Blurring the Lines: How human, nonhuman and nonliving interact in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied Sing

Details

Supervisors

De Bruyn, Ben

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité spécialisée: langues des affaires

Abstract

This thesis aims to offer both a formal and meaningful interpretation of the interactions of the characters in Jesmyn Ward's novels, Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, with their environment. Set in the rural south of Mississippi, both stories bring their characters into contact with a harsh, savage, sometimes hostile environment that confronts them with their black condition. In particular, the characters' relationships with animal entities, mainly dogs, natural elements such as water - including Hurricane Katrina, a persona in itself - and forests, as well as certain material objects are analyzed. We can observe, as much on the level of writing and figures of speech as on a conceptual level, the construction of a fusional space between the different categories, which transcends the initial dualities. This confrontation with the fauna, the flora, the water and even material objects leads, by the force of the writing of Ward, on a "to be the world", quite distant from the "to be in the world", organized in a hierarchy of categories.