Camouflage : secrecy and exposure in cultural and literary studies

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Camouflage

Secrecy and Exposure

in Cultural and Literary Studies

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NR 3196

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Camouflage

Secrecy and Exposure

in Cultural and Literary Studies

Edited by

Wojciech Kalaga, Marcin Mazurek and Marcin Sarnek

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego • Katowice 2014

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Editor of the Serirs: Historia Literatur Obcych

Magdalena Wandzioch

Referee

Ilona Dobosiewicz

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Introduction

Camouflage. Between Fear and Desire (Wojciech Kalaga, Marcin Mazurek and Marcin Sarnek) . . . .

Part One

Transgressing Suspicion

Tomasz K alaga

Between Theory and Narrative: A Mask as a Hermetextual Artefact in

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe . . . . Hanna Boguta-Marchel

From Voyeurism to Serial Murder: Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God . Klara Szmańko

Mimicry in Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door . . . . Rafał Borysławski

Reversed Conspiracy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and When We Were Orphans . . . . Irena Księżopolska

The Pattern Camouflaged: Symbolism as a Trap for the Reader in Vladimir Nabokov’s Mary . . . .

Introduction

Camouflage. Between Fear and Desire

Out of a plethora of discursive attempts to grasp metaphorically the early twenty-first-century spirit of our late capitalist/postmodern condition, the notion of camouflage seems a particularly disturbing one. On the one hand, it implicitly problematizes the traditional postmodern dislike of the inside-outside distinction, directly or indirectly introducing a border between the visible and the invisible, the latent and the manifest, the form and the essence. If cognition is not only mediated but also distorted by a potential illusion – whether linguistic or visual – then the very process of perception seems inevitably contaminated by a strong sense, if not of cognitive uneasiness, then at least of perceptive uncertainty. Seen in these terms, the gesture of distrust, which the notion of camouflage inevitably includes, announces the return of rigid cultural divisions between the inside and the outside, divisions that a large number of post-modern and post-structuralist claims have managed to first theorize and then deconstruct, rendering our cultural landscape always-already open to transparent debate and open-ended evolution.

On the other hand, however, camouflage understood as a cultural practice, rather than a notion, offers, as well as the aforementioned sense of existential suspicion, a peculiar feeling of relief. In a culture in which there is “no more stage, no more theatre, no more illusion, when everything becomes immediately transparent, visible, […] all-too-visible, the more visible-than-visible,”¹ camouflage brings back a restless glimmer of hope that not everything has already been theorized, visualized and represented. That behind the ever-present gaze – whether of the

1 Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication, trans. Bernard and Caroline Schutze (New York: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, 1988), pp. 21–22.

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8 Introduction

ubiquitous media, or of the remains of patriarchy – there exists the unspoken and the inexpressible in however latent a form. That underneath the never-ending play of ever-present signifiers there rests a deeper, perhaps even a metaphysical realm of the as-yet undiscovered presence.

Hence, seen as a promise of the unrepresented, the notion of camouflage remains intimately related with the desire it provokes – the desire to transgress the boundaries of social acceptability, political correctness, historical determination and other traces of the still detectable ideologies of Reason. Naturally, the desire to see through the fake cover of things is in itself open to a number of often contradictory interpretations. The desire – or rather desires – to uncover the truth behind the camouflage range from an urge to bring back the long gone grand narrative to an invitation to explore the repressed or forgotten components of identity, to a mere analysis of camouflage as a survival strategy.

But there remains yet a third way of approaching the notion/

practice of camouflage. Regardless of whether the drive to transgress the often invisible wall of the latent is instigated by social, discursive, psychoanalytical or survival motifs, one might still detect the sheer fear (rather than hope) connected with the prospective find. What if the truth behind the cover is more disturbing than the cover itself? What if what lies beneath turns out to escape our cognitive apparatuses, further interrupting our already shaken postmodern sense of the real? What if the truth beneath requires a whole new set of discursive practices and perspectives for which the contemporary confused subject might still not be ready? And finally – and perhaps most disturbingly – what if the camouflage is revealed to be camouflaging nothing at all?

That is what this book is about. About the variety of our perceptions of camouflage as well as the multitude of cultural practices it inspires and provokes. About the subtle tensions between the transparent nature of its discursive representations and the not-so-transparent structures of their ideological foundations. About the whole range of literary manifestations revolving around the ambiguous connections between the visible and the real and the way in which they are represented.

But most of all, it is a book about the questions of the consequences of camouflage’s double presence in our contemporary cultural environments, social and textual alike, the answers to which are located between the fear of what lies beneath and the often desperate desire that whatever it is it will enlarge rather than complicate the cognitive horizons of our postmodern landscapes.

For the sake of the reader’s convenience the papers in this book have been divided into three main chapters revolving around the ideas of

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Introduction 9 suspicion, truth and concealment, respectively. This does not mean, however, that the distinction between them is always a clear-cut one.

Just as the presence and range of camouflaging practices do not invite obvious divisions, the borders between textual inspirations and their social and philosophical translations are often vague, if not entirely hidden. Nevertheless, the arrangement of the papers is structured around a certain interpretative evolution. The initial sense of suspicion provoked by complex narrative strategies identified in particular texts generates a peculiar reading perspective, based as much on textual distrust, as on consistent attempts to uncover the meanings and assumptions behind textual representations. Once these mechanisms have been revealed it becomes clear that most of them serve a particular purpose: that of encoding whatever the texts’ authors consider to be truthful messages worthy of being camouflaged, or whatever their readers consider as such.

The process of encoding is subsequently followed by that of exposing concealed contents, this time reaching beyond multilayered analyses of concrete texts and also exploring non-literary cultural phenomena, particularly in cinematography.

