Title: “Grotesque” Food and “Alienated” Subjectivity: Identity Dilemma in The Ballad of the Sad Café

Abstract: Carson McCullers’s gothic masterpiece The Ballad of the Sad Café portrays typical McCullers’ marginalized characters. Miss Amelia, the hunchback Lymon, and the poor whites in the town, struggle against the distortion between fantasy and their real identities. The characters attempt to reshape their biological, psychological and social identities via culinary performances, but their eating habits expose their true colors: an outwardly strong but inwardly weak meat-eater, a sweetness-addicted “child”, and alcohol-indulged revelers. Employing culinary criticism, this essay reveals the intertwinement between the characters’ gastronomical behaviors and their identity construction. This paper argues that the characters’ “grotesque” diets mirrors their “alienated” subjectivity. Through the concrete representations of the implied contradiction in the characters’ eating habits, McCullers discloses the root causes of their failure to construct identity and further guides readers to reflect upon the identity dilemma and its solution under the institutionalization of modern society.

Keywords: Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café, literature of the American south, culinary criticism, identity construction

Authors: Huiqing Chen, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China; Mingwen Xiao, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2022.04.003