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Rebel Yells and Restless Spirits: Literary Resistance via the

Grotesque, Magic Realism, and Carnival in Pan-America

The Grotesque, Magical Realism, and the Carnivalesque: Key Terms

and Concepts

In literature of the Pan-American region, which includes

certain parts of North America, Central America, South America,

and the Caribbean, common literary elements are frequently used

by cultures where contact with European and American colonial

powers permanently altered indigenous culture and agrarian

landscapes across the region. Forced industrialization, the

introduction of capitalism, and diasporic migration (by the slave

trade) that led to the assimilation—and destruction—of countless

indigenous cultures are represented by literary modes like the

grotesque and magical realism which are driven by the impulse to

question, mock, criticize, and reject institutional control once

observed in early carnival celebration. Comparative analysis of

texts from the American South (William Faulkner’s The Sound and the

Fury, Flannery O’Conner’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,”

and Larry Brown’s Dirty Work), the Caribbean (Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s

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Love, Anger, Madness and Edwidge Danticat’s “Nineteen Thirty-Seven”),

and Latin America (Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of

Solitude and Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World) indicate a

new regional identity where the grotesque and magical real

literary modes—anti-institutional responses to the clash of new-

industrial culture with indigenous tribes—utilize carnivalesque

origins to narrate a series of similar realities altered by

interaction with natural surroundings. Critiques are made using

subversive romantic conventions and various forms of carnivalized

free expression, fragmented formats like short stories, and

unique regional experiences that express the potential for

change, growth, and freedom in literature of the Caribbean, Latin

America, and the American South.

In order to discuss the grotesque and magical realist

literary modes as distinct representations deriving from a shared

anti-institutional impulse, one must discuss their evolution from

a common source: the carnivalesque, a literary mode whose origins

are found in the social institution and traditional folk

celebration of carnival. Used by governing state and religious

powers as an institutionally-approved outlet for antisocial

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impulses considered threatening to the larger order, carnival was

a festival period during which societal norms and practices,

socioeconomic boundaries, and hierarchal power structures were

temporarily reversed in order to allow controlled, manageable

forms of chaos. The carnival—observed until the early seventeenth

century by various European cultures—is described by Mikhail

Bakhtin as an event “with no performers or spectators,” in which

all citizens participate, that functions not as an extension of

“the real world” but as “the world standing on its head,” and

which creates an inverted reality whose most liberating potential

stems from the lack of restriction of public discourse (250).

Governing powers used carnivals to control dispossessed

populations through the allowance of regulated transgressive

behavior; however the unrestricted interaction allowed during

carnival also created a space for the ridicule and analysis of

accepted beliefs and power structures. In order to accommodate

these privileged exchanges created by the suspension of cultural

norms during carnival, a “special type of communication” evolved,

and a carnivalized, “marketplace style of expression was formed”

by the combination of sacred and profane language with use of

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free expression (Holquist 10). Though the tradition of carnival

dwindled in Europe as feudalism gave way to capitalism, the

impulse towards free communication survives in many regions,

practiced as a festival of freedom and revolution in parts of the

world where the custom was spread by European slave traders; and

as a result of work in the field of cultural studies, there is an

increasing awareness of the degree to which the carnival has

evolved into a form of subversive literary expression.

The carnivalesque is a literary extension of carnival;

translated from a term used in Bakhtin’s discussion of the

evolution of carnival from celebration to literary mode, a mode

that works as a mirror through which the carnivalesque is

“reflected and refracted through the multi-perspectival prism of

verbal art” formed by carnival forms of thinking and writing

(Danow 4). Driven by the same impulse to question, mock,

criticize, and reject institutional control that inspires

carnival celebrations and the carnivalesque, a literary mode

evolved to provide the space in which a similar form of free

expression could still occur. In “The Spirit of Carnival; Magical

Realism and the Grotesque,” David K. Danow describes the

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carnivalesque as “a permeation of a similar spirit of reversal

and revolt,” and a “reflection in literature, a mode and

perspective that at once produce transformations, reversals, and

inversions of fate and fortune that reveal in turn a resultant,

necessarily dualistic view of the world” (3, 5). In the

carnivalesque literary mode, truths and realities become confused

as they are involved in processes with dualistic notions of old

and young, comedy and horror, good and evil, or the magical and

grotesque intermix to create new, altered realities that are in

direct contact with each other despite their binary opposition.

Combining within a text the mundane realism of life’s more

practical concerns with a spectrum of unrealities both magical

and dark, narratives that contain elements of the carnivalesque

rely on fantastic and horrific visions of everyday life to most

accurately achieve mimesis of life as it is lived by actual

people—in particular, by people living in places where colonial

contact brought about sudden and sweeping changes to routines and

belief systems that had existed for generations. Generalized

carnivalesque language would later be filtered through the

particular oral and regional literary traditions of the

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Caribbean, Latin America, and the American South, thus resulting

in the divergent but related literary modes that have come to be

known as “magical realism” and “the grotesque.”

Put another way, the carnivalesque narrates diverse stories

of communal experiences with strong cultural ties to the

collective memory of a region and its peoples, necessarily

evolving into related literary modes like magical realism and the

grotesque. Forming a common literary bond between regions

historically conquered by Europe and the northern region of the

United States, respectively, the magical real mode of Latin

American literature and the grotesque literary mode of the

American South allow the formation of a Pan-American literary

culture that illustrates the common experience of regions

affected by forced modernization brought on by the industrial

expansion of conquering nations. The same anti-institutional

impulse is expressed from distinct perspectives and

representative of a dualistic separation within carnival between

magical and grotesque ways of experiencing and representing

reality. The two modes advance the original spirit of free

expression of social and political struggle inherent to carnival

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celebration, creating a space for similar cultural narratives to

occur while embodying what Danow refers to as “the wide range of

man’s potential combined with a corresponding, even greater

potentiality that exists in the world of nature,” and “the

darkest side of human capacity, what would have been unimaginable

if it had not actually happened” (7). The carnivalesque (now

evolved into the magical real and grotesque literary modes)

allows for comparative critiques of imposed social conditions

like industrialism, capitalism, and colonialism constructed upon

the foundations of dualistic notions like light and dark, mundane

and exceptional, humorous and horrific. These interpretations

reflect individual regional experience while simultaneously

expressing the potential for change, growth, and freedom in

literature of the Caribbean, Latin America, and the American

South.

In order to understand the specific significance of the

grotesque as a literary mode, one might benefit from a historical

overview of the term. The original use of the grotesque as an

artistic concept, evolved from the mid-sixteenth century Italian

word, grotto, or grottesco, meaning “of a cave,” referred to an

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ancient Roman art-deco style rediscovered in the ruins around

Nero’s unfinished palace, Domus Aurea, built in 64 AD (Landow). The

ruined corridors, named Le Grotte due to their underground location

and overgrown appearance, contained various decorative patterns

that utilized elements of curving, winding flora and fauna that

Wolfgang Kayser, a German scholar and literary critic renowned

for his studies of grotesque art and literature, referred to as

“something playfully gay and carelessly fantastic, but also

something ominous and sinister in the face of a world totally

different from the familiar world . . . in which the realm of

inanimate things is no longer separate from those of plants,

animals, and human beings” (24). As the popularity of the

artistic style spread across Europe, the term retained a similar

meaning and usage in French, German, and English until the late

seventeenth century, when the term was replaced by its modern

pronunciation and an evolving meaning that would eventually

become less exclusive to the aesthetics of art and evolve into a

common descriptive term.

The term “grotesque,” used to refer to anything strange,

fantastical, horrific, or incongruous with the world around it,

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referenced not only an artistic mode but literary, architectural,

theatrical, and typographical mode as well. In his study of the

grotesque, George P. Landow states that as early as the sixteenth

century “confusions—of moral, political, social, and spiritual

order” began to bring about a new literary and artistic emphasis

on the monstrous and a “definitive lack of proportion and

organization” that adapted into a more threatening, anti-

institutional, modern form of the grotesque (Landow). The

grotesque functioned as a fundamental, potentially universal

literary mode, incorporating doubled, hybrid, and metamorphosing

figures and motifs used to conceptualize alterity and change in

diverse cultures. The term’s strong associations with conflicted

emotional audience and reader-responses of simultaneous

discomfort and sympathy (and other dualistic notions) emerged

around the same time as the literary grotesque mode continued its

transition toward its modern form, linked by forms like satire

and the tragicomedy in European literature and stage performance.