The first part, Transgressing Suspicion, revolves around the notion of suspicion as an interpretative strategy. Tomasz Kalaga explores Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” and the issue of narrative masking of intentions, games and ethics whose overlapping presence is superimposed upon the game of interpretation between the text, its narrator, and its reader. Hanna Boguta-Marchel’s paper deals with the nature of voyeurism as illustrated in Cormac McCarthy’s novel Child of God, in which voyeurism forms a “transitional” offence between an attempt to satisfy the onlooker’s desire, elimination of the inspected object, and ultimate self-destruction. A problematic redefinition of the notion of “mimicry” in Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door provides the departure point for Klara Szmańko’s paper which – drawing on both psychoanalytical and post-colonial inspirations – explores the conceptual proximity between camouflage and warfare in the context of deconstructing ethnic stereotypes. Rafał Borysławski, in his paper devoted to two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, analyses instances of reversed conspiracy where conspiracies are constructed as protective camouflage and thus directed inwards, towards the novels’ protagonists rather than the outside world or the readers. Finally, the textual explorations in Part One are rounded off with Irena Księżopolska’s symbolic interpretation of Vladimir Nabokov’s debut novel Mary, which at first sight expects the reader to recognize the deceptiveness of the symbolically motivated imagery, but then, through further complexity of the deceptive pattern, oscillates between recognition and denial of the symbolic order.

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10 Introduction

Part Two, Encoding Truths, opens with Ewa Rychter’s paper examining the relation between the notions of survival, eccentricity and camouflage as presented in the Bible and explored in Jeanette Winterson’s first two novels, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Boating for Beginners, which results in the emergence of “biblical camouflage”

– a strategy employed by Winterson’s protagonists who use the biblical text as a camouflage. Justyna Pacukiewicz explores the Victorian version of the religious crisis as presented in Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,”

whose interpretation aims at disclosing the discursive strategies applied by “Darwinian” thinking of the Victorian rhetorician. Karolina Lebek, taking Robert Herrick’s six-line poem “Upon Madam Ursly” as a point of departure, concentrates on the multilayered process of blurring the boundaries between the abject, object and subject through a series of cultural transformations and changing value systems incorporating the notions of ownership and ornamentality. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues provide an inspiration for Agnieszka Adamowicz- Pośpiech’s paper which reveals how through a number of camouflaging techniques the poet is able to create a disturbing persona characterized by a fluctuating self-consciousness and, as a result, hamper uninvolved reading. Marek Pacukiewicz identifies various undertones of the concept of “homo duplex,” a double context of body and spirit which informs Joseph Conrad’s oeuvre, and introduces its open-ended discursive nature in an attempt to confront it with the anthropological dimension of cultural context. The section is closed by Eliene Mąka-Poulain’s exploration of Philip Larkin’s effort to unmask the way human beings deceive themselves through a multilayered relation between deception, illusion and truth, which, rather than providing a simple set of voyeuristic pleasures, seem to constitute an indispensable part of the very act of observation.

Decoding Concealment becomes the focal point of Part Three, largely devoted to cinematic representations of camouflage. Artur Piskorz scrutinises contemporary Hollywood conspiracy tendencies which constitute an artistic response to social and political upheavals, posing a question about the possibility of establishing any patterns of discourse between the classic and contemporary productions. Following the cinematic conspiracy path, Marcin Sarnek’s presents an account of representation of secrecy and cryptography in contemporary American cinema, with particular emphasis on the character of a cryptographer- magician, a motif which has earned a truly solid position in today’s popular imagination. Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, inspired by Red Road, a movie directed by Andrea Arnold, explores various surveillance theories, including Jeremy Bentham’s panoptic design and Michel

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Introduction 11 Foucault’s surveillance society, whose ideological foundations seem to theorise the binary opposition between the state and the society.

Much as it seems impossible to draw any universal conclusions concerning the nature, let alone the definition, of what camouflage is or even how it manifests itself on the contemporary cultural horizon, at least one observation seems beyond any doubt. As all the papers in this volume clearly demonstrate, it is not only the amount and variety of camouflage-related representations, whether literary, cinematic or other, which may puzzle the potential observer. Following the sometimes subtle yet detectable tone of a large number of the papers in this volume, it seems clear that camouflage – both as a concept and as practice – has evolved into a multilayered interpretative perspective modifying our post-modern cultural gaze and – through an implied sense of cognitive distrust – has made us aware that though its surfaces are often hard to find, its agents are potentially everywhere. As such, camouflage seems equipped with much more power than it would itself probably like to reveal: the power of situating us in an uncomfortable, though not necessarily hopeless, position between existential fear and interpretative desire.

Wojciech Kalaga, Marcin Mazurek and Marcin Sarnek

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Part One

Transgressing Suspicion

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Tomasz Kalaga

Between Theory and Narrative:

A Mask as a Hermetextual Artefact

in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

The present paper is essentially an experiment in the liminal field between literary theory and textual reading. The narrative and its field of textual devices is considered to belong to a different category than the act of reading: the first is commonly understood as the “content,”

the other as “the method” of interpretation. Hermeneutic theory, which very frequently conceptualizes the act of reading in philosophical terms, would consider presumptuous any attempt to devote special treatment to a particular symbol in the context of theoretical approach to interpretation. Generally speaking, both traditional and modern hermeneutics provide a framework, rather than criteria or waypoints for textual readings. The only places where we may find concrete blueprints for narrative interpretation are hermeneutic schools which are inspired by or derived from theories that are not themselves of literary character.

This article will explore the possibility and conditions for treating a textual entity as privileged in relevance both to the internal structure of the text and a “general” hermeneutic theory that serves as a methodology for its description.

