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

23 teaching me something... they must have their own significance somewhere: where and how, exactly, I'm not prepared to say."

2^ Stingo lives in a "Wizard of Oz" world. Peyton penetrates deep into the unreal while Stingo lives in the "pink"

3^ world of eye-opening wonders. Peyton rises high into the unreal and immediately falls down to meet her tragedy. Stingo ascends to a level from where descending is possible without destroying his own self. The slow, ritualistic pace of writing in SC gives a further emphasis to Styron's view that modern mem will succed by persistence. Stingo's dreams are restricted to fantasies about sex. He begins with the normal fantasies of a young man of his age in a period of sexual repression. Alone in New York he imagines making love to Mavis Hunnicutt. But then he moves to the pink apartment in Flatbush arid his dreaming takes on a darker side because he has just got a letter from his father saying that Maria Hunt, a beautiful girl with whom Stingo had been hopelessly in love, was dead. Here sexuality and death are related to each other. Maria Hunt is Peyton Loftis and the similarities are obvious. Maria Hunt killed herself by leaping from the window of a building. She came from a tragic household. Her father is Martin Hunt - Milton Loftis -, who is a near alcoholic and always at loose ends. Her -3 1 mother is Beatrice Helen Loftis, who is "cruel in her moral demands upon people.'

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1 After reading the tragic story of Maria Hunt, Stingo was overtaken by an erotic hallucination. Stingo's personal balance was disturbed and death was again interwoven with sex. The Maria Hunt story is the best representation of the organic relationship between Peyton Loftis and Stingo and Styron. Stingo and Peyton were created by Styron and Peyton's story was absorbed into Stingo's life, and Stingo as a writer was inspired by her tragic life. The autobiographical implications are unequivocal in SC and this is how Peyton's story becomes "Stingo - Styron's" story. Stingo is the survivor of Peyton's tragedy and he is the character who relates Peyton's personal tragedy to Sophie's experience in the hell of Auschwitz. Styron put the emphasis on Stingo, he says, "The book was meant to radiate outwards like concentric circles being set up in a still pond. There's Stingo at the centre, alive, young, thinking of love and sex and art, gradually discovering these other things, and carried at last to the complete horror of Auschwitz."^ After observing the social and psychological implications of the difference between Peyton Loftis and Stingo one can see that the analysis of the protagonists' background and their ties to the South is extremely important for Styron because he