In his discussion of the grotesque and the writings of

literary critic and grotesque scholar Philip Thomson, David

Lavery states that, from roughly the seventeenth century until

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the late 1950’s, only isolated attempts were made to define the

evolving nature of the grotesque (20). Individual critics

throughout the eighteenth century had little influence on its

perception, definition, and usage until the work of the literary

critics G. K. Chesterton of England in 1903 and of German

Wolfgang Kayser in 1957. Chesterton states in his text, Robert

Browning (1903) that “the grotesque may be employed as a means of

presenting the world in a new light without falsifying it”

focusing on the grotesque and inherently carnival element of

seeing all things from a new perspective, “though strange and

disturbing” (Lavery 2). Through this evolution of the modern

grotesque literary form, the narrative mode of carnival and the

carnivalesque are re-identified and prioritized by the

grotesque’s focus on horrific and terrifying events and

situations. Kayser, while objecting to the notion that the

grotesque contained some element of “exaggerated buffoonery or

the ludicrously fantastic,” brought focus to the “co-presence of

the ludicrous with the monstrous, the disgusting and horrifying”

that would later incorporate a sense of horror, anger, and awe at

the negative potential of the human condition (Lavery 2). Kayser

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and Chesterton together began to apply the most inherent elements

of its contemporary usage to literature of the Caribbean, Latin

American, and American South, describing a combination of the

regenerative nature of the grotesque literary mode and a growing

sense of dissatisfaction with institutional power structures.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe and the

Americas, ideologies like capitalism and industrialism influenced

much in literature and art, including the grotesque literary mode

as it had evolved from its medieval origins through the romantic

period. The grotesque literary mode, which was already more

specifically focused on the horrific and terrifying aspects of

the human experience than the carnivalesque or magical realism,

shifted from what Lavery describes as a mode of classical

allusions, departures from classic order and reason, and gothic

themes to melancholy, horrific reflections on the human condition

in the face of colonialism, industrialism, and devastating war

(2). The grotesque literary mode began its transition to its

modern form with characteristic elements like dark, twisted, or

distorted bodies, timelines focused on the theme of outsiders and

victims of a rapidly-changing society, and alienation that

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expressed the carnival notion of free expression while giving

narrative voice to the distresses of rapid, forced modernization

throughout the world. Critics commonly agree that the romantic

grotesque became fully involved in the literary mode with the

beginning of World War I though this transition is seen in some

parts of industrial Europe as early as the late eighteenth

century and in the American South, after the loss of the Civil

War. A focus on the fantastical grotesque creature emerged—

symptomatic of the human cost of war and its horrors in the

brutal clash of opposing world forces—highlighting the themes of

congenital deformity and medical anomaly in its reflections of

modern society. The visual image of maimed soldiers deformed and

disabled by war injuries merged and half man-half machine forms

created through prosthesis frequently appeared, as well as

various other forms of the physical grotesque that reflected

anti-institutional impulses created by forced industrialism and

the ravages of warring capitalist societies on folk cultures

throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the American South.

Magical realism is another concept, evolved from the

carnivalesque like the grotesque literary mode, which requires

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introduction. The magical real literary mode (similar to the

grotesque literary mode because of anti-institutional elements

used to criticize colonialism and industrialism in the evolving

language of the carnivalesque) appears frequently in literature

of the Pan-American region and is often used in combination with

the grotesque literary mode, helping to bring mundane reality

into conflict with daily experiences of the magical real. First

used by the German historian, photographer, and art critic Franz

Roh in 1925, the term “magic realism” originally described a new,

distinct style of painting recently emerged in the wake of

Expressionism’s decline. Magical realism’s evolution from the

carnivalesque into a separate literary mode began with everyday

realities in which the fantastical, a sense of regenerative

nature, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction with institutional

power structures was expressed in relation to painting and other

forms of art. Louis Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris write in

the editorial note of their text, Magical Realism: Theory, History,

Community, that “the word ‘magic’ in this sense indicates “that

the mystery does not descend to the represented works, but rather

hides and palpitates behind it” (15). Roh’s studies, returning to

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hyperreal representation of ordinary objects, focused on the

separation between magic realism and surrealism and cited a focus

on the actual existence of things in the world as opposed to

psychic realities and subconscious, dreamlike forms. The magical

realist artistic mode of the early twentieth century, categorized

by its frequent inability to be resolutely defined, was built

upon a shifting, interweaving series of characteristics used to

depict the familiar not only in “aesthetic and stylistic terms,”

but also in political, cultural, and regional terms as well. The

magical realist literary mode, frequently connected to colonial

regions where forced industrialization and the capital interests

of international powers consumed lands, resources, and indigenous

cultures, embodied similar characteristics in its emergence from

regions of Europe and Latin America after the translation of

Roh’s text, Revista de Occidente, into Spanish in 1927. In its modern

form magical realism links strongly to its roots in carnival and

the carnivalesque, seeking to depict the inherently mysterious

and fantastic qualities of reality while recalling the

interruption of the mundane by chaotic, unreal events in order to

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give narrative voice to regional and cultural realities less

horrific than those described by the grotesque literary mode.

In its modern form, magical real literature frequently

depicts the continuing negative resonance of the effects of

industrialism, capitalism, and colonial expansion upon native

peoples, focusing on border restrictions between territories and

the struggles of powerful nations to gain and maintain control of

conquered peoples, lands, and resources. Modern magical realism

also incorporates any number of characteristics used to identify

the mode, thereby adapting itself to the culture and events that

it describes, relying on regional individualities of flora,

fauna, and indigenous cultures to dictate its form. M. Ruth

Noriega Sanchez names common criteria for identifying magical

realism in her book, Challenging Realities: Magic Realism in Contemporary

American Women’s Fiction, describing the “dialogic encounter of two

cultures” in colonial and postcolonial interactions that are

“reflected in the language of [magical real] narration,” in which

there occurs “the juxtaposition of national views of reality

based on Western cosmology and the magical view coming from

ancient non-western systems of belief and folklore” (25).

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Elements of the fantastic that include local fables, myths, and

folk tales are built upon the foundation of a real-world setting

and are often intertwined with contemporary events. Revealingly,

such elements are given the highest social relevance in times of

cultural crisis. Narration is often removed or indifferent,

describing fantastical events as if they were commonplace,

focusing on the vastness of unconsumed space and resources and

mixing of ethnicities into hybrid characters and concepts,

including the concepts of Western, indigenous, urban, and rural.

Hybridity is further used to access multiple planes of reality in

order to portray a more mimetically-accurate representation of

the human condition. Danow states that the literary mode presents

a “hallucinatory impression . . . of a land where time is bent,”

and that “time is frequently presented as cyclical,” since “what

occurs on one occasion (which is not likely to be the first) is

destined to take place again [in] eternal recurrence” (74). The

magical realist literary mode superimposes one reality upon

another, crossing paths with local religious beliefs, myth, and

historical occurrences in order to highlight the events of the

past being repeated or relived in the present as a traumatic

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cultural event.

Rebel Yells: The Grotesque in Literature of the American South

Although the Caribbean and Latin America are often

considered to be culturally distinct, both share with the

American South various geo-cultural affinities that explain

similarities in how literature is used to represent the

experiences of people living in these places. Various sub-genres

were used to propagate the Southern tradition of chivalrous white

heroes returning from service during and after the Civil War to

protect regional honor often set in what was portrayed as the

quiet backdrop of plantation life. White authors like William

Gilmore Simms, Caroline Lee Hentz, and Mary Henderson Eastman

wrote regional—and often rural—stories that favored slavery and

the preservation of Southern mores. In his essay “Romance and

Riot: Charles Chesnutt, the Romantic South, and the Conventions

of Extralegal Violence” Andrew Hebard states that authors during

and after the Civil War “rewrote the history of Reconstruction

through forms of chivalric romance” and portrayed a “beleaguered

white aristocracy resorting to extralegal violence to restore

honor and good governance to a corrupt state” (476). These and

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other similar genres portrayed coexistence between whites and

African Americans that mimicked the master and slave relationship

in patriarchal settings constructed to prioritize and protect the

successful upper-class white lifestyle. Characters of both races

were confined to their allotted social place having been drawn,

in these texts, within safe borders that intended to prevent

racial mixing. Southern authors romanticized ideals of white

superiority and their traditional society, rewriting their own

mythic past and making it a part of the historical narrative and

memory of the region.

Southern authors like Mark Twain and Kate Chopin, then later

William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Margaret Mitchell, utilized

the grotesque literary mode, writing detailed descriptions of

agrarian landscapes, folkways, and post-antebellum concerns

specific to the region: the loss of autonomy and traditional

Southern culture caused by urban growth and industrial pursuits

by the North (MacKethan). Southern literature became focused,

through from a variety of perspectives, on the loss of

centralized authority and folkways throughout the region from its

beginnings in the Colonial era forward, reflecting the perception

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by the South of “the victory of nationalism over regional

interests,” and an “increasing move towards urbanization and

industrialism following the war” (Rowe). Writers responded to the

assimilation of their regional culture by focusing on what they

perceived to be the few unique aspects of their traditional

lifestyle that remained in the newly modernized South.

