The Ballad of the Sad Café: A Myth of All Time

「傷心咖啡店之歌」：永恆的迷思

許惠芬(Hui-Fen Hsu)

《高雄應用科技大學人文與社會科學學刊》 1卷2期 (2015/12) Pp. 1-10

https://doi.org/10.6554/JKTUHS.2015.0102.01

摘要

「傷心咖啡店之歌」敘述美國喬治亞小鎮三位畸零人糾葛的愛情。此小說貫徹作者的南方風格，其怪誕的人物向來是評論家的焦點。本文以坎伯的神話理論解讀此小說，視女主角的英雄行徑屬於內心之冒險，她的苦共通於世人。此觀點給予作品正向之新義。本研究首先分析女主角歷經意識轉變的英雄特質，接著提出她的故事是所有生命的典型。以此角度解讀，可扭轉神話理論過時的批評，也能消除此小說悲觀的氛圍。男女兩性都可以承擔英雄的冒險之旅。雖然人創造的一切終將歸零，它的意義依然存在。神話觀點讓此小說成為反映人類存在問題的不朽作品。

關鍵字

迷思 ； 英雄 ； 原型 ； 生命意義

並列摘要

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, generally considered one of Carson McCullers's best works, is a story of unrequited love among three eccentric characters in a small town of Georgia. This novella exhibits McCullers's unique style as a southern writer obsessed with a pathetic world. While most criticisms center on her characters of grotesque, this paper explores Sad Cafe as a myth reflecting universal human conditions and thereby gives it a positive twist. Based on Joseph Campbell's mythic theory, the female protagonist is a mythological hero undertaking an inward journey, and her suffering is common to humanity. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part analyzes Miss Amelia as a female hero undergoing consciousness transformation. She answers the call of love, adopting an androgynous identity and further breaking her ego boundary. The second part discusses her life as a paradigm of human life. Her cafe reflects the futility of human aspirations. Despite the decay of the cafe, her life is still meaningful in that it leaves traces in the minds of her townsfolk. The mythic interpretation not only redresses the prejudice of myth as phallocentric and outdated but also reverses the pessimistic tone of this novella. Both sexes can embark on the heroic journey. That human creation comes to nothing can't deprive its meaning. From the myth perspective, Sad Cafe is a timeless tale mirroring existential problems.

並列關鍵字

myth ； hero ； archetype ； life meaning

參考文獻

Adams, R.(1999)."A mixture of delicious and freak": The queer fiction of Carson McCullers.American Literature.71,551-583.

Bloom, H.(Ed.)(2009).Carson McCullers.New York, NY:Bloom's Literary Criticism.

Bloom, H.(Ed.),McCullers, Carson(2005).Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Café.New York, NY:Chelsea House.

Campbell, J.(1968).The hero with a thousand faces.Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Cengage, G. (1997). The Ballad of the Sad Café --Introduction. Retrieved from http://www.enotes.com/ballad-sad-cafe-essays/ballad-sad-cafe-mccullerscarson