Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Catharsis in all of our Novels
I wasn't in class Monday for our conversation on Catharsis so please correct me if I'm wrong about it's meaning. From what I've got from other posts and the dictionary definition it means the purging of emotions. If this is correct than I feel like all of our novels have ,in a sense, shown catharsis. Even The Jungle's anti-sentimentalist structure causes readers to go through a kind of emotional purification. The author's that we have read argue for social change and therefore a change in the attitudes and feelings of the audience. In order to be effective authors have to change the reader's emotions ,so kind of an emotional purge and purification, in order to cause actual social change. Again please let me know if I'm not understanding this term! :)
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I think you have a good grasp of the term. Essientially novels can work to either purge our emotions or purify them. Catharsis is a process, not just an effect. You go through emotions, trials, and triumphs with the characters and either vicariously identify with the character or you are so caught up in the emotion of the novel that you forget about your own troubles. Catharsis isn't just about making something good however, it can be about purifying something bad to help you deal with it more. Hope that makes sense!
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of catharsis in the anti-sentimentalistic novel that is "The Jungle" is really valid point. Because an anti-sentimental novel doesn't mean there is no emotion it simply means that any kind of emotion your supposed to feel is stripped back to bare bones where the reader can feel the characters' situations and not necessarily the emotion that the author believes you should feel for the character.
ReplyDeleteCatharsis is this process of purging emotion. I don't know if we find it in all our novels with the characters, but we could see Jurgis belief in socialism as a cathartic process he goes through to purge the emotion of what happened when he came over to America with Ona and the way they were treated and the places they were forced to live. I would almost call it like raw catharsis at its most basic form with no one trying to lead you anywhere. Overall, very interesting idea.