Concurrently, the grotesque literary mode re-emerged in the post-

antebellum era, overlapping with other subgenres including

Southern Romanticism, Southern Modernism, and counter-pastoral

fiction, subverting their conventions in order to recreate the

privileged exchanges created by the suspension of cultural norms

during carnival. In order to reflect the new Southern reality,

privileged and unrestricted carnivalesque language that

facilitated interaction between the culturally-sacred and profane

appeared in Southern literature, allowing ridicule or analysis of

the Southern way of life in the wake of industrial expansion and

reformation laws enacted by the North.

In the last years of the colonial era the grotesque literary

mode emerged in various genres of Southern literature including

memoirs, diaries, essays, and novels focused on the

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individualities of America’s Southern states as a unique region

rather than the broader interests of the United States. Manual

Broncano, in his analysis of the transition from a national to

more regional narrative, describes the first appearances of the

“magical grotesque,” a trope or “peculiar kind of realism often

produced in the Americas;” it is, Broncano suggests, a distinct

style of the grotesque literary mode with a clear tendency to the

magical and mysterious (662). Broncano states that the magical

grotesque, beginning with the first portrayals by the Europeans

of the New World as the land of exaggerated plenty, was “created

by the unique circumstances surrounding the contact and conflict

between Native, European, and African populations in the New

World,” where newly-merged populations interacted with unfamiliar

landscapes, flora, and fauna (662). The grotesque literary mode

evolved from the unique, unrestricted social interactions of the

carnivalesque and magical realism—drawing upon its conflicted

environment to critique its position as a conquered region

similar to other transcontinental American conquests despite

being a landlocked part of the rest of the nation—in order to

recreate the unique grotesque realities of the American South.

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In the late nineteenth century the focus of Southern writers

turned to more intellectual, realistic depictions of the South as

the region’s interests became more personal and symptomatic of

the feeling of displacement experienced by Southern culture in

relation to the rest of the nation. The emergence of the

grotesque literary mode in Southern literature brought new focus

to the individualities of America’s Southern states as a unique

region rather than the broader interests of the colonial era in

the United States, simultaneously becoming more reliant on the

grotesque literary mode than in the past. With their focus on

agrarian traditions and romantic values, these writers often

cited a dehumanizing movement, arguing that the South served as a

national model for society in which man, rather than machine,

remained the dominant force. Southern authors criticized the

nation, observing that life in the South remained one where man

was still able to have a relationship with his surrounding lands.

Freaks, soldiers crippled by war, social pariahs, outsiders,

foreigners, the ugly, weak, obese, and other grotesque deviants

of all sorts appeared throughout Southern literature; these

figures were symptomatic of the feeling of displacement

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experienced by Southern culture in relation to the rest of the

nation. The grotesque literary mode revolted against national

interests and social norms in order to depict the unique

realities of life in the American South as disconnected from an

idealized historical progression of Southern tradition and the

North American myth of freedom and prosperity for all citizens.

The grotesque utilizes shocking images and themes that create

dualistic relations between pity and horror or understanding and

loathing in the same way that magical realism relies on the

fantastical to create interaction between the mundane and the

magical, having evolved from the same carnival origins.

Generations-old Southern traditions are often characterized by

highly-integrated narrators speaking from a “community”

perspective that contrasts with the removed, indifferent

narration of magical realism, creating a voice and privileged

space in which to comment on the contemporary state and future of

the American South.

In many of his novels, William Faulkner’s commentary on the

progression of Southern culture utilizes longstanding Southern

traditions and various narrative tools that speak for an

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idealized Southern past while providing a commentary on the

regional inability to adapt to new national realities. Folk

storytelling traditions like multi-generational family

narrations, a popular sub-genre of Southern literature that

utilized the romantic literary mode, sought historical and

cultural continuity by building meaningful connections between

the mythic past and contemporary Southern identity, repeating

names and traits from one generation to the next. Faulkner’s

version of the family narrative, rather than serving as the

vehicle of Southern tradition, narrates a single family’s

perspective of the last, gasping breaths of the unique culture of

the American South, subverting its characteristics in order to

criticize outdated social mores and commercial expansion by the

North. In the aftermath of what many likely perceived as a form

of colonial contact with the culturally-different and highly-

industrialized North, critics commonly agree that the ideologies

that came with Reconstruction (industrialization and capitalism)

took their toll on traditional Southern culture and imprinted

themselves upon the region’s literature as the rapid expansion of

industry and urban growth consumed the agrarian culture. Texts

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like The Sound and the Fury (1929) written by Faulkner during the

Southern Renaissance employ elements of the grotesque literary

mode in their depiction of the decline of the traditional

patrilineal Southern white aristocracy in the new-industrial era

of the South. Shifting, nonlinear narratives, moral, spiritual,

and social chaos, as well as doubled, monstrous, and pitiful

characters are present in the story of Jason Compson III, a

disillusioned Southern patriarch, and his family; the remaining

members of a vanishing line dating back to the founding of the

nation.

In The Sound and the Fury the Compsons’ archetypal role as

respected members of the white, Southern aristocracy deteriorates

as each Compson sustains some grotesque defiance of traditional

Southern mores. Benjamin, youngest son and the first narrator of

The Sound and the Fury, is the most evident grotesque symbol for the

decline of regional culture after industrialism and a reminder to

the elder generation of their fall from aristocratic grace.

Benjy’s adult body and childlike mind are irresolvably,

grotesquely conflicted by a cognitive condition, discovered in

early childhood, which makes him monstrous to some and pathetic

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to others. Jason (IV) identifies Benjy as a grotesque social

pariah when he argues with his mother over finances, saying,

“Rent him out to a sideshow; there must be folks somewhere that

would pay a dime to see him” (196). Later, Jason focuses on the

financial burden of caring for Benjy while symbolically tying his

grotesque status to regional taxation (likely collected under

Northern authority), saying,

if we’ve got to feed another mouth and [mother] won’t

take that money, why not send [Benjy] down to Jackson.

He’ll be happier there, with people like him. I says

God knows there’s little enough room for pride in this

family . . . you’ve done your duty by him; you’ve done

all anybody can expect of you and more than most folks

would do, so why not send him there and get that much

benefit out of the taxes we pay. (221-22)

The archetype of the treasured youngest child of a romanticized

Southern family is subverted by Benjy’s grotesquely-distorted

form and Jason’s focus on the economic strain of Benjy’s in-home

care. Continuation of patrilineal tradition and the Compson

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family line, already interrupted by Quentin’s suicide and Jason’s

obsession with money, are shut down completely by Benjy’s

condition and inability to contribute to the family or to

flourish either mentally or physically, creating a grotesque

conflict between the reality of his condition and the

romanticized, mythic notion of heroic soldier-sons who stood for

the prosperity of Southern culture in the pre-industrial era. The

historical decline of traditional values, symbolized by the lapse

in continuity between the South’s idealized patriarchal tradition

and Jason’s failure as head of the family, intertwines with the

Compsons’ deterioration in the new-Industrial era and Benjy’s

grotesque form in order to highlight the death of agrarian

prosperity in the American South.

Commentary on the decline of Southern culture and the

regional inability to adapt to new national realities including

industrialization and commercial growth moved across the region

while continuing to appear in the Southern literary tradition.

Many writers of the Southern Renaissance utilized various forms

and narrative tools to reference the idealized past while using

carnival free expression to create historical and cultural

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continuity between it and contemporary Southern identity. In the

short story—a literary form believed to have evolved from oral

storytelling traditions like fables and anecdotes in the

seventeenth century—cultural and social identities as well as

diverse Southern realities are depicted in clever, sometimes

shockingly twisted plots and climaxes, often unexpected because

of the brevity of the text. Despite the challenges of the short

story form, Faulkner and contemporaries like Flannery O’Conner

write carnivalized fragmented realities from the decline of

Southern culture, expressing feelings of loss and confusion with

the grotesque literary mode.

Several grotesque symbols for the continuing decay of

Southern culture are evident in O’Conner’s short story, “The Life

You Save May Be Your Own;” a tale of a mother and daughter, both

named Lucynell (a distortion of the traditional passing of a male

name from one generation to the next), isolated on the rural

landscape with no man to tend to the needs of the farm. The elder

Lucynell, head of her household and a subversion of the

patriarchal hierarchy of the traditional Southern home,

symbolizes the decay of Southern morality as industrialism

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continued to inhibit the Southern agrarian lifestyle when she

calculates the value of a man walking up her drive, noticing that

he is thin, has only one arm, and is carrying a tool chest. The

tramp, Mr. Shiftlet, eyes both the car in the garage and young

Lucynell as he describes his years of odd jobs and military

service, suggesting another subversion of Southern moral

character and the romantic ideals of Southern chivalry. Mr.