There exist, of course, a number of textual approaches where literary artefacts of a certain kind are especially relevant. Thus a Freudian interpretation would be particularly aware of symbolism embedded in psychoanalytic theory; a feminist reading would focus on elements indicative of gender power relations; a Marxist would be on the lookout for signs of class struggle and capital influence. Oversimplification as it may be, this serves to turn our attention to the fact that perspectives on interpretation which are not ideologically marked (at least by their own definition!), but based on various understandings of the principle of the hermeneutic circle, do not favour any particular textual element over any other. The emphasis that they place on the coherence of interpretation is

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a principle rather than a criterion; whether the methodology itself is based on the meeting of socio-historical contexts of creation and reception (Gadamer), filling the phenomenological gaps of indeterminacy (Iser), defining the social context of reading/writing (Fish), examining the semiotic structures of the work (Eco) or the outcome of an intercultural dialogue (Habermas), there are no actual prescriptions as to the relative importance or precedence of what we may call of narrative artefacts – symbols, characters, narrative strategies, etc. One may argue that despite numerous, often fundamental differences, these theories do share a common element – the implication of the principle of the hermeneutic circle – the insistence that the final interpretation ought to constitute a holistically consistent reading. The criteria of judgments or validity of such a reading are a different matter altogether and are based upon the philosophical foundations of each theory respectively.

Such a description of the relation of theory to literature implies a stance that considers theory as a paradigm of perception, an interpretive “optical filter” rather than a set of pragmatically applicable methodological prescriptions for interpretation. Therefore, the actual narrative/symbolic/ideological content of literature is immaterial in relation to a particular hermeneutic approach. From this perspective, the only possible exception to this rule would be a narrative artefact, device, or element which would itself be hermeneutic by essence, i.e.

would involve in all of its essential aspects (pragmatic, symbolic, metaphorical, and even physical) notions that would in some way parallel the processes involved in the act of interpretation. Such a liminality of a symbol would of course necessarily be limited: any commentaries referring to, for instance, similarities between the role of the artefact in the story and theoretical issues of textuality, authorship, intention and meaning would have to remain within the sphere of an extended illustrative metaphor. The sole possible context of such a treatment would be literature that openly invites such parallels – a kind which Linda Hutcheon termed “metafiction.”¹ In such texts

“the writing of the text [becomes] the most fundamentally problematic aspect of that text […] Any text that draws the reader’s attention to its process of construction by frustrating his or her conventional expectations of meaning and closure problematizes more or less explicitly the ways in which narrative codes – whether ‘literary’ or

‘social’ – artificially construct apparently ‘real’ and imaginary worlds.”²

1 Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (New York:

Methuen, 1980).

2 Patricia Waugh, Metafiction. The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 22.

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Between Theory and Narrative… 17 Barthesian “texts” by Vonnegut, Barth, Eco, Borges, Somoza, and Fowles are good illustrations of such instances, as they are permeated by the postmodernist quality that Ihab Hassan calls “self-reflexiveness.”³ In all other cases, the hermeneutic character of the literary device/

artefact in question would have to relate only to the most general theoretical notions: the process of uncovering/producing meaning, or the description of the act of reading itself.

That masks and camouflage ought not to be considered on the same level as the countless other literary symbols is precisely due to their hermeneutic essence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to conceal means to “keep from the knowledge or observation of others, refrain from disclosing or divulging, keep close or secret,” while the nature of the mask is to “hide or conceal from view by interposing something.”⁴ Thus concealing or masking as an action, related object, faculty or power may subsequently be paraphrased as hiding, covering, obscuring; making secret, invisible, and indiscernible. It is therefore essentially an object of a hermeneutic procedure, hermeneutic, of course, in the traditional sense of the term, understood as “bringing what is strange, unfamiliar, and obscure in meaning into something meaningful,”⁵ representing a “system for finding the ‘hidden’ meaning of the text”⁶ and structurarily reflected in what Roland Barthes describes as the code of enigma where “an enigma can be distinguished, suggested, formulated, held in suspense, and finally disclosed.”⁷

Taking into consideration the hermeneutic nature of masking and camouflage, let us define more precisely their possible relevance for the analysis of literary texts. It would appear that two kinds of applications of the concept arise. The first would consider the notions in question as elements of the plot, i.e. examine their role in the narrative structure of the text and perceive them as functions involved in character interaction.

This perspective would not mark the privileged nature of those symbols at all – there would be no reason to distinguish them on the basis of their innate merit from any other artifact in the text. The second approach, which is of primary interest for the purpose of this article, would focus on masking as being part of the narrative, yet at the same

3 Ihab Hassan, “POSTmodernISM: A Paracritical Bibliography,” in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 399.

4 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. (Oxford: OUP), CD-Rom edition.

5 Jean Grondin, Sources of Hermeneutics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), p. 29.

6 Grondin, Sources of Hermeneutics, p. 36.

7 Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1975), p. 18.

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time being somehow reflective of the perception and interpretation of the text itself. In other words, this particular symbol would perform a double function: within the narrative as one of its meaningful elements and “outside” the narrative as an indication or a signpost in the process of interpretation.

Let me forestall potential criticism by remarking that the above observations need not apply to all possible occurrences of masks or camouflage in all possible literary genres. It seems that the privileged character of those concepts is of particular relevance in genres with the evident predominance of the previously mentioned Barthesian hermeneutic code or code of the enigma. Such texts are usually characterized by their focus upon mystery, suspense and a final “twist”

of revelation – it is not surprising, therefore, that we may find most of its representatives in the genres of thrillers, horrors and detective fiction. The most obvious, and as such least interesting, instances of a mask being the crucial element in the emergence of an interpretation would be in texts based on the secret identity of one of the characters, an identity that is revealed at the end of the tale, frequently to the shock and horror of both the reader and the other characters. Classic examples of such tales are Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Whisperer in Darkness and Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Far more interesting, however, would be a case where the function of a mask is less apparent and involved in a more complex network of relations between the narration, the characters and the reader. I believe, however, that the most curious instance would be one which, at least to some extent, reverses the customary role of the mask, yet maintains the aforementioned parallel between the artefact and the hermeneutic circle, yet in the least apparent way.

