Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Short stories by Alice Munro merge autobiographical themes with remarkable language and stirring imagery. This paper analyzes the impact of ‘wilderness’ and mirrors the complexities of the obsession with the human psyche in the lives of the characters of Alice Munro’s short story “Vandals”. She portrays the evil and the threat that prevails in the wild and its hazardous impact on the psychology of its characters where they face cognitive clinical manias. The objective of the present paper is to read “Vandals” with reference to Bertrand Westphal’s theory of ‘geocriticism’ as proposed in his book Real and Fictional Spaces (2007) to identify the psychic disorders that Ladner, Bea, and Liza possess in the story. The wilderness that is constantly set against civilization or the urban space, distorts perception and selfperception, which metaphorically is an intrusion into the mental space of an individual. The characters are driven by intrusive thoughts and dysfunctional beliefs which lead to the suppression of their thoughts and psychological obsession after encountering the wilderness of Canada. This essay analyses Alice Munro’s depiction of this Gothic setting through the Canadian environment and the character’s preoccupation with the wild. The significance of the wilderness as a place, both in its ‘physical’ and ‘abstract’ representations in Munro’s stories, has been attempted to be discussed.
Authors: Dr. Pulak Avinashi, Dr. Preeti Bhatt
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4320149006