Shiftlet and the old woman speak of capital interests as if they

were shallow and base, bringing chivalry and other key tenets of

Southern culture into grotesque conflict by using irony to

suggest the symbolic meaning of the conversation—decaying

Southern morality in the new industrial era. The narrator

describes Shiftlet’s description of himself:

Mr. Shiftlet’s eye in the darkness was focused on a

part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the

distance. . . “I’m a man,” he said with a sullen

dignity, “even if I ain’t a whole one. I got,” he said,

tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the

immensity of what he was going to say, “a moral

intelligence!” and his face pierced out of the darkness

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into a shaft of doorlight and he stared at her as if he

were astonished himself at this impossible truth. (58-

59)

Both the old woman and the tramp continue to use irony to convey

their meaning. Lucynell is described as innocent throughout the

course of a week-long negotiation, indicating that her cognitive

condition makes her a more agreeable, suitable wife than modern

women do by traditional Southern standards. The old woman barters

the marriage of her daughter in order to convince the one-armed

tramp to stay on the land and care for them, forming a grotesque

union symbolic of the decay of traditional Southern culture and

the desperation of some of its poorest citizens in the wake of

industrialization. Subsequently, the romantic ideal of chivalrous

Southern gentleman with flawless moral character is distorted

when Mr. Shiftlet abandons Lucynell in a diner a hundred miles

from home, continuing on in the car from the women’s garage. The

quality of white, Southern manhood—the keystone argument for

white superiority and domination of the region—is symbolically

corrupted by base, selfish desire and disregard for morality,

subverting the institution of patrilineal, hierarchal, white

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power at the heart of Southern culture using the grotesque

literary mode.

Many twenty-first century Southern authors, inspired by

their reading of Faulkner and his contemporaries, utilize the

grotesque literary mode to express similar regional concerns

despite the years and social progress between the nineteenth

century and today. Contemporary Southern authors, like their

predecessors, subvert romantic Southern conventions with the

grotesque in various forms of carnivalized free expression.

Despite the continued expansion and incorporation of

industrialization and capitalism into every aspect of American

life, the grotesque literary mode continues to appear

symptomatically in Southern literature, often focused on modern

weapons of war and their devastating effects. Southern archetypal

grotesque figures that include veterans of war missing limbs, or

maimed, characters with physical and mental birth defects, and

the elderly and wasted; these figures continue to be combined

with characteristics of Southern romantic tradition, cultural

mores, and regional pride to emphasize, in Southern literature of

the present day, emphasizing the continued uniqueness and

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separation of the region from the rest of the United States. The

use of the grotesque literary mode in contemporary Southern

literature subverts limited characterizations of the South in

America’s ongoing media discourse as the lesser-developed,

economically-depressed portion of the country, creating

continuity in literature where the continuity of romanticized

Southern culture has failed.

Decades after the works of Faulkner and O’Conner, similar

themes concerned with the threat of forced industrial expansion

continue to appear in Southern literature, growing exponentially

in scope with the capability of modern technology to affect

remaining agrarian cultures on a world-wide level. For example,

Larry Brown’s Dirty Work (2007) employs elements of the grotesque

literary mode seen in the work of his predecessors in nineteenth

century Southern literature: elements of Southern romanticism,

distorted archetypes, and frequent references to the South’s past

glories and defeats. In Dirty Work, like various works of Southern

literature of the nineteenth century which focused on the

frightening capabilities of combat weaponry as industrialization

progressed across the nation, the grotesque literary mode is used

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to subvert the romantic ideals of brave, young men fighting for

the freedom of (the South) the nation during American conflicts—

in this case Vietnam (a war with its own North/South dynamic).

The addition of twenty-first century postmodern elements like pop

culture reference to film and television and the depiction of the

post-Vietnam experience of (Southern) veterans neglected by the

country they defended allude to American conflicts dating from

the Civil War era to the Middle East crisis of the seventies,

engaging with the present in order to criticize industrialization

and continued Northern consumption of the South’s most valuable

asset—its young men. Set in the late seventies in a VA hospital

in Mississippi, Braiden (who is African American) and Walter (who

is white) share many characteristics: in particular, they have

both suffered traumatic injuries in battle which left them

grotesquely disfigured. The freakish appearance of the two men

(symbolic of Civil War-era soldiers who returned as amputees;

monstrous reminders of Southern loss) subverts the romanticized

Civil War-era image of young Southern men fighting for the

region’s noble cause by bringing it into conflict with the

reality of injured veterans whose lives and productivity are cut

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short in the same way that traditional Southern culture was by

interactions with the North.

Braiden and Walter, having returned from Vietnam to lives of

physical and emotional alienation from their families and the

outside world experience a conflicted, grotesque response to each

other’s injuries when they meet despite having lived for decades

as freakish social outcasts. Braiden, awake when Walter is

wheeled (unconscious) into their shared room, gives the first

description of Walter’s disfigured face. He says that

Most of it had been blowed off and they’d tried to put

him another one together. RPG probably. Rocket-

propelled grenade . . . Just scar tissue. Places he had

hair and places wasn’t no hair. Skin grafts. Aw he had

a piece of face but it wasn’t a real face. . . . Anyway

when they rolled him up next to me I saw what the load

of shit he was toting was. (6, 84)

In his description of Walter’s injuries Braiden identifies

himself as a grotesque double or twin to Walter’s character

through his recognition of various tools of industrialized

warfare that have the capability to leave a man’s face in that

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state. Later, when Walter opens his eyes and sees Braiden’s

condition he says that “I had to suck in a big breath when I saw

the rest of him. He didn’t have any arms or legs, just nubs. Just

like Johnny Got His Gun. . . He was kind of like a large baby laid up

there on a sheet. But he wasn’t a baby. He was forty-something

years old” (13-15). Walter, like Braiden, wonders “what could

have eaten him up like that, but I knew. A machine gun, or a

mine. Or hell, maybe a claymore. Maybe even one of our own

claymores” (16). Walter’s reference to Johnny Got His Gun, in which a

World War I veteran hit by an artillery shell is left a quadruple

amputee with no sight, hearing, or speech, intensifies the

description of Braiden’s injuries, simultaneously associating the

horrific capabilities of industrialized warfare from one American

conflict to the next with the extreme isolation of life in that

physical state.

Walter and Braiden’s injuries are continually associated

through subversion of romantic Southern conventions and the

archetype of young men headed off to war to defend the Southern

cause, building upon the symbolism of lasting injuries to

Southern culture by industrialization and war with the North.

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Braiden describes his last night at home before deployment to

Vietnam spent watching TV with his mother. He says that,

Me and her had watched some old movie on TV . . . It

was old Jimmy Stewart in something. He was in the Civil

War. And he got shot, and he had this beautiful horse,

and his arm was almost blowed off, and this doctor said

he couldn’t save his arm but saw that horse he was

riding and remarked over what a fine animal it was.

This guy was like a lowdown motherfucker on the

battlefield of life. Couldn’t save his arm, see . . .

Then he seen old Silver over there. And old Jimmy

Stewart told him, Doc, if you’ll save my leg, arm,

whatever it was, you can have that horse. Well the old

Doc decided he might could save it then. (24)

Braiden’s description of the plot of the film symbolizes several

aspects of the effects of industrialization and war with the

North on the South. The injuries to Jimmy Stewart’s character,

similar to Braiden’s, continue to subvert the romantic Southern

archetype of heroic sons of the region going off to fight for the

South’s noble cause in the Civil War by referencing severe,

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grotesque injuries sustained by veterans of all American

conflicts. Northern industrial growth in the South brought with

it ideologies like capitalism which motivated the consumption of

all Southern resources available, represented here by the greed

of the doctor who chooses not to act to save Jimmy Stewart

character (not just anyone in need of medical care, but a

soldier) until he secures possession of the horse. The grotesque

literary mode further criticizes capitalism and its effects on

the South through depictions of desperate individuals forced to

compromise their morals or their own security to survive while

others (representative of the carpetbaggers of the North waiting

to take advantage of regional weakness after the Civil War) put

self-interest and capital gain before moral obligation and the

guidelines of Southern mores.

Restless Spirits: Part One—Magical Realism in Caribbean

Literature

The analysis above focuses primarily on the deterioration of

Southern culture in the new-industrial era and its demonstration

through the use of the grotesque as a predominant literary mode.

In other Pan-American regions with populations affected by

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diasporic movement, colonization, and industrialization—regions

that include, in particular, the Caribbean, and, more precisely,

a country like Haiti—elements of the carnivalesque evolved into a

literary mode with magical elements related to the grotesque but

altered by collective cultural experiences and interaction with

the unique geographical features of the region. Haiti proves to

be an especially good case study for this topic because it’s

diverse literature, which reflects the varied experience of its

peoples’ complex and problematic contact with several colonial

regimes, represents for readers the carnival and/or magical real

literary mode as they are used throughout much of the Caribbean

as a whole. In other words, a study of the Haitian version of

magic realism will offer an adequate (though, of course, not

exhaustive) overview of how the carnivalesque is used throughout

the Pan-American world.