Let us then proceed to a demonstrative analysis of such a case in action: the illustration of the concrete occurrence of a mask in a literary texts will allow me to simultaneously develop the theoretical side of my argument and further comment on the consequences of the special treatment of this notion. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is surely one the classic tales of revenge. A typically “Poesque” story, it contains many of the elements that we have come to associate with the grotesque style of the writer: carnival frenzy, terrible vengeance, a descent into the depths of the earth, a live burial. Montresor, the protagonist and simultaneously the narrator of the story, vows to avenge himself for a nameless insult upon his friend, Fortunato. Under the pretext of an opportunity for appraisal of a pipe of rare Amontillado, Montresor lures Fortunato to the cellars under his residence. Having intoxicated and brought the unsuspecting victim to the catacombs under the cellars,

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Between Theory and Narrative… 19 he entombs Fortunato alive, thus living up to the motto of his ancient family “Nemo me impune lacessit.”⁸

In order to examine the hermeneutic strategy of revelation, we must investigate the strategy of concealment, both within and “outside” the tale. In other words, we need to differentiate between what Montresor as a character conceals from Fortunato, and what Montresor as the narrator conceals from the reader. Only the context of this double stratum of concealment will allow us to properly comment of the hermeneutics of the mask within the tale. Even a cursory examination of the text yields the observation that the two operative levels of concealment do not coincide. Montresor hints at his murderous intent to the reader in the very first sentence of the story: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.”⁹ His victim, on the other hand, is kept in the dark until the final scene which leaves him moaning incomprehensibly in a predicament not to be envied by any living soul – being entombed alive.

The power of the tale resides in the tension that results from the gradual development of two conflicting states of awareness: the suspense of the growing realization on the part of the reader as to Montresor’s twisted purpose and the good-natured naiveté and unsuspecting friendliness of the poor Fortunato. Thus, the unfolding of the narrative progresses on two levels in two opposite directions.

It ought to be added here that despite the apparent presence of numerous symbols within the tale, their examination is superfluous from the perspective of the analysis of the aspect of the suspense (which is bound to represent a reader-oriented approach). While they most certainly open up a plethora of interpretive paths, they do not seem to augment in any significant manner the stretching of the tension caused by the double concealment of the story. In accordance with my initial statement in this paper, pursuit of the meaning of those symbols would be consequential for the critical approach assumed upon the interpretation in the sense that certain approaches might (and probably will) necessitate an entailment of an ideologically/psychoanalytically/

socio-culturally marked theory. It is my firm belief, however, that any such theory is ultimately secondary in origin, since it already assumes, for the legitimacy of its application (the mere presence that it makes in reading), a certain meta-hermeneutic approach: neither more nor less than an attitude that the interpreter assumes towards the relation

8 Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” in The Portable Poe, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 309–317. All subsequent references to the story are based on this edition of the tale.

9 Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” p. 309.

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author-reader-text and the definition of meaning and interpretations that follow as a consequence.

To better illustrate the two dimensions of the narrative, let us present them as two parallel structures of the presentation of the plot: the first will reflect the temporal unfolding of the events before the eyes of the reader, and as such will emulate the hermeneutic process of the emergence of the narrative level of meaning of the text. If we were to make reference to any particular model of theoretical description of that process, then in what proves to be the tale of suspense we would focus on hermeneutics where the main accent falls upon the temporality of reading. Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenological approach based on Ingarden’s concretization seems to be particularly fitting here,¹⁰ as is Paul Ricoeur’s dynamic version of the hermeneutic circle based on the interwoven play of understanding and explanation.¹¹ Iser’s approach would describe the appropriation of the narrative events as a movement of anticipation and retrospection with the final revision of previously presumed content. Ricoeur’s perspective, in its explanatory aspect deeply rooted in structuralist thought, would see it as a temporal reflection of the existent narrative structures. The other, parallel part of the presentation describes the events as they unfold before the eyes of the victim, Fortunato. Thus, on the one hand, we are addressing the content of the reader-narrator relationship, and on the other, character- character interaction.

The events, as they are presented to the reader, evolve as follows:

1. The reader learns of the grudge of Montresor against Fortunato.

2. Montresor expresses his desire for revenge.

3. He cons Fortunato into visiting his cellars by appealing to his taste in wines.

4. As they descend deeper and deeper into the cellars, Fortunato becomes more and more intoxicated with wine provided by Montresor.

5. When they arrive in the innermost catacombs, Montresor chains For- tunato to the wall and entombs him alive.

In the eyes of Fortunato, the events occur in the following form:

1. Montresor informs him of the delivery a pipe of rare Amontillado and expresses his intention of consulting another wine connoisseur.

2. Montresor urges Fortunato to taste his newest acquisition and invites him to his home.

10 Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

11 Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1978).

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Between Theory and Narrative… 21 3. Together they descend into the cellars, drinking copious quantities of

wine on the way.

4. To Fortunato’s surprise, Montresor chains him to the wall and pro- ceeds to bury him alive, oblivious to his pleas for mercy.

In terms of the reader’s perception of the plot, the final act of revenge introduces new information that forces a temporal modification in the timeline of the story. This is the only exception to the plot/story congruency and the reader discovers the twist only at the end of the tale:

1. The reader learns of the grudge of Montresor against Fortunato.

2. Montresor expresses his desire for revenge.

3. Montresor prepares the place and the tools of burial that are to serve his vengeance.

4. He cons Fortunato into visiting his cellars by appealing to his taste in wines.

5. As they descend deeper and deeper into the cellars, Fortunato becomes more and more intoxicated with wine provided by Montresor.

6. When they arrive in the innermost catacombs, Montresor chains For- tunato to the wall and entombs him alive.

The incongruence of those two structures is immediately apparent:

the whole story is based on the notion of the reader being privy to knowledge that is withheld from the victim. At the end, the reader learns but a mere detail of the whole operation, a detail that is in itself horrendous, yet whose input relates primarily to our understanding of the cruelty of Montresor’s character, not to the suspense provided by the narrative structure. For Fortunato, it is a different matter altogether: the final scene reveals his host’s terrible purpose, exposes his own naïve trust in Montresor’s good will and foretells his unpleasant end. We may therefore close this demonstration with a statement that what becomes a revelation for Fortunato is but a confirmation for the reader.

