulses, but the struggle leaves the protagonist sadder and wiser
about humanity and about himself or herself. (Dr. Glen Johnson, Catholic
University of America)
2. The Fantastic: According to Tzvetan
Todorov (1939- ), “the
fantastic” is a
distinct genre characterized by a “hesitation” either on the
part of the reader in deciding whether to interpret the events of the story as
real or unreal, natural or supernatural, or a similar hesitation evident in any
of the characters.[1] Todorov explains:
In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world
without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same
familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is
the victim of an illusion of the
senses, of a product of the imagination – and the laws of the world then remain
what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality – but then
this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us […] The fantastic occupies the
duration of this uncertainty. Once
we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring
genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. (Todorov, 25, emphasis mine)
According
to Todorov, “the fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions”:
First,
the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural
explanation of the events described. Second,
this hesitation may also be experienced
by a character; thus the reader’s role is so to speak entrusted to a
character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one
of the themes of the work -- in the case of naive reading, the actual reader
identifies himself with the character. Third,
the reader must adopt a certain attitude
with regard to the text: he will reject
allegorical as well as “poetic” interpretations. (Todorov, 33, emphasis mine)
Todorov’s
third condition—that
the reader must “reject allegorical as well as ‘poetic’ interpretations”—is the most problematic of
the three. After all, what literary text can be read only
in a literal sense?
Aren’t all literary texts at least open
to the possibility of a “poetic reading,” i.e. of being read metaphorically
or allegorically? Does this openness
really
disqualify the work
from being an instance of the
fantastic? Christine Brooke-Rose
and others have challenged this claim, arguing that the fantastic and allegorical/poetic modes of reading are not
mutually exclusive.
Todorov
divides the fantastic into two kinds: (1) those in which the hesitation is
between real and illusory, and (2) those in which the hesitation
is between real and imaginary. In the first
instance, the reader (or character)
is certain that the described events have taken place,
yet uncertain as to how to explain them; in short, the usual laws of nature do not
apply. In the second instance, the reader (or character) is not sure
whether the
described events have actually taken place or whether they were simply the product of the character’s imagination,
hallucination, dream, madness, drug-induced vision, etc.
Todorov’s positions his genre of the fantastic
between two related genres: the uncanny
and the marvelous. The uncanny is (according to Todorov) a
genre in which the strange
elements of the work are
ultimately shown to be explainable in natural terms; that is, our usual laws of
nature need not be adjusted to explain the strange events, which can be
explained as being
the product of the narrator’s
imagination or illness.
The marvelous is a genre in which the strange elements
are ultimately explained in supernatural
terms; that is, the
reader (or character) ascribes
the event to laws of nature that are different from our own.
Todorov
explains that the
genre of “the fantastic” forever
vacillates between these two alternative genres of the uncanny and the marvelous, never
committing itself to either. It
is precisely this hesitation that is suspended throughout Kajii’s “The Ascension of K”—for
in the end the question of how to explain
K’s strange behavior and death is left unresolved. Is the narrator’s account to be believed?
I should also note that while Todorov
holds that the
fantastic consists of a distinct genre in its own right that is marked by a
certain vacillation, hesitation, or ambiguity on a structural level, Rosemary
Jackson and others have challenged this claim by arguing that the fantastic is
a literary mode that can appear in a
variety of genres, rather
than a distinct genre as such.[2]
3. Icarus: Son of Daedalus in Greek mythology; attempted
to escape from Crete with the wax-and-feather wings his father made for him,
but drowned after flying too close to the sun.
4. Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897): In the
play, the character Cyrano escapes to the moon.
5. Kaguya-hime of Taketori monogatari: echoes of this
tenth-century story are present in Kajii’s story; the “bamboo girl” Kaguya-hime
returns to the moon at end of story.
6.
….
Study Questions
In bullet-point form, answer four
questions for each story. Bring your answers to class, and add to them as
you discuss your answers with your group.
“Lemon”
(1925)
1. Identify and describe the sensory
experiences depicted in the work. Which of the five senses (touch, sight,
sound, taste, smell) is the narrator most sensitive to? How do these sensory depictions
relate to the main theme of the work?
2. What relation between imagination
and reality is implied in the first half of the work?
3. Describe the narrator’s aesthetic
sensibilities. Where does he find beauty? What pleases him? What displeases
him?
4. How has the narrator’s attitude
toward the Maruzen bookstore changed? What is to account for this change?
5. Describe the narrator’s attitude
toward his illness (tuberculosis). At the time the work was written, what sort
of people and lifestyle was this illness associated with?
6. Discuss the lemon as symbol. Explain
the effect the lemon has on the narrator, and the reasons for this effect. How
does the lemon alter his attitude toward the world, himself, his illness, the
lump in his throat, the Maruzen bookstore, etc? Why does it have this effect?
7. Discuss the narrator’s view of the
relationship between art and everyday reality. Is this view an inversion or
reversal of the usual view? Explain.
8. Why does the narrator pile the books
into an imaginary castle and place a lemon atop the stack as if it were a bomb?
What is the symbolic significance of this act? Also, discuss the significance
of the last sentence.
“The
Ascension of K” (1927)
1. Describe the setting.
2. Describe the narrative structure of
the work.
3. Identify the elements of “the
fantastic” found in the work (i.e. elements that cause a certain “hesitation”
in the reader or character; see above for a description of “the fantastic”). Explain
how these elements cause such a hesitation.
4. Explain how the Doppelgänger motif
appears in the work. Explain its significance and function.
5. How does K prepare for his own death?
How are his actions a preparation for what happens in the final scene?
6. Explain the similarities and
differences between Icarus’s flight to the sun and K’s ascension to the moon.
7. Describe K’s view of the
relationship between light and shadows, reality and dreams. What do shadows
represent for him?
8. Identify the circular imagery/motifs/descriptions in the work. Explain the
significance and overall effect of all these circles, repetitions, ebbs and
flows, images of roundness, etc.
9. Discuss K’s “ascension to the moon”
as described by the narrator at the end of the story. Are we to believe his
account of what happened to his friend K?
[1] See Todorov’s
The Fantastic: A Structural
Approach to a Literary Genre (1973). For
more on the fantastic, see Fantastic
Literature, A Critical Reader by David Sandner and Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) by John Clute. For a broad-ranging
overview of the fantastic in modern Japanese literature, see Susan Napier’s
excellent study The Fantastic in Modern
Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity (1996).
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