In order to discuss the origin of the magical realist

literary mode, we must understand the binary connection between

the grotesque in the literature of the American South and magical

realism in literature of the Caribbean (and Latin America). One

begins with the juxtaposition between the Caribbean’s indigenous

Spears 38

tribes, their oral traditions, religious beliefs, and their

comprehension of nature. In his examination of aboriginal

Caribbean religions, History of Religions in the Caribbean (1989), Dale

Bismauth states that prior to its occupations, Haiti’s indigenous

tribes shared similar religious beliefs that encompassed aspects

of animism, both believing that mysterious, magical forces of

nature and mischievous spirits had the power and desire to

inhabit humans, animals, objects, natural landscape like rivers

and mountains, and the elements (1). One tribe (Arwaks) practiced

a more advanced system of animism than the other (Caribs),

“[combining it] with polydaemonistic elements” that consisted of

similar infinite numbers of spirits (1). Both feared the magical

abilities of their gods and spirits, calling upon shaman or

bohitos to exorcise them when necessary. In his study of the

carnivalesque and its various evolutions, Danow analyzes links

between the religious beliefs of Haiti’s indigenous peoples and

their explanations of the natural phenomena around them. In

Danow’s description of the origins of magical realism as a

literary mode, he states that in an environment like the

Caribbean (and Latin America as well), animals were living close

Spears 39

to men, the vegetation became colossal, and that “the nature of

the place naturally [propagated] strange tales” (67). The various

forms of magical realism “derived from a host of [realities]:”

imposing geography, composed of daunting natural

barriers—impenetrable forests, dangerous waters,

and portentous heights—and a frequently unbearable

humid Caribbean atmosphere . . .The geographical

proximity of the jungle to the city elicits a

related omnipresent sense of the closeness of the

prehistoric past to modern life, of myth, or

primordial thinking, to scientific thought. (71)

Jean Delbaere-Garant similarly states that the tribes lived among

so much “unconsumed space” that the magical images so present in

their religion and daily life were “borrowed from the physical

environment itself” (252). Though deforestation left contemporary

Haiti with little of its original flora, the island before

colonization was covered with a variety of different types of

forests allowing for a variety of plant and animal life.

Seemingly magical and controlled by the will of the spirits,

various natural phenomena and regional elements became entangled

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in the religion and myths of Haiti’s indigenous peoples, then

later into contemporary culture and literature as well.

Interaction between elements like environment, traditional

beliefs, oral tradition, and the human imagination of the

indigenous peoples coalesced in literature of the Caribbean,

creating the necessary conditions for the region’s particular

strain of the magical realist literary mode. Passing collective

cultural memories and myths orally from one generation to the

next, magical real mechanisms were accepted and incorporated into

Haiti’s cultural narrative. Referring to “oral storytelling” as

the “cultural transfer of memory,” Jana Evans Braziel describes a

powerful cultural tool, drawing on a long griot tradition that

people of African descent have used to give alternative accounts

of the world” (88). Dating back to 600 CE, the oral traditions

of Haiti (Ayiti, ‘land of high mountains’ in the pre-Columbian era)

connected mythical ancestors with a cultural narrative consisting

of a tri-world cosmology and animistic explanations for all

things. The magical real literary mode, evolved from its origins

in oral storytelling modes to recall and retell the past in the

carnivalized space of free expression created by Caribbean

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literature, which Braziel describes as, “lieux de mémoire (‘places

of the memory’),” with no “referent in reality” (78). Braziel

refers to moments torn away from the movement of history, then

returned, resulting in the “[juxtaposition of] legendary Haitian

myths against more contemporary historical references,” stating

that “that they are without content, physical presence, or

history . . . they escape from history [and are] the ultimate

embodiment of a memorial consciousness” (78-80). The magical real

literary mode and its inherently carnivalesque tendency to

express anti-institutional impulses, symptomatic of Haiti’s

political turmoil, mix familiar magical elements with everyday

events in order to depict the realities of Haitian life, serving

as the voice of lost generations and a criticism of the horrors

of colonialism and industrialization from the fifteenth century

until the present day.

Occurrences of violence, subjugation, revolution, and

rebirth are all frequent themes in the Caribbean’s unique

incarnation of the magical real literary mode, emerging from the

interaction of European and American sociocultural groups with

the indigenous peoples of Haiti and their culture. The history of

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colonization, industrialization, and revolution in Haiti,

recorded in the region’s literature, depicts a cyclical pattern

ongoing since the fifteenth century that merges the past and

present in close literary quarters from one generation to the

next. In Caribbean literature of the late-colonial and

postcolonial era, a revolutionary voice emerges within that

pattern from diasporic cultural roots to protest violent

occupation, exploitation, and enslavement of human beings from

around the globe as expendable resources. Authors like Fernand

Hibbert, Oswald Durand, Frankétienne, and later Marie Vieux-

Chauvet, Jean-Claude Charles, and Edwidge Danticat write historic

traumas and revolutionary rhetoric with a carnivalesque spirit,

using subversive literary modes like magical realism to describe

the repeated occupation and enslavement of Caribbean nations.

Literature of the Caribbean is frequently written in short story

or novella form, and fragmented time, events, families, and

nations coalesce, interacting with Haiti’s unique flora and

fauna. The wide range of man’s potential and a corresponding,

even greater potentiality that exists in the world of nature

create a magical space for subversive cultural narratives to

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occur in the magical realist literary mode, allowing free

expression of social and political struggles related closely to

its origins in carnival celebration.

In order to create the necessary conditions for Caribbean

literature’s particular strain of magical realism in the modern

era, folk culture and generations of regional history are

embodied by revolutionary language and actions that subvert

violent, mechanical images of colonial occupation and

industrialization. In Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s award-winning Haitian

trilogy, Love, Anger, Madness (2005), three loosely-related novellas

depict life in Haiti in the late nineteen-sixties from varying

narrative perspectives. First published in a limited release in

France, Love, Anger, Madness was suppressed by two longstanding

militaristic Haitian regimes for its subversive content, causing

Vieux-Chauvet to go into permanent exile until her death. Each

novella describes a fragment of life in post-occupation Haiti

from a unique economic and social perspective, romanticizing the

revolutionary spirit of Haiti while demonstrating various levels

of subjugation imposed by militaristic colonial regimes. In the

novella Anger, a mother (Madame Louis) is sickened by her

Spears 44

inability to prevent the suffering of her family—which has been

ravaged by military police—so she begins to climb towards “the

gigantic outline of a fortress protected by cannons, their

charred muzzles like forbidding tunnels,” to satisfy her deep,

physical need for rebellious action (225-26). Suddenly, “a

deafening drone [swells] around her, which she [mistakes] for

engine noise,” then “hundreds of thousands of men . . . every

one of them in boots and a helmet,” begin to emerge from the

mountain (226). Madame Louis realizes then that “it [is] no

engine noise but the blurred voices of hundreds of thousands of

mouths, all of them yelling in unison: Hail to the chief of the

Blackshirts!” (226). Soldiers—industrialized and suggestively

mechanical, stripped of their humanity by their engine-like sound

—are symbolically transformed into a consumable resource (or

expendable weapon) of the militaristic regime. The startling

visual representation of colonial-industrial strength reinforces

Madame Louis’s feeling of helplessness and despair while

signifying the desperation felt by generations of Haitians under

similar military control. The significant depletion of natural

resources is suggested as the colonial forces march out of the

Spears 45

mountain by the thousands, defiling the connection between the

Haitian people and the natural landscape with the intrusion of

industrialization.

A stark contrast is drawn between thousands of soldiers

yelling in unison and participants in the subversive cultural

traditions of carnival, bringing to mind Danow’s earlier

description—paraphrased here—of the carnivalesque as a literary

mode that produces inversions of fortune in the spirit of revolt

revealing dualistic realities in constant interaction. As quickly

as Madam Louis can retreat from the traumatic display of

industrial power the colonial imagery is challenged and brought

into conflict when, defeated and weary,

[Madame Louis was] snagged by a delirious crowd

shouting and singing a Carnival merengue . . . A group

of half-naked devils with scarlet horns threatened the

spectators with their gilt pitchforks. Two rows of

giant laughing heads ran ahead of a queen of great

beauty dressed in pink tulle blowing kisses to the

crowd atop a float depicting the fortress in

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miniature . . . Hundreds of beggars in rags followed in

[the queen’s] wake, arms in the air, swarming to the

sound of a huge, colorful ribbon-draped drum pounded by

crew members lurching to the rhythm . . . Nothing

existed anymore: not anger, nor fear, nor despair. The

throng granted itself a reprieve through the ancestral

rituals that, for the moment, offered a deceptive sense

of freedom. (227)

The inhuman sound of the soldiers’ chanting and militaristic,

industrialized imagery of the fortress on the hill are challenged

by the carnival parade marching almost within sight of the

mountain. A festival period of managed chaos and free expression,

taking place only streets away from a living symbol of industrial

strength, subverts militarized cultural norms, protesting the

(industrial) colonial regime with indigenous cultural tradition,

mocking European imperialism with colorful costumes and spiritual

abandon. The appearance of carnival celebration as if in response

to the dramatic show of military force creates a privileged space

for a deliberately subversive voice-of-the-people that opposes

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intrusions of the industrial or colonial into everyday life with

mockery and jubilant defiance.