It has been my initial argument that symbolism connected with masks and camouflage may to be seen as privileged over other symbols, since it is essentially (anti)hermeneutic in nature. Let us now appropriate this notion in the context of Poe’s story. The action takes place during the “supreme madness of the carnival season” and masks make their appearance against the background of the Dionysian reversal of the natural order. What interests us here more than the implications of the carnivalesque are the possible reverberations of the introduction of masks in the story for the hermeneutic aspect of its reading.

As we examine the presence and role of the masks and masking attire from the perspective of both character interaction and reader-narrator

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relation, we immediately notice that they reinforce the double tension marked earlier in this article. Fortunato wears motley: “he had on a tight fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells”¹² – in plain words, a fool. Montresor, on the other hand, is the one who wears a real mask, “of black silk” and envelopes himself in a “roquelaire”¹³: the archetypal image of a “caped avenger.”

The disguises of the protagonist clearly serve to reflect and strengthen the unfolding events of the story: Montresor’s grotesque determination to avenge an insult with death and Fortunato’s naïve blindness which borders on idiocy.

It is only when considered in its hermeneutic “double application”

that Montresor’s mask acquirers a greater, albeit not necessarily symbolic, depth: what Montresor’s mask hides from Fortunato, it reveals to the reader. This function of the mask is by no means a simple one: there are several implications which need to be clarified. Let us attempt to present them in an orderly fashion.

1. Fortunato sees nothing suspicious in Montresor’s attire – his blindness is made more severe by the context of the carnival and his in- toxication.

2. The mask does not in fact appear to conceal anything. By its evident- ly foreboding, “evil” character, it makes Montresor’s intention plain to the reader; the act of masking works in the direction opposite to the customary: it becomes a gesture of demonstration, signature and revelation rather than concealment.

3. Masking as a revelation, a disclosure of purpose is only apparent in the narrator-reader relation. Fortunato knows not the anger and mal- ice that Montresor feels towards him – only the reader is partial to this information.

4. Fortunato’s mind is soothed by the discourse of deception produced by Montresor during their descent into the wine-cellars/catacombs.

The function of the mask is further complicated by a new element, hitherto unmentioned in our discussion: the language of deception employed by Montresor towards Fortunato. This element produces yet another field of tension based on contradiction or opposition. The mask makes Montresor’s purpose evident, while his speech is maliciously false. Unlike Fortunato, the reader recognizes the avenger’s discourse for what it is: thus from the perspective of character relation, language takes predominance over the significance of the mask, but from the point of view of narrator-reader relation, the situation is exactly the

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Between Theory and Narrative… 23 opposite – the intention revealed by the mask casts a dubious light over the benevolent care expressed in Montresor’s speech.

The hermeneutic strategy of the mask is therefore, in accordance with our preliminary remarks, a double one. What it reveals to the reader, it hides from Fortunato. Its function within the text fully reflects the temporal schemes which I have presented in the beginning of the analysis. As a textual artefact, Montresor’s mask, though seemingly marginal to the plot, constitutes a condensation of the two separate fields of address: on the one hand, it epitomizes the relation of the two characters based on the villain’s secrecy and the victim’s foolishness, and on the other, serves as additional means of privileging the reader in the context of information provided by the narrator. The interpretation of the story is largely based on conflict construed between the perspective of the reader and that of Fortunato. The hermeneutic code experienced by the reader is not based on secrecy but, quite to the contrary, on awareness of the situation. It is Fortunato who takes the reader’s customary role and uncovers the truth hidden from him by the narrator.

Of particular interest is the fact that the reversal of the usual order of a tale of suspense constitutes no hindrance for the special status of the mask as a hermeneutic symbol. Even a departure from the traditional chronology that culminates in a final revelation does not prevent the mask from being simultaneously a narrative element and a reflection of the structure of the act of reading.

The code of academic rigour certainly prevents us from making generalizations on the basis of but one analysis. Yet the purpose of this article is primarily demonstrative: its intention is to confirm, if not a definite presence, then at least a possibility of the existence of textual imagery that reflects the process of reading in a way that is more than a mere comparison or analogy. Such a hermetextual artefact would certainly disturb the comfortable distance between the optics of theory and the textual content but at the same time can uncover a sphere of relations unexplored by both ideologically marked theories and philosophically “detached” descriptions.

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24 Tomasz Kalaga Tomasz Kalaga

Pomiędzy teorią a narracją: hermetekstualna funkcja maski w opowiadaniu Edgara Allana Poe Beczka Amontillado Streszczenie

Maska, będąca jednym z głównych elementów kamuflażu, jest symbolem szczegól- nym. Jako nieodłączny element estetyki literatury grozy skrywa zarówno tożsamość postaci, jak i nierzadko jej mroczne intencje. Jednak sprowadzenie maski jedynie do roli kamuflującego akcesorium byłoby dużym uproszczeniem. Niniejszy artykuł jest próbą ukazania podwójnej funkcji maski w opowiadaniu Edgara Allana Poe Beczka Amontillado, funkcji modyfikującej dwie płaszczyzny: wewnętrzną, na poziomie narra- cji tekstu, oraz poza-tekstową, wyznaczającą kierunek interpretacji dla czytelnika. Ma- ska w tym opowiadaniu pełni rolę zarówno narracyjno-symboliczną, jak i hermeneu- tyczną: to co skrywa przed bohaterem-ofiarą tekstu, nieszczęsnym Fortunato, ujawnia przed czytelnikiem, wciągając obydwu w grę podwójnego znaczenia. Artykuł analizuje i opatruje komentarzem sekwencje wydarzeń przedstawione w opowiadaniu, ukazując dwie równoległe linie fabularne tekstu: wydarzenia, tak jak jawią się oczom Fortunato, oraz wydarzenia, takimi jakimi powinien widzieć je czytelnik podążający za zwodni- czym głosem narratora-mściciela Mortesora. Maska jest tu czynnikiem wprowadzają- cym interpretacyjny dysonans – hermeneutycznym kamuflażem, dzięki któremu narrator prowadzi swą przewrotną, podszytą ironią grę z ofiarą i z czytelnikiem.

