Triangulation of madness, power and resistance in selected post-war American novels
This study aims to discover the triangulation of madness, power and resistance in selected post-war American novels, namely The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger, On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac, and The End of the Road (1958) by John Barth. It is hypothesized in this study that t...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/66776/1/FBMK%202016%2037%20IR.pdf |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | This study aims to discover the triangulation of madness, power and resistance in
selected post-war American novels, namely The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D.
Salinger, On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac, and The End of the Road (1958) by
John Barth. It is hypothesized in this study that the protagonists of the novels represent
different modes of madness and resistance and I aim to analyze how the protagonists
react to pressures by the disciplinary power that attempts either to normalize them or
cast them into asylums and alienation. Thus, I present three objectives, namely to
examine the characters’ entanglement in the disciplinary power system of their society
and their different reactions to the status quo, to explore the concepts of madness and a
madman as reflected by the characters of the selected texts and to discover how the
authors portray the characters’ resistance to the pressures the disciplinary power
imposed on them. This approach allows for a textual analysis of the characters of the
selected texts based on Foucauldian concepts of madness, power and resistance as the
theoretical tool, where Foucault suggests that madness and sanity are socially
constructed concepts created by the disciplinary power system to eliminate resistant
individuals. My findings demonstrate that the selected authors present those concepts
of madness, power and resistance through the characters’ portrayal of visible
disagreement with their respective society’s cultural codes of conformity. Thus, the
three selected authors share a similar way in depicting mad resisting individuals who
respond to society’s disciplinary power through their conducts. However, my findings
also reveal that, despite sharing this similarity, the selected texts exhibit different
modes of madness and resistance to society’s disciplinary power. For example, the
protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is regarded as mad because of his
resistance to accept his society’s disciplinary codes. Thus, in terms of the triangulation
of madness, power and resistance, Holden’s resistance to disciplinary power is
portrayed as madness. On the other hand, Sal and Dean, the protagonists of On the
Road, give birth to a new resistance strategy against the 1950s American cultural codes
by transfiguring the dichotomy of madness and sanity, where their resistance to accept
the disciplinary cultural codes of their society is depicted as madness that actually
brings real happiness and prosperity to them. Thus, madness becomes a strategy for Sal
and Dean to resist their society’s norms that are established by the disciplinary power
system. Hence, the triangulation of madness, power and resistance in On the Road is Sal and Dean’s madness as resistance to society’s disciplinary power. In contrast, Jake,
the protagonist of The End of the Road, resists the popular culture and mainstream
values of the society by getting paralyzed; thus, he is entangled in the psychiatric
power from which he has no way of freedom. Conversely, Joe, another major character
in the text, is portrayed as a sane character whose obsession in gaining power and his
resistance to society’s network of power relations manipulate the concept of madness.
Joe resists his position in the network of power and decides to deconstruct the structure
of the network by bringing Jake under his control. Thus, in the triangulation of
madness, power and resistance, I posit the view that, in The End of the Road, the
relation is madness to gain power in order to resist disciplinary system. Therefore, my
findings show that the triangular relationship between Foucauldian concepts of
madness, power and resistance is attained from the selected authors’ depictions of the
different modes of madness and resistance to society’s powerful disciplinary norms. |
|---|