Book Of Grotesque Analysis

Both novels provide proof that a novel does not need an overarching plot or continuous characters. Despite appearing as distinct parts or stories, the narrative becomes both clearer and more complex when the parts are joined. The rise and fall of each narrative, or their cyclical style, allows for a more in-depth theme to be more prominantently pronounced. These themes, mostly revolving around the characters in the novels, are emphasized by the disjoined parts in a way that a normal narrative, which follows a linear and cohesive path, cannot. This cyclical movement of the novel also serves to prevent readers from being able to read the sections out of order, though this may seem counterintuitive, and allows the novel’s ideas to be reiterated …show more content…
He lables them as “symbolic, emblematic, and thematic stories and stories of incident,” and then goes on to explain which stories fall under which categories (1304). Then, at the end of his essay, he explains that “it is valid to assume, then, that in each new composition a form emerged that allowed for a focus on that dominant element” (1312). This key idea of his is important when considering why the novel is positioned as it is. The first story of the novel is titled “The Book of Grotesque,” which Mellard calls a symbolic story, and serves as a veil for the rest of the stories in the novel. The old man in this story has a dream in which “All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques. The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness;” This description of people is vastly important to the rest of the characters within the novel (23). Although the most obvious reason for reading this section first is because it was placed there by the writer, it is not the only reason for doing so. Without this section, the …show more content…
George Willard’s depiction of leaving the town has many parallels to that first section. A more direct parallel is when George is greeted by all the people on the station platform much like how the writer is greeted by people in his dream (23-24 &324). This parallel is made to reiterate the idea of these characters within the novel being the grotesques in the writer’s novel. The reason for doing this at the end instead of somewhere in the middle is to allow the reader time to process the characters as grotesques. In the beginning, the readers are told to see the characters as grotesques and through the different types of stories they are shown specific truths that the characters deal with. The narrator is the one that tells us what these truths, or what the end goal of the novel is, in the beginning by stating that there was “the truth of virginity and the truth of passion… Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful… It was the truths that made the people grotesques” (25). Thus these stories become a look at characters on their search for the truths and how those truths change them. Mellard exhibits one example of this in the story “Paper Pills” in which Doctor Reefy “manages to avoid becoming a grotesque because he never allos the ‘thoughts,’ beautiful in themselves, to become distorting ‘truths’” (3). As explained above these truths are exemplified in