Tomasz Kalaga

Entre la théorie et la narration: la fonction hermetextuelle du masque dans la nouvelle d’Edgar Allan Poe La Barrique d’amontillado

Résumé

Le masque, un des principaux éléments de camouflage, est un symbole particu- lier. Comme élément indispensable de l’esthétique de littérature d’horreur, il cache de même l’identité des personnages, que leurs sombres intentions. Pourtant la réduction du masque uniquement à un accessoire de camouflage serait une grande simplification.

Le présent article est une tentative de montrer la double fonction du masque dans la nouvelle d’Edgar Allan Poe La Barrique d’amontillado, la fonction qui modifie les deux espaces : intérieure, au niveau de la narration du texte ; et hors-texte, qui esquisse au lecteur la direction de l’interprétation. Dans cette nouvelle le masque joue un rôle égale- ment narratif- symbolique qu’herméneutique : ce qu’il cache devant le héros-victime du texte, le pauvre Fortunato, il dévoile devant le lecteur, en les poussant tous les deux dans un jeu de la double signification. L’article analyse et commente des séquences d’événe- ments présentés dans la nouvelle, en montrant deux lignes de trame narrative : événe- ments vus de la perspective de Fortunato et les événements que devrait voir le lecteur, suivant la voix fallacieuse du narrateur-vengeur Montresor. Le masque est ici un facteur introduisant une dissonance interprétative – un camouflage herméneutique, grâce au- quel le narrateur mène son perfide jeu, teinté d’ironie, avec la victime et avec le lecteur.

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Hanna Boguta-Marchel

From Voyeurism to Serial Murder:

Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God

Lester Ballard, the protagonist of Child of God, is not – as it is usually the case in Cormac McCarthy’s prose – introduced to the reader in any traditional, straightforward way. Instead, we get to know him through various fragmentary stories dispersed throughout the novel, which are told by the townspeople of the desolate eastern Tennessee county he inhabits. This way we learn that Lester’s mother abandoned the family when he was a small child, and soon after, when he was nine years old, his father committed suicide by hanging himself in the attic of their house. Lester was the one who found his body.

They say he never was right after his daddy killed hisself. […] He come in the store and told it like you’d tell it was rainin out. We went up there and walked in the barn and I seen his feet hangin.

We just cut him down, let him fall to the floor. […] He stood there and watched, never said nothing. […] The old man’s eyes was run out on stems like a crawfish and his tongue blacker’n a chow dog’s.¹

Lester is, therefore, presented as a person wholly devoid of natural human empathy and unable to experience or manifest deeper emotions.

We also learn that he has been a “bad seed” from the very beginning since even his grandfather, Leland Ballard, was a brash fraudster and a thief. He never joined the Union Army and always managed to avoid serving his country during the war, yet was impudent enough to petition the government for a life-long war pension.

1 Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (London: Picador, 1989), p. 21.

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26 Hanna Boguta-Marchel

In the first scene of the book, we witness Lester Ballard mutely watching an auctioneer attempting to sell his family home, which he was driven out of for refusing to pay taxes. At some point, not minding the presence of the county sheriff, Ballard threatens the auctioneer with a rifle and tells him to “get [his] goddamn ass off [his] property.”² He is then struck unconscious with an axe – he “never could hold his head right after that,” an anonymous witness relates.³

The rest of the book tells the story of Ballard’s steady and irreversible decline into deepening madness, increasingly distant seclusion, and progressively violent criminal life. He moves into an abandoned house on the barren outskirts of the town, overgrown with wild weeds and inhabited by stray dogs. Sexually teased and humiliated by the teenage daughters of his neighbour, the dumpkeeper (practically the only person in the community who offers him a minimal degree of hospitality and kindness), Ballard begins looking for occasions to satisfy his frustrated desire. Not accidentally, he has the typical disposition of what psychiatrists term a voyeur. According to specialists, “the voyeur is found to be a relatively young man of low socioeconomic status, who sociosexually is said to be

‘not retarded but a late bloomer’.”⁴ Lester, who is twenty-seven, is assessed by one of his female victims as someone who “ain’t even a man” but “just a crazy thing,”⁵ and this disparagement may be considered an accurate expression of women’s attitudes towards Ballard in general. Voyeurs, people who derive sexual pleasure from the “observation of an unsuspecting person who is naked, in the process of disrobing, or engaging in sexual activity,”⁶ are typically reserved and socially withdrawn individuals, for whom direct personal interaction with others is deeply problematic, while close intimate relationships are practically beyond reach.⁷

It is, however, interesting to juxtapose this narrow psychiatric designation with the increasingly common recognition of voyeuristic content in the products of postmodern popular culture. Beginning with Clay Calvert’s book, tellingly entitled Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peeping in Modern Culture,⁸ researchers have been pointing to the fact

2 McCarthy, Child of God, p. 7.

4 R. Spencer Smith, “Voyeurism: A Review of Literature,” Archives of Sexual Behaviour, vol. 5, no. 6 (1976), p. 585.

6 Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders: Py – Z, accessed September 2, 2007, http://

www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Voyeurism.html.

7 See for instance: Sandra R. Leiblum and Raymond C. Rosen, eds, Principles and Practice of Sex Therapy (3rd edition) (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), pp. 529–533.

8 Clay Calvert, Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peeping in Modern Culture (Boulder, CO.: Westview, 2000).

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From Voyeurism to Serial Murder… 27 that, partly as a result of universal access to electronic media, “curious peeking into private lives of others has become a defining characteristic of contemporary society.”⁹ In other words, we are nowadays less likely to regard voyeurism in psychopathological terms perceiving it as a sexual deviance that requires in-depth psychiatric treatment, but we are more inclined to conceptualize it as quite a common (however “guilty”) pleasure derived from gaining access to the intimate details of the lives of consenting individuals. Therefore, such forms of entertainment as blogging, tracking “friends” on social networking sites, or watching reality television, have come to be generally acknowledged means of satisfying our escalating voyeuristic appetites.

