Bakhtinian Reading of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye and Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy[پايان نامه لاتين]

Homa Mirzaei

The aim of this research is to analyze J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye and Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in light of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories. The present research explores the significance of his most famous notions dialogism, polyphony and carnivalesque in the given novels. To study issued concepts, it is vital to examine a few minor Bakhtinian notions such as outsideness, heteroglossia and unfinalizability. Bakhtin believes that the dialogic truth requires a multiplicity of consciousness that comes to existence when there is contact between various consciousnesses; in other words, development of signification between the “self” and the “other” is called dialogue through which human beings define their existence as individuals. The protagonists of The Catcher in The Rye and The Butcher Boy, both are non-conformists, unwilling to follow social rules. They both create their very own way of dialogism with their surrounding and both end in mental hospitals that shows the authors’ approval to Bakhtin’s view point towards the importance of dialogue in shaping human beings’ consciousness and in shaping their existence in the world. The artistic representation of dialogic truth in literary form especially novel is what Bakhtin calls polyphony. In a polyphonic novel, there are various unmerged voices that each of them has their own identities and ideologies, in line or in contrast with one another. These two novels tell too much about their main characters’ socio cultural environment with creating independent unmerged voices that are not dominated by a special voice which makes them suitable ground to be read from Bakhtinian perspective. Moreover, in this research attempts are made to clarify the resistance of the main characters before their society’s hierarchical structure that makes them perfect examples of carnivalized hero who are marginalized characters disobeying rules and regulations opposed by the power of authorities to gain an independent resolution. Keywords: Bakhtin, Carnivalesque, Dialogism, Dialogue, J.D. Salinger, Patrick McCabe, Polyphony