Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - László Dányi: On the Bad Side of the Fence: Fiascos of Southern Ethos
"moralistic self-righteousness and his adultery with Dolly is his rather banal rebellion against Helen's puritanism and castrating selfrighteousness" (Ratner 599). The explanations about the characters relationships with each other sound very convincing, and it is so relieving to attach labels like Oedipal complex, sexual frustrations, misuse of sex and the like to their ties. These categories could be true, but I would not say that they must be true. Perhaps they just fulfill the characters' desire to classify things and phenomena, and to rationalize their struggles. In Peyton's life the "clock" is an ambiguous symbol. It can stand for personal order, for regaining balance, it can represent something eternal in the world and something to cling to. Peyton buys a clock for Harry and herself. Here "clock" can be the possibility of happiness for Peyton and Harry. Peyton says, "I could hear the clock whirring against my ear, perfect and ordered and eternal" (Styron, Lie 324). She longs for a communion with the "clock", "In my clock Harry and I would be safe from flies forever" (325). Peyton's clock can make itself manifest yhe achievement of the ideal condition in which you can be sure of everything, but certainty in everything kills the questioning attitude, because you will not ask any more questions. If THE answers and THE only acceptable answers are provided, the questions —and the questioners —are killed, and even those who just slightly dare to attempt to question something commit themselves to suffering. The absurdity of the clock is that it can stand for harmony and balance but at the same time it can express the oppressive order of seemingly well-organized systems in Styron's concept. "Lenin said there was no God and Stalin said collectivization + elecrtification = Soviet power, all working like a clock, tick-tock" (323). The clock image can have another noteworthy function in uniting what Milan Kundéra calls the monsters of the soul on the one hand and the monsters of the outside world, that is history, on the other hand (Vajda 158). Kundéra describes the shift of a human being's struggle from fighting against the monster of the soul to fighting against history. In Styron's novel this shift can be traced, the two are interrelated and cannot be isolated. 182