Interestingly, studies meant to explicate the phenomenon of reality television consentingly point out that the most dedicated viewers of such programs as Big Brother, Survivor, or America’s Most Wanted, are typically “externally controlled, with low mobility and low levels of interpersonal interaction,” which is clearly a set of features defining individuals with poor social adjustment (though not necessarily ones who cannot function without receiving professional help). It also appears that the population of regular reality TV spectators is not a small one – the quoted study reported an average of 74 hours per week of reality television viewing in the studied sample.¹⁰ Moreover, a content analysis of a variety of reality programs revealed that their voyeuristic appeal is enhanced by the greater frequency of “scenes which adopt a ‘fly on the wall perspective,’ take place in private settings, contain nudity, and/or include gossip.”¹¹ This type of content put the viewer in the position of a “third party” peeking into the intimate spaces of other people’s lives. An analysis of the spectators’ motivation to watch reality television in turn demonstrated that reality entertainment (“It amuses me,” “It is exciting,” “It is more enjoyable than fiction programming,” “I just like to watch”) and habitual pass time (“It gives me something to do to occupy my time,” “Just because it is there,”

“When I have nothing better to do”) had the highest scores – it thereby seems that reality programs primarily serve the double function of giving the semblance of companionship and providing enjoyable entertainment.

9 Lemi Baruh, “Publicized Intimacies on Reality Television: An Analysis of Voyeuristic Content and Its Contribution to the Appeal of Reality Programming,”

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. (June 2009), p. 191.

10 Zizi Papacharissi and Andrew L. Mendelson, “An Explanatory Study of Reality Appeal: Uses and Gratifications of Reality TV Shows,” Journal of Broadcasting &

Electronic Media (June 2007), p. 355.

11 Baruh, p. 190.

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Therefore, McCarthy’s Lester Ballard, who is far more interested in seeing than in acting, in watching people rather than in socializing with them, may be said to belong to the not-so-narrow population of socially restrained voyeurs. It seems that McCarthy attempts to stress Ballard’s ordinariness by the very title of the novel; indeed, at some point the narrator refers to him as a “child of God much like yourself perhaps.”¹² His steady development into a sexual deviant and an anomalous psychopath does not change the fact that he is a regular, emblematic product of his society.

The first time Ballard sneaks upon a couple making love in a car parked on Frog Mountain, his greatest amazement is caused by the fact that the girl’s partner is black. “A nigger,” he whispers twice, as if realizing that a black man is able to win a woman, while he himself has never been given such a chance. He clearly takes this state of affairs as a personal offence and an injustice in the order of things. Noticed by the alarmed girl, Ballard runs away, “a misplaced and loveless simian shape scuttling across the turnabout as he had come, over the clay and thin gravel and the flattened beercans and papers and rotting condoms.”¹³

The next time he comes to observe what is going on in a car parked on the Frog Mountain road, he realizes that the couple inside are no longer alive, probably having been asphyxiated by carbon monoxide.

He gets inside, manages to pull the dead man’s body off the half naked girl and sits in the front seat staring at her for a long time. Finally, he lies on her body and “pour[s] into that waxen ear everything he’d ever thought of saying to a woman.”¹⁴ He then rapes her and takes her body to his house. At home “he took off all her clothes and looked at her;

inspecting her body carefully, as if he would see how she were made.

He went outside and looked in through the window at her lying naked before the fire.”¹⁵ The next day he goes to the store and, feeling awfully awkward and embarrassed, buys some fancy female underclothes. He then dresses up the girl, brushes her hair, paints her lips, arranges her “in different positions,” and goes out and “peer[s] in the window at her.”¹⁶

Ballard’s interests are therefore clearly focused on looking, watching, observing, and inspecting. During his few encounters with live women, usually teenage girls from the neighbourhood, he is agitated and uneasy, yet still his main desire is to see them. “Wearing his sickish smile, his lips dry and tight over his teeth,” he “hoarsely” asks one girl to show

15 McCarthy, Child of God, pp. 91–92.

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From Voyeurism to Serial Murder… 29 him her breasts.¹⁷ Similarly, when he comes by to talk to the provocative blonde daughter of the dumpkeeper, their whole conversation also concerns seeing and watching – an act for which the girl wants to be paid.¹⁸ When he in turn encounters a drunk woman sleeping under a tree on a cold winter morning, he also initially takes a detailed look at her.

One cold morning on the Frog Mountain turnaround he found a lady sleeping under the trees in a white gown. He watched her for a while to see if she were dead. He threw a rock or two, one touched her leg. She stirred heavily, her hair all caught with leaves. He went closer. He could see her heavy breasts sprawled under the thin stuff of her nightdress and he could see the dark thatch of hair under her belly.¹⁹

When she wakes up, his first impulse is to help. He asks her if she is not cold and where her clothes are. Yet when she drives him off with curses and raises a rock to hit him, he tears her gown off and leaves her stark naked on the ground. He, therefore, develops the conviction that if a woman is to expose herself, she must either be forced or paid.

It becomes clear that wooing and observing dead females is much easier and far more satisfying.

And so Ballard goes on to murder more women and to collect their fresh and warm bodies first in his new house and then, when one night it burns down, in deeper and deeper underground caves outside town.

The female bodies he assembles not only gratify his sexual desire and his need to be a woman’s sole master and owner, but also, at least temporarily, appease his longing for permanence and immutability.

