Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)
László Dányi: Universal implications of William Styton's Southern Heritage
18 if we find the parts of ourselves we have lost. In Martin Heidegger's concept of quest every human being is preoccupied with finding some way in which he can feel "Dasein", literally the sense of "being there", of having meaningfully existed in the face of death and nothingness.^ Styron's heroes need to feel that they have at some time established some meaning in life, a temporary balance, which death cannot take away from them. In his quest for meaning, Gustav Mahler achieved it in his Ninth Symphony. What is the aim of the quest and how can it be achieved in Styron's world? Styron's characters, in their quest for truth and their longing for perfection, search for nothing less than a kind of grail, which is buried within the darker divisions of a world of conflicting change and lost value. But they are drawn by their own burning, ecstatic and tragic visions to lost values. They are yearning for the impossible state but they need roots in the solid stuff of life. In Styron's world the deception of others and the self is the first step towards redemption. The personality, burdened by the consciousness of guilt and unsure of the means of redemption, wants to find meaning, and in this long process he has to face and meet all the distortions and cataclysms of of the world which can destroy his own physical and spiritual self, and at last he cannot reach the core of the problem. "The quest motif stresses less the journeying than the sought-after results of that journey. The goal of the quest is the lost treasure of innocence, which may be symbolized in various tangible and intangible ways. Ultimately though, the quest hopes to find the self through uniting the conscious with the unconscious."^ In the search for meaning the protagonists lose touch with themselves and the world, and this evokes the feeling of hollowness and emptiness. 3/ The Motif of Hollowness Harry Guntrip has found a fundamental human problem to be that of our fear of inner emptiness, of the weakness of identification, and a fear of the meaninglessness of our existence: the schizoid problem. 1^ There is always an explicit moment which implies a character's internal feeling of emptiness. In LDD Dolly and Milton talk about the war between North and the South and the prospects of the USA, and this conversation indicates the realisation of how "perverted" they are. "What have I got? I'm perverted, religion's perverted - look at Helen... What have I got? Nothing!"^ * Helen Loftis lost her daughter but it is not the loss of her daughter and Peyton's actual death that are the greatest shocks for her. Helen realizes that she is a mother no longer and she thinks life is for others. She examines her face in the mirror and she can see her white hair and pale face. It is unbearable for her to see that her motherhood, youth and husband are lost. She escapes into an imaginary world. She pulls the skin of her face so
