英文摘要 |
Physical and mental impairments are more than just common in the works of noted southern American writers; they are a much used symbolic tool for making subtle or even overt statements. They show differences between people in stark and bold ways that demands that readers acknowledge those differences that they might not be aware of, ignore as not vital, or that they have become blind to through cultural apathy. By examining briefly a small selection of the works of three southern writers, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O’Connor, this paper presents a look at some uses and partial purposes of this literary device of impairment and the "moral lesson" that may be at the base of its use, at least in regard to these three artists with discourse analysis and disability studies as helpful references. This morality seems to call for change, for a "wholeness" of person that is lacking, apparently in the view of these authors, in most "normal" people; this concept of wholeness being central to what is lacking, again, not only in those characters who are impaired but in others. The possible moral use of the literary device of the depiction of impairment, whether intentional or not, is argued, herein, as a call by these modernist southern authors for serious change in society and the individuals that make it up. |