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Macau Periodical Index (澳門期刊論文索引)
- Author
- Mao, Edgar YB
- Title
- Cultural clashes, individual crises of existence and violence: a study of Paul Bowles' Let It Come Down
- Journal Name
- 中西文化研究(停刊)
- Pub. Info
- Jun. 2010, 總第17期, 第1期, pp. 60-76
- Keyword
- Identity；Alienation；Incompatibility；Clashes；Violence
- Abstract
- Abstract : Violence is a distinctive feature marking the often shocking and disturbing novels and short stories by the American expatriate author, translator, and composer Paul Bowles(1910-1999). Published in 1952, Let It Come Down(LICD) tells the bleak story of the experiences and violent end of a young American man named Nelson Dyar who moves to the International Zone of Tangier, Morocco in search of a new job and life. Like many of Paul Bowles' other works, readers of LICD have often been shocked by the apparently senseless violence committed by such an unlikely person-the harmless, melancholic Dyar. While studies of LICD in the past have helped by pointing out that the social and cultural contexts are not only the environment but also part of the causes of the violence in the story, the exact ways in which the multiple cultural and social clashes of Tangier are related to Dyar's gradual descent into homicide are yet to be examined in detail. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to attempt a closer and analysis of the protagonist's individual crisis of existence and the clashes in the social/cultural spaces in which violence has become at once shocking yet credibly inevitable. Paragraph Headings： 1. Introduction 2. The city as the Site of Culture Clashes 3. The City as the Psychological Space of Existential Crisis 4. The Spaces as Devoid of Superego and Ego 5. Conclusion