A deconstructive reading of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

associated with the modern novel overrides the structure of romance as if to say that romance is no longer possible. This process finds its symbolic expression in the confrontation scene between Gatsby and Tom in the New York hotel. According to the romantic formula, it is here that the hero wins his bride and reveals his true origins, which are royal or associated with some kind of important parentage. Instead, Gatsby reveals, with Tom’s help, that his true origins are far beneath those of his beloved, and the result is that she abandons him. Thus, from the perspective of Frye’s theory of mythoi, the romantic formula “jumps the track,” ceases to function, and the void is filled by the only structure left in the narrative: that of irony. The structure of irony does not succeed, however, in eradicating the structure of romance. Instead, the structure of irony is “haunted” by the very structure it overrides. Perhaps because he knows that romance is no longer possible, Nick’s narrative is marked by an intense nostalgia for a lost past, for the lost world of romance that Gatsby represents. We see this longing in his lyric descriptions of a virginal, idyllic past: descriptions of Daisy and Jordan’s “beautiful white . . . girlhood” (24; ch. 1) in Louisville and of Christmas in the Midwest of his youth, with its “street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow” (184; ch. 9). This nostalgia for a lost innocence, a lost paradise, for the mythos of summer, the genre of romance, reaches its climax in Nick’s closing description of a literal paradise forever gone. As Nick sits on the beach the evening before his return to Wisconsin, he muses on the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. (1; ch. ) This passage is emblematic of the structural process that occurs over the course of the novel: the mythos of summer (romance, the successful quest) is overrid‑ den by the mythos of winter (irony, the complexities of reality), which remains haunted by the loss of the structure it has overcome. In The Great Gatsby, then, we see the operations of quite a complex structure. We see a narrative grammar consisting of seek‑find‑lose and its subset, seek‑ but‑don’t‑find. This grammar, I have suggested, reflects a worldview associated with the modernist period and with the modern novel’s rejection of the traditional seek‑and‑find quest. Analogously, the text is structured by a struggle for dominance

between two very different literary genres: romance (the mythos of summer and the genre to which Gatsby’s narrative belongs) and irony (the mythos of winter and the genre to which Nick’s narrative belongs). I have argued that the genre of romance is overcome by that of irony in the novel, although, throughout the text, the former “haunts” the latter in the form of the narrator’s lyric descrip‑ tions of a lost past, a romantic, paradisal youth. This analysis has thus attempted to illustrate two aspects of structuralism that sometimes seem in conflict: its reliance on formulaic description, which derives from its commitment to the kind of objectivity associated with mathematics, and its philosophical grounding as a science of humanity, which requires us to speculate on the relationship between the structural formulas we describe and the world in which we live. Although this second aspect is often forgotten in the practice of structuralist criticism, it is the dual nature of structuralism that, for many of us, makes it exciting.

Questions for further practice: structuralist approaches to other literary works

The following questions are intended as models. They can help you use struc‑ turalist criticism to interpret the literary works to which they refer or other texts of your choice. 1. How might you use Frye’s theory of mythoi to analyze Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902)? What kind of hero is Kurtz? How would you clas‑ sify Marlow? In what sense might the novel be called a tragedy? In what sense does it belong to the genre of irony? What might our difficulties (or disagreements) in classifying this text suggest about Conrad’s novel or about our system of classification? 2. Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) is structured by the interweaving of several narratives, each the story of a particular character. There are, among oth‑ ers, narratives associated with Sethe, Denver, Beloved, Baby Suggs, Paul

D, and Stamp Paid. Identify all the narratives present in the novel and analyze them structurally, as if they were a collection of stories (which, in a sense, they are). Is there a narrative grammar that informs all the “stories,” or does a structural analysis reveal that they belong to different structural groups? What does your analysis suggest about the way in which Morrison’s novel and similar texts make meaning? 3. William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” (1931) has a complex structure that lends itself well to Genette’s theoretical framework. Using Genette’s categories, analyze the text in terms of the relationship among story, narra‑ tive, and narration. Be sure to discuss the functions of tense (order, duration,

and frequency), mood (distance and perspective), and voice. How does your analysis help you understand the narrative effects Faulkner achieves in this story? Do your findings apply to other Faulkner works? 4. Although their content is quite different, Katherine Anne Porter’s “The

Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (1930) and Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Iron‑ ing” (1956) are short stories with a number of structural similarities. For example, both consist largely of interior monologues; both are narrated by a character within the story who has a very limited, subjective point of view; and both are structured by a series of flashbacks. What other structural similarities can you find? Draw on the structural narratologist(s) whose work you find most helpful in illuminating these two pieces. Are structural similarities (or dissimilarities) related to similarities (or dissimilarities) in theme? 5. John Steinbeck’s political novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) was produced as a Hollywood film. For the most part, the film is very faithful to the novel’s structure, characterization, and theme (the capitalist exploitation of tenant farmers who fled the Dust Bowl to become migrant laborers in

California). However, the film’s ending is triumphantly optimistic, in direct contrast to the ending of the novel. Analyze the novel’s genre using Frye’s theory of myths, Frye’s theory of modes, and Scholes’ theory of modes.

Then analyze the ways in which the film’s ending calls for a modification of your classification of the novel. What do your findings suggest about the conflict between political novels (to which category the genre of natural‑ ism belongs) and the Hollywood tradition of “the happy ending”?

For further reading

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. 1957. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and

Wang, 1972. Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New York: Routledge, 2002. Culler, Jonathan. “Literary Competence.” Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. 113–30. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1957. Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1977. Herman, David, ed. Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI, 2003. Lévi‑Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Trans. John and Doreen Weighman. New York:

Atheneum, 1974. Phelan, James, and Peter J. Rabinowitz, eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Malden,

Mass.: Blackwell, 2005.

Pratt, Annis, et al. Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Books on

Demand, 1981. Rowe, John Carlos. “Structure.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. 2nd ed. Ed. Frank Len‑ tricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 23–38. Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale Univer‑ sity Press, 1974.

For advanced readers

Barthes, Roland. Critical Essays. 1964. Trans. Richard Howard. Evanston, Ill.: North‑ western University Press, 1972. Davis, Todd F., and Kenneth Womack. “Reader‑Response Theory, Narratology, and the

Structuralist Imperative.” Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory. New

York: Palgrave, 2002. 57–63. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane Lewin. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer‑ sity Press, 1980. Greimas, A. J. On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. 1970. Trans. Paul Per‑ ron and Frank Collins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Herman, David, ed. Narratologies. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. Jakobson, Roman. “Linguistics and Poetics.” Style in Language. Ed. T. Sebeok. Cam‑ bridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1960. 350–77. Lévi‑Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. 1964. Trans. John and Doreen Weigh‑ man. New York: Harper, 1975. Propp, Vladimir. The Morphology of the Folktale. 1928. Trans. Laurence Scott. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1968. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. 1916. Trans. Wade Baskin. New

York: McGraw‑Hill, 1966. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1977.

Notes

1. Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays attempts to systematize literature in four different ways. He calls these approaches his (1) theory of modes, or historical criticism (tragic, comic, and thematic); (2) theory of symbols, or ethical criticism (literal/descriptive, formal, mythical, and anagogic); (3) theory of myths, or arche‑ typal criticism (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire); and (4) theory of genres, or rhetorical criticism (epos, prose, drama, lyric). Although there has been some debate concerning whether or not Frye’s work falls within the category of struc‑ turalism, it seems rather clear that all four of the approaches offered in Anatomy of Criticism are structuralist theories of genre because all seek the structural prin‑ ciples—such as plot formulas and character functions—that underlie genres in the Western literary tradition.

2. Not all archetypal criticism relates the mythic motifs found in literature to liter‑ ary genres. Many archetypal critics, or myth critics—most of whom have been influenced by the work of Carl Jung—analyze literary works in order to identify the specific myths on which they draw. See, for example, Bodkin, Campbell, and

Jung.

Works cited

Barthes, Roland. “The World of Wrestling.” Mythologies. 1957. Trans. Annette Lavers.

New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. 15–25. Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination. 1934.

New York: Random House, 1958. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton Uni‑ versity Press, 1968. Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1957. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane Lewin. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer‑ sity Press, 1980. Greimas, A. J. Structural Semantics. 1966. Trans. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Jung, Carl. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part I of Collected Works. 2nd ed. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. ———, ed. Man and His Symbols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. Lévi‑Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth.” Structural Anthropology. 1958.

Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Schoepf. New York: Basic, 1963. 206–32. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. 1916. Trans. Wade Baskin. New

York: McGraw‑Hill, 1966. Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale Univer‑ sity Press, 1974. Todorov, Tzvetan. Grammaire du Décaméron. The Hague: Mouton, 1969.