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The Redemption of Boneless Christs
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Plank, Karl A. |
| Copyright Year | 2021 |
| Description | Book Name: The Fact of the Cage |
| Abstract | Acknowledging that Wallace had spoken of fiction as redemptive, this chapter analyzes theological and religious dimensions of the novel. It takes its cue from the concluding line of one character’s monologue: “the drunk and the maimed both are dragged forward out of the arena like a boneless Christ, one man under each arm, feet dragging, eyes on the aether.” While “the drunk and the maimed” is fair description of nearly every character in the novel, the line as a whole transfers in explicit ways to the episode of Don Gately’s sacrificial wounding and its aftermath while he is a patient in the trauma wing at St. Elizabeth’s. Unabashedly, Wallace has vested Gately as a Christ-figure and shaped that figure in terms of the paradox of the boneless Christ image, a figure at once in need of help and yet capable of providing it. Help, or redemption, again takes the form of hearing (as visitors come to regard Gately as their confessor), of touching and being touched (significantly as Joelle van Dyne typologically assumes the role of St. Veronica, wiping Gately’s face), and the revelation of faces (for instance, in the dream in which Joelle sees her face reflected in Gately’s and hears his word that what she sees can be “saved”). Though the use of the Christ-figure device serves decidedly literary purposes, in doing so it also enables Wallace to make a theological claim: that the tragic condition which encages human beings no less offers the potential to modify or even arrest its alienation; this is the view that Gately as boneless Christ makes available to those who share the confinement of his hospital room and his broken body. Where critics Dreyfus and Kelly would see this as godless redemption (their view of Wallace’s work at large), it is no less possible to argue that the actions of in interrelationship are themselves signs of divine agency and portals of grace in a world where, as Wallace indicates, nothing significant ever happens because one “engineers” it. |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2020-0-16495-2&isbn=9781003104292&format=googlePreviewPdf |
| Ending Page | 153 |
| Page Count | 30 |
| Starting Page | 124 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003104292-4 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2021-01-23 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: The Fact of the Cage Cultural Studies Redemption Wallace Theological Gately Christ Makes Boneless Christ |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