The revolutionary voice in Anger is fully realized when

elements of the magical real appear in subversive response to the

imposition of a militarized (colonial) border that circles the

family’s property with stakes and armed soldiers, restricting

surrounding lands and crops while intimidating the family into

selling land to members of the colonial regime. Claude, Madame

Louis’s youngest son, summons an ancestral ghost with the help of

his grandfather—also named Claude—who legend says will be

compelled to seek revenge against the soldiers. When their

ancestor arrives, Claude describes the specter’s appearance,

saying that the ghost is “dressed in a high-collared jacket and a

big straw hat . . .His feet [are] bleeding as if he [has]

travelled a great distance, and he [is] looking at us with sad,

heavy eyes” (258). The ancestor (a symbol of voiceless

generations of natives and slaves consumed as expendable human

resources in the pursuit of colonial industrial progress)

disappears in a moment, leaving Claude in despair but with the

expectation of violent vengeance. The narrator describes elder

Spears 48

Claude’s response to the ghost, saying that “In the depths of his

soul, legends he thought he had forgotten had been reawakened”

(258). Indigenous animistic beliefs, Christianity, and the

magical real literary mode (in the form of the ancestral ghost)

merge when the grandfather—a living symbol of Haiti’s

revolutionary spirit—suggests that the ancestor is compelled to

carry out the wishes of Claude and his grandson, but then

speculates that “If even the dead refused to hear God’s voice and

come to our aid . . . then what would become of us” (258). The

(magical) mundane reality of an otherwise powerless colonial

situation is demonstrated when Christian doctrine—one which only

God can summon a spirit from the dead—is brought into conflict

with the traditional Haitian belief that an ancestral spirit

could be compelled to intervene in human affairs by the actions

of a boy and his elderly grandfather. Shortly thereafter, several

of the guards shoot each other during an argument, creating the

sense that a minor revolution had occurred. The combination of

magical real literary elements like the ghost of Claude’s

ancestor with revolutionary ideas and the carnivalized space for

free expression—created by the same (colonial) borders that

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separate the family from their land—allow the progression of

social commentary from colonialism to the carnivalesque to the

magical real present.

In literature of the Pan-Americas, a common romantic element

exists that, while focused on themes individually prioritized by

the cultures of the region, demonstrates consistent connections

between seemingly-unique colonial-era experiences of the

Caribbean, Latin America, and the American South. As

industrialization, commercial growth, and the reign of powerful

military regimes moved across the Caribbean, authors of the

region utilized various literary forms of carnival free

expression to create historical and cultural continuity between

contemporary Haiti and its lost, voiceless past, including

romanticism and the short story format. Haiti’s romanticism,

while similar to its appearance in Latin American and Southern

literature, focuses on cyclical periods of revolution in Haiti’s

history, making archetypal folk heroes and villains of historical

figures, rather than Latin American literature’s romanticized

attempt to build cultural continuity across the region and the

obsession in Southern literature with the connectivity of its

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romanticized, Eurocentric past. In Haitian literature, the short

story is used to highlight cultural identities largely based on

social status and diverse realities with violent, often shocking

plots and climaxes emphasized by the brevity of the text.

Carnivalized, fragmented realities depict the restriction of free

Haitian culture, utilizing the magical real literary mode to give

voice to the feelings of loss, confusion, and rage created by

constant military control.

In order to criticize colonialism, industrialization, and

the dictatorial control of military regime leaders, Haitian

author Edwidge Danticat presents a series of modern-day folk

tales about survival, nationalism, and the magical reality of the

Haitian people in her award-winning collection of short stories,

Krik? Krak! (1996). In “Nineteen Thirty-seven,” Danticat creates

what Dean Franco refers to as “a dialectical engagement with

history,” that utilizes the short story format, non-linear

storytelling, and the magical real literary mode to depict

traumatic historical events rooted in the region’s collective

memory while subverting the event to reflect Haiti’s romanticized

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revolutionary spirit. The narrator (Josephine) describes the

night of her birth after her mother (Manman) escapes from

Massacre River, saying that, “On that day not so long ago, in the

year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my

mother did fly. Weighed down by my body inside hers . . .she

glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which

at that moment looked as though it were in flames” (49). Here,

imaginative, magical storytelling is overlapped with the

historical events of the Parsley Massacre of 1937 (during which

the Dominican president Rafael Trujillo ordered the execution of

thousands of Haitians living near the Dominican border) as well

as grotesque language and imagery in order to describe the

reality of cultural clashes between Haitian citizens and

militaristic leaders enforcing colonial borders. Josephine’s tone

as she describes her mother’s escape is indifferent, as if

describing a commonplace event as three realities merge into one:

a magical reality in which a flaming pregnant woman covered in

blood flies to avoid her pursuers is juxtaposed with a violent, a

traumatic, grotesque reality where human beings are slaughtered

in the streets for crossing an imposed political border, and

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mundane reality as similar violent attacks became commonplace.

When Manman—whose character is romanticized by her revolutionary

actions—flies to escape her attackers then gives birth to

Josephine in the same night she becomes a magical real subversion

of everyday militaristic oppression and the consumption of

Haitian (human) resources used to fuel the industrial growth

necessary for European and American colonial success.

Restless Spirits: Part Two—Magical Realism in Latin American

Literature

As the above analyses indicate, there is a strong,

intentional link between the grotesque and magical real literary

modes and the colonial contact between European/American and

various Pan-Caribbean cultures. This fact is given particular

emphasis by Latin American writers, whose evolution of

subversive, anti-institutional carnival expression began in Latin

American literature in response to colonial contact between

indigenous cultures and various European nations—then later with

the American North—during the late fifteenth century

(concurrently with literature of the Caribbean and American

South). The magical real literary mode of the Latin Americas—like

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literature of the Caribbean—evolved initially from the unique

contact between indigenous tribes, their religious understanding

of the world around them, and unconsumed natural resources in the

pre-Columbian era. For centuries throughout the region,

polytheistic belief systems containing elements of mysticism,

traditional folkloric entities, and Afro-Latin hybrid culture

coexisted with several thriving oral literary tradition and

pictorial writing systems (codices) used by cultures like the

Aztecs or Mayans before colonization. Elements similar to Haitian

literature’s “lieux de mémoire (‘places of the memory’) and

Braizel’s description of oral narrative traditions as the

“cultural transfer of memory” emerged in Latin America,

establishing forms of what Ruth Hill calls “artistic verbal

expression,” or: “prayers, hymns, myths, [and] theatre of various

kinds,” used to retain the collective past (1). Complex

indigenous populations—like indigenous Haitians and Native

American populations in the American South—which had previously

flourished across Latin America were absorbed into Spain’s empire

and assimilated, enslaved, or devastated by European disease.

Concurrently, a popular literary effort was made by Europeans to

Spears 54

record and preserve native oral tradition, and in the late

fifteen hundreds as native populations interacted with early

Spanish colonizers, particularly in highly-advanced native

regions of Mexico, Chile and Columbia, “the creation of a native

elite, able to write and imbued with Western culture, [became]

crucial to the empire’s functioning, so colleges and universities

were founded” (Hill 1). A new, subversive voice of native culture

began to form, evolving from common elements of indigenous

culture that combined artistic verbal expression, carnivalized

language, magical realism, and European alphabetic tradition to

form a new literary response to colonial and industrial

domination in Latin America.