Child of God contains numerous, more or less, explicit suggestions that Ballard is deeply disturbed and alarmed by change, movement, and the constant metamorphosis of things. He first risks his life to defend his family house (in which the rope his father hanged himself by is still dangling in the attic) and to avoid having to move to a new place.²⁰ One time, when he is walking through the forest in the middle of the winter, he grows distressed by its untidiness:

Coming up the mountain through the blue winter twilight among great boulders and the ruins of giant trees prone in the forest he

19 McCarthy, Child of God, p. 41, emphasis added.

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wondered at such upheaval. Disorder in the woods, trees down, new paths needed. Given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in the woods and in men’s souls.²¹

When near the ending of the novel Ballard observes a wagon pulled by a mule, its wheels incessantly turning and turning (turning wheels being a symbol repeatedly used by McCarthy to signify continuous change and the irreversibility of fate), he is deeply saddened by the impossibility of attaining authentic constancy and permanence.

He watched the diminutive progress of all things in the valley, the gray fields coming up black and corded under the plow, the slow green occlusion that the trees were spreading. Squatting there he let his head drop between his knees and he began to cry.²²

The same night Ballard has a dream in which he seems to finally acknowledge the fact that he himself must also participate in the ever- turning cycle of nature.

He dreamt that night that he rode through woods on a low ridge.

[…] He could feel the spine of the mule rolling under him and he gripped the mule’s barrel with his legs. Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he’d never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.²³

Killing and watching are therefore, for Ballard, ways of preserving reality, of breaking the incessant circular movement, of stopping the continuous transition and change. The most compelling character of Cormac McCarthy’s magnum opus, Blood Meridian, referred to as Judge Holden, employs an analogous strategy of safeguarding and mastering reality: he draws copies of the plants, tools, and ruins he encounters and subsequently destroys, annihilates them. Holden’s tactic of devising exact copies (he is a very talented draftsman) with a subsequent extermination of their originals is meant to guarantee not only constancy and immutability in the order of things but also a continually expanding

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From Voyeurism to Serial Murder… 31 orbit of power over nature. As he later explains in his characteristic, forcefully prophetic idiom, “Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.”²⁴

Who then is Lester Ballard? How can we attempt to explicate his behaviour or to define his personality? If we came across the story of an individual who was not only a serial murderer but also a voyeur and a necrophiliac, we would most probably assume that this person was a psychopath – someone whose personality precludes sympathizing with others as well as experiencing powerful feelings such as love, intense joy, or deep sorrow.²⁵ Yet in the case of Ballard this diagnosis would not be fully justified since he lacks at least one very important feature of the psychopath. On the surface and in everyday casual interactions with other people, psychopaths are typically charming and easygoing individuals. They possess an exceptional ability of telling blatant lies without batting an eyelid and of acting out the role of experts in practically any given field. Lester Ballard is certainly not an amusing conversationalist; he feels lost and confused in the most superficial encounters with other people in such surroundings as stores or bars. He, therefore, barely speaks at all, limiting his conversations to awkward comments about the weather and to defensive curses, coarsely signaling his wish to be left alone.

In fact, Ballard also is not a typical voyeur (in psychiatric terms) in that his voyeurism is not limited to a purely sexual context. He not only looks at naked women and lovemaking couples but is generally an acute observer of the surrounding reality. After the day he was forced to move out of his family home, he walks up to it every night to watch its new inhabitant, Greer, sitting in his own kitchen and peacefully reading seed catalogues.²⁶ This fills Ballard with envy and rage, finally leading him to an attempt at murder – when he shoots Greer, he does not manage to kill him, but in the course of the assault loses his own arm.²⁷

Ballard also carefully tracks the surrounding nature. Those fragments of the novel in which he himself is the focalizer are abundant in lyrically detailed descriptions of the wood with its trees, moss, lake, and creek.

He is a hunter familiar with the trails and habits of birds, deer, foxes,

24 Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 198.

25 See for instance: Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience. The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: Guilford Press, 1999). For features characteristic for psychopathy see especially pages 52–133.

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and squirrels. There are moments when those observations lead him to reflect upon profound existential matters:

Ballard lying on his pallet by the fire one evening saw [bats]

come from the dark of the tunnel and ascend through the hole overhead fluttering wildly in the ash and smoke like souls rising from hades. When they were gone he watched the hordes of cold stars sprawled across the smokehole and wondered what stuff they were made of, or himself.²⁸

Ballard can therefore be considered neither a mindless psychopath who acts upon the impulse without any deeper emotion or reflection, nor a typical voyeur compulsively focused on the sexual activities performed by other people. In fact, he may be regarded as both the offender and the victim in one – a double identity which is symbolically confirmed by the fact that he develops the habit of wearing the clothes and scalps of the women he had killed. The stories and gossip of the townspeople that are woven into the novel as well as the book’s ending (Ballard is taken to a hospital for the mentally ill where he contracts pneumonia and dies, his body being utilized by medical students and finally “scraped from the table into a plastic bag and taken with others of his kind to a cemetery outside the city”²⁹) suggest that he played the role of a kind of mythical figure in the community. From the very beginning he is being marginalized, stared at with outright hostility, and even charged with crimes he did not commit. Wrongfully arresting him for raping the woman whom he found sleeping under the tree in her thin gown, the county sheriff, tellingly named Fate, provocatively asks Ballard about his future plans:

And what then. What sort of meanness have you got laid out for next. […] I figure you ought to give us a clue. Make it more fair.

Let’s see: failure to comply with a court order, public disturbance, assault and battery, public drunk, rape. I guess murder is next on the list ain’t it? Or what things is it you’ve done we ain’t found out yet.³⁰

At moments, Ballard therefore has the impression that the events he is participating in have somehow been orchestrated to serve a cause he

Camouflage : secrecy and exposure in cultural and literary studies

Camouflage

Camouflage

Secrecy and Exposure

in Cultural and Literary Studies

Wojciech Kalaga, Marcin Mazurek and Marcin Sarnek

Contents

Introduction

Camouflage. Between Fear and Desire

Part One

Transgressing Suspicion

Tomasz Kalaga

Between Theory and Narrative:

A Mask as a Hermetextual Artefact

in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

Hanna Boguta-Marchel

From Voyeurism to Serial Murder:

Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God