The obvious grotesque character would be the grandmother. In the beginning you almost feel bad for her because when she asks or suggests to do something like go somewhere new the family shrugs it off and completely ignore her but throughout the story the reader begins to realize why she is like this. Without blinking an eye the grandmother is able to come up with lie after lie to manipulate the family into doing what she wants. Not only do they take the road trip she wants but she convinces the kids that there is a special treasure hidden in a house she desperately wants to visit. The grandmother gets the children so worked up that they are begging there parents to take them. Finally Bailey gives in and takes them down this dirt road towards the house when the grandma realizes she is wrong and the house is in a different state. When she remembers this, it startles her and she kicks her bag that has a cat she snuck in the car with her. The cat gets scared and jumps out of the bag, onto bailey, causing the car to crash and roll.
After the car crashes they see somebody coming and wave it down. unfortunately the people in it are murderers on the loose, one is called the misfit. Of course the grandmother recognizes him and yells out "you're the Misfit" and this upsets everybody. Eventually the whole family gets shot, the grandmother deceives till the end. While begging for her life she uses Jesus to try to sway him and as a last measure she claims that she recognizes him as her son. The misfit ends with "she could have been a good woman if somebody had been around to shoot her every minute of her life."
To add to the grotesqueness of the story, there are obvious racist spots, specifically coming from the grandma when she talks about a plantation that used to be in a cotton field and the graves from the workers, she jokes about this story. She also wears a hat and flowers which is a very old southern style it was a way of showing the hierarchy of a person's wealth. also the small things like the dirt road, little café on the side of the road, and long driveways lined with trees.
I agree that the grandmother had a hand to play in the overall grotesqueness of the story.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think "grotesque", in a literary sense, the definition that comes to mind is "a setting in which most things appear normal on the surface, but there is an uneasy and lingering feeling that something is not quite right."
Have you ever had a dream where you ALMOST knew you were dreaming, but you just couldn't quite realize it? That's similar to the feeling that grotesque literature is supposed to give you (in my opinion). There's something just "off" about it, and the reader feels like they were subjected to something subtly and carefully sinister by the time they're done reading. It's a subversive, quiet sort of evil.
You have to be really careful to make straight foward claims. It's not enough to point to the grandmother, then to engage in plot summary. It's up to you to identify criteria that make the grandmother the best example of grotesque. You're more on track in the last few sentences when you mention racism.
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