Beginning early in the sixteenth century the number of

slaves imported from Africa increased rapidly to meet the growing

industrial need for manual labor in Latin America as the

indigenous cultures were all but wiped out. As a result, African,

Native American, and Spanish cultures merged, forming hybridized

races, languages, and modes of understanding the world that

included elements of various religious practices (Santeria,

voodoo, and Catholicism), folk practices (oral or written

Spears 55

traditions and culturally-specific mythology or rituals), and

regional influences (unique natural elements and landscape and

interactions between bordering and non-native cultures). As the

written word made its way across Latin America, published

accounts of colonialism from the perspective of native authors

appeared concurrently with European epic-style conquest and

exploration literature as well as travel journals; all gained

popularity as debates regarding the status of the indigenous

peoples, conquered lands, and the ethics of colonial contact

raged in the Latin American literary world. Frequent descriptions

of the astonishment of Europeans at the cultural development of

Latin America “likens to the marvels found in the romances of

chivalry,” echoing Broncano’s statements about the magical

grotesque in areas of the New World where newly-merged

populations interacted in unfamiliar regions and were portrayed

by Europeans as the land of exaggerated plenty. Like literature

of the American South, the Latin American romantic literary

tradition, in combination with the magical real literary mode,

helped to build a sense of national and regional identity—largely

based on heritage and religion—as once-separate cultures from

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around the world merged through common experience. Spanish-

American poetry and drama thrived throughout Latin America as

distinctly Baroque stylistic movements like culteranismo—ornate

vocabulary, hyperbaton, metaphoric language, and mythological

illusions—and conceptismo—rapid, simple language that relies on

wordplay and metaphors to convey multiple meanings and concepts—

slowly gave way to the writing of Latin American drama and

fiction in the late eighteenth century.

Theatrical retellings of Spanish history and the early

colonial period ranging from tales of European bravado to

indictments of colonial culture and Spanish tradition presented

“sanitized accounts of the Spanish conquest of [indigenous]

empires” as well as different regions of America and “the

reconquest of Spain from Muslim invaders” (Hill 1). Concurrently,

lyric poems with magical, spiritual themes suggestive of early

Latin American artistic verbal expression like hymns and prayers

evolved into the first attempts at epic poetry in the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth century that included satirical

themes and heavy focus on the natural elements of New Spain.

Early Latin American novels evolved from various genres (often

Spears 57

sharing the themes of conquest and exploration literature),

possessed with a “Neoclassical conviction that society would be

reformed by a combination of informed individual choice and state

regulation” (Hill 9). Hierarchal systems of race classification

based on “the purity of one’s blood” where challenged in

narratives with both Romantic and Naturalist literary elements

(the beauty of nature, the effect of environment on its people)

focused on the building of a national identity, local agrarian

landscapes, and regionally-unique characters (various mixed-race

characters, gaúchos, slaves, the urban poor) as the movement

towards cultural independence gained momentum (Hill 9). A period

of “foundational fictions” occurred during which a “clash between

barbarism (rural, native culture) and civilization (urban,

European-influenced culture)” occurred in regional fiction that

contributed to discourse on the status of indigenous and mixed-

race peoples across the region (Hill 9.) It was from this period

that many of the most widely-recognized works of fiction in Latin

American tradition emerged, utilizing carnivalized language, free

expression, and the magical real literary mode to reflect

industrialized colonial realities throughout Latin America.

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The evolution of the modern Latin American novel continued,

defined by nineteenth-century Realism (where “The mighty struggle

against nature . . . [approaches] allegory and myth: man against

nature, civilization against barbarism, good against evil”) and

an emerging twentieth-century focus on “rebelliousness,

skepticism, and contentiousness of the avant-garde,” which

incorporated elements of indigenous and African American culture

and fragmented, multi-voiced narratives into mainstream Latin

American literature (Hill 11). The incorporation of hybridized

folk, religious, and supernatural beliefs formed a literary

movement that incorporated the magical into traditional

definitions of everyday reality, resulting in a unique

presentation of the Latin American magical real literary mode. In

the wake of this shift the Latin American Boom occurred in the

late twentieth-century and Modernism emerged as authors

throughout the region began to incorporate “the style and

techniques of the modern European and American novel:” “stream of

consciousness, multiple and unreliable narrators, fragmented

plots, interwoven stories, a strong influence of the cinema,” and

humor (Hill 11). One of the most widely-recognized authors in the

Spears 59

Latin American literary tradition, Gabriel García Márquez,

combines carnivalized language, the magical real literary mode,

modernism, and in-depth descriptions of unique regional flora and

fauna to present a subversive criticism of colonial power,

simultaneously depicting Columbia as a complicated political and

social entity. Folk storytelling traditions like multi-

generational family narrations are combined with elements of

Naturalism and Romanticism, building cultural continuity through

meaningful connections between the mythic past and contemporary

Latin American identity, repeating names and traits from one

generation to the next. In Márquez’s seminal text, One Hundred

Years of Solitude (1967), the mutli-generational story of the

Buendias (a large Columbian family) is told from the time of José

Arcadio Buendias, the family patriarch, just before he founds the

city Macondo—a metaphoric representation of Columbia—until its

destruction by a hurricane decades later. Appearances of the

magical real literary mode, combined with mundane reality and a

romanticized notion of the potential of the future depict the

realities of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization on

the Latin American world.

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In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez combines magical realism

with Cuban myths and ageless, archetypal figures in order to

subvert the ideals of colonialism and industrialization in a

symbolic representation of Cuban history. Zamora describes the

Buendias family, saying that they “unsettle discrete, stable

identity with familial repetitions, self-reflections, and

integrations of the living and the dead” in a jungle setting

where industrial, political, and colonial influence alter life in

Macondo (502). After the founding of the village—in a vast swamp

surrounded by mountains—extravagant expansions are made to the

family home, incorporating man-made (industrial) items with

elements of nature. In spite of Macondo’s agrarian landscape,

“The primitive building of the founders became filled with tools

and materials, of workmen exhausted by sweat . . . in that

discomfort, breathing quicklime and tar, no one could see very

well how from the bowels of the earth there was rising . . . the

largest house in the town” (60). Before the house is finished the

local magistrate, who “had arrived in Macondo very quietly,”

orders the Buendias family to paint the front of their new home

blue, “in celebration of the anniversary of national

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independence,” despite the irony of a mandated celebration of

one’s freedom (61). When José Arcadio expels Don Apolinar from

the village the magistrate returns a week later “with six

barefoot and ragged soldiers, armed with shotguns” (62). Colonial

and industrial influences are brought into play by overlapping

situations: Úrsula corrupts the native, agrarian environment—

already distorted by the founding of Macondo—by expanding her

home, while the arrival of the magistrate (Don Apolinar Moscate)

symbolizes the impending intervention of a (militaristic)

government armed with (industrial) weapons. A recurring theme—the

progression from the indigenous to the industrial and then

ultimately to destruction—emerges, subverting the government’s

narrative of social progress and demands for obedient

nationalism.

The ongoing interference of colonialism and

industrialization in Macondan culture (introduced by various

outside forces that include the Buendias family) is subverted by

a series of supernatural presences surrounding José Arcadio and

his wife Úrsula—the incestuous root of the Buendias family tree—

and their ancestors. After the expansion of the Buendias family

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home and reopening of José Arcadio’s alchemist laboratory where

he engages in a frenzy of scientific creativity, a familiar

spirit—Prudencio Aguilar—appears, leaving José Arcadio with

intense feelings of nostalgia for the long-dead enemy who speaks

with him until dawn. Aguilar’s appearance is treated as

commonplace though it marks the beginning of a period of madness

that comes over José Arcadio, which concludes when he

[grabs] a bar from a door and with the savage violence

of his uncommon strength he [smashes] to dust the

equipment in the alchemy laboratory, the daguerreotype

room, the silver workshop, shouting like a man

possessed in some high-sounding and fluent but

completely incomprehensible language. (85)

José Arcadio lashes out in the areas of the newly-renovated home

that have scientific or technological connections to

industrialism and the separation of (Latin American) man from

native agrarian lifestyle. José Arcadio’s violent outburst and

destructive frenzy following his spectral guest interrupts the

temporal flow of the Buendias narrative, subverting Úrsula’s

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attempt to modernize (industrialize) her (swampy) agrarian

surroundings, simultaneously disrupting already-fragmented

communications between Macondo and the (progressive) outside

world. In response to the advancement of colonialism and

industrialization appearances of the magical real reconnect the

living to their regional roots, signifying the rejection of

unwanted social and political progress in favor of folkways

dating back to the origins of indigenous peoples and their

understanding of the workings of the world.

Another Latin American (Cuban) author whose work in the

magical real literary tradition allows the expression of a

subversive, carnivalized language focused on criticism of (and

protest against) oppressive colonial power is Alejo Carpentier.

In his award-winning novel, The Kingdom of This World (1957),

Carpentier describes the violent colonial occupation and

enslavement of many thousands of Haitians and others brought to

the Caribbean by the forced diaspora of the slave trade,

utilizing his experience in a similar postcolonial setting to

establish narrative integrity. Magical real literary elements

overlap with the mundane, subverting the absolute control of the

Spears 64

French colonists over the indigenous culture while simultaneously

encouraging the revolutionary spirit of the enslaved peoples of

Haiti. Macandal is a one-armed slave who was a “king . . .

warrior, hunter, judge, and priest,” in Africa, and who is

“irresistible to Negro women [and] held the men spellbound,

especially when he recalled his trip, years earlier, as a

prisoner before he was sold to the slave-traders of Sierra Leone”

(8, 14). Macandal’s shaman-like characteristics foreshadow the

magical while his tales of travel symbolize vast distances

covered to supply colonial commercial industry with valuable

human resources. Though Macandal’s size and strength make him a

valuable resource to his slave master his memories of African

legends, history, and of his own travels—maintained through the

cultural tradition of oral narrative—indicate a symbolic role as

s traditional folk hero, an archetypal figure common to both

Haitian and Latin American literature during times of collective

cultural trauma.

A significant relationship forms between Macandal’s

inability to affect change—for himself and others—while working

in an industrial setting with the ability to avenge himself

Spears 65

against foreign colonizers after being moved to a more agrarian

landscape. When Macandal’s arm is crushed feeding cane into the

large, iron rollers of a mill, he is removed from manual

(industrial) labor and reassigned to the cow pastures where he

begins to realize his magical potential. Life in the pastures

transforms Macandal spiritually: he reconnects with unconsumed

resources around him, discovers regionally-specific flora and

fauna, and explores the geography around his plantation. The

narrator tells of Macandal’s wonder, saying that “To his surprise

he discovered the secret life of strange species given to

disguise, confusion, and camouflage,” describing the discovery of

a variety of species of fungi (17). In order to achieve magical,

physical transformation Macandal meets with a witch who gives him

the magical ability to transform into various animals. The

narrator states that, “At times the talk was of extraordinary

animals that had had human offspring. And of men whom certain

spells turned into animals” (19). Macandal’s magical abilities

overlap with the mundane, making each act of rebellion against

the plantation managers an act against the commercial

exploitation of Haiti’s resources. Macandal uses his magical

Spears 66

ability in conjunction with knowledge of poisonous fungi to

torment and murder slave-owners throughout the region, interrupt

commercial production, and destroy various resources,

symbolically subverting the absolute control that colonial forces

had over Haiti’s enslaved population and protests against forced

industrialization and its culturally-destructive qualities.

The Common Bonds of Pan-American Literature: Collective

Trauma and Non-Linear Narratives

Collective cultural damage to conquered and postcolonial

regions like the Latin Americas, the Caribbean, and the American

South represented in literature of the Pan-American region by the

grotesque and magical real literary modes is often used to build

a stronger historical link between traumatic past events and the

cultural experiences attached to them. Associated closely with

what Peter Coviello refers to as “a language of affect” and

universalist rhetoric, the sensations of national belonging and

devastation or “of the capacity for suffering and trauma at the

citizen’s core” are used to connect and create a sense of unity

across landmasses in the Pan-American region (439). Collective

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traumatic experiences commonly found in literature of the Latin

Americas, Caribbean, and the American South are referenced in

Coviello’s statement, which describes the construction of a sense

of national unity at the regional level that has evolved into

feelings of Pan-American and transnational unity. Forced

industrialization, similarities in folk culture, traumatic

historical events, and a unique American literary identity are

formed across borders and bodies of water using modes like the

grotesque and magical realism to demonstrate the cultural

proximity of the Caribbean, Latin America, and the American

South. Elizabeth Bellamy states in her article, “‘Intimate

Enemies’: Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Postcolonial Affect,”

that “the figure of the subaltern [in literature] is the point

where complex (and never fully “locatable”) intersection between

Marxism and psychoanalysis occurs within postcolonialism,”

describing a “countermovement to mainstream history in terms of

defining national identity in the context of decolonization”

(344). The grotesque and magical real literary modes illustrate

and repackage history to represent the collective cultural damage

to conquered and postcolonial regions represented in literature

Spears 68

of the Pan-American region subject to forced industrial growth

and the introduction of capitalist ideology.

Some of the common bonds between literature of the Pan-

Americas are demonstrated in Deborah Cohn’s description the

influence of William Faulkner’s depiction of “his South” upon

Latin American literature in her essay, “He Was One of Us: The

Reception of William Faulkner and the U. S. South by Latin

American Authors.” Cohn states that Latin American authors relate

to Faulkner’s writing because of similar experiences of colonial

dependency, economic difficulty, and the culture crisis that

resulted from forced industrialization as the Northeastern United

States modernized farming methods and increased its capital gains

(150). Both the American South and Latin America—populated

previously by agrarian communities under regional and often much

more local autonomous political control—were forced into a state

of economic dependency as their way of life was assimilated,

contributing to the industrial growth of the nation while

standards of living dropped locally (164). Cohn writes that

“reconstruction policies resulted in the South’s perception of

itself not just as defeated but as conquered, and of the North as

Spears 69

the conquering nation,” (164) noting that Latin American writers

are conquered historically not only by America but also Spain,

bringing about “a shared comprehension of America and a shared

mode of narrating its history” (Cohn 152). Tensions created by

environments rife with social upheaval are made visible by

literary devices like the grotesque and magical realism, whose

non-temporal depictions of conflicting cultural perspectives,

figurative language, and fantastical and often horrific

occurrences subvert accepted cultural and political structures of

conquering nations, undoing or working against mundane reality in

all of its forms.

Put another way, literary modes like the grotesque and

magical realism in Southern, Caribbean, and Latin American

literature demonstrate a common cultural lens used to understand

and respond to colonial—and industrial—contact with the Northern

United States. In his critical analysis of the connection between

Southern and Latin American literature, Manual Broncano refers to

literary modes like the grotesque and magical realism as ways of

understanding literature and viewing the world. Specifically, he

identifies a “unique texture” of reality “found in the Caribbean,

Spears 70

especially Haiti and Cuba, but also in the Americas at large,

where history is filled with atrocities and wonders,” stemming

naturally from “[realities] recreated in fiction” that are

expressed by these modes (663). Márquez claims that “the

Caribbean stage as well as the writings of Latin America”

consistently use “similar techniques which find their roots in

the same postcolonial atmosphere and are deeply indebted to

Faulkner’s heritage” (661). Events portrayed in Pan-American

literature—like the loss of a war to and occupation by the

Northern United States (particularly in the South, where the

experience of military defeat, occupation, and reconstruction

were not shared with any other part of America) and

industrialization—are demonstrated to bring with them ideologies

like industrialism, which annihilated the regional economy and

culture previously built on local agrarian labors and autonomous

political control. Capitalism, related to the industrial growth

in both regions, further alienated independent farming and

production, working in direct opposition to the cultural norms

and folkways already in place in the region, causing the eventual

loss or corruption of those as well.

Spears 71

While many critics agree that a Pan-American connection

exists between Caribbean, Latin American, and Southern literature

based on alienating experiences with capitalist industrial

societies, some critics focus more specifically on the traumatic

experiences of the subaltern. Julia Grandison proposes that the

link between grotesque and magical realist texts utilizing non-

linear narratives and trauma exists in the interaction of memory

and affect. Grandison describes narrative memory as “capable of

shortening, modifying, and narrating a past event,” and

“traumatic memory” as “an anachronistic and dissociative

intrusion whereby a traumatic event is repeatedly re-experienced

in the present as if it were recurring,” combined with affective

language deeply connected to feelings of national identity used

to revisit and bring to life events and voices often forgotten in

the narrative of history (Grandison). Narrators and characters

question structural institutions like temporality, nationality,

and even reality at the most basic level through literary modes

like the grotesque and magical realism which are often associated

closely with human emotion and collective cultural experiences.

Layered and disjointed narratives weave carnivalesque and mundane

Spears 72

elements of daily life into one as narrative and emotion

intertwine with memory, leaving the events of the present less

real than the traumas and successes of the past in literature of

the Caribbean, Latin Americas, and the American South.

Put another way, in Pan-American literature diverse stories

of communal experience—tied to the collective memory of a region

and its people—suggest similar impulses to question, mock,

criticize, and reject institutional control while subjective,

non-linear narratives illustrate similar histories of

underdevelopment, dispossession, loss of centralized authority,

and unwanted political intervention. As a result the magical real

and grotesque literary modes are used as a common voice to

express distrust of colonialism and industrialization in order to

connect with a time when “the [world was] preindustrial, or, at

least, resisting industrialization,” before centuries-old

cultural traditions and religious beliefs where lost to slavery

or absorbed by violent assimilative practices (Cohn 165).

Folkways are portrayed as a high (or even the highest) cultural

value and have numerous complicated ties to traumatic historical

events referred to, alluded to, and assumed in multifaceted

Spears 73

literary inversions of reality and convention. The common

experiences and unique realities of the Pan-American region are

recreated using magical realism and the grotesque, forming a

continuous bond to the carnivalesque foundations of subversive

rhetoric that subverts and ignores colonial borders, building

(through literature) a renewed sense of national unity in the

Pan-American region.

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