Catastrophe and image, international post-modern fiction

I have found two common, linked problems under scrutiny in three short stories by non-American authors. The three stories are “And of Clay We Are Created” (Isabel Allende), “The Laugher” (Heinrich Böll), and “The Street-Sweeping Show” (Feng Jicai), and the problems these stories share are those of mediation and the power of images. These stories deal at least in part with how images are used or consumed and what these images impart and how. Because these stories deal with modern structures of society and the problems seem inextricable from these structures, and because each narrative works to subvert these problems by at least shedding light on them, I will call the narratives postmodern stories.All of the characters in each of these postmodern stories exhibit the need to preserve images. Ultimately, and to simplify, this need is destructive or dehumanizing, either for these characters or implicitly for the society the characters inhabit. In Allende’s story the image is used for extracting personal meaning from a catastrophe, but paradoxically this need to understand is harmful to the self and is an indictment of the way we try to understand the world in an information society. In Böll’s story the image is preserved ad infinitum and its mediator is reduced to an object of consumer society. And in Jicai the image is promulgated for public consumption though no one believes in it any longer (or maybe never did).

[...] And out of the desire to know she creates her own narrative and meaning, one in which catharsis can be realized, but for Rolf. Thus the narrator also creates resolution for herself out of the desire to know, even though the means of resolution is entirely unrealistic. Now on what is lost. The narrative focus on Rolf that elides Azucena is important because readers would expect Azucena to be the subject of the story, since she is indeed the story of the mudslide—she is a “symbol of the tragedy” for the narrator and the public (Rubenstein and Larson 47). [...]

[...] For instance, when the regular people witness the “majestic” procession of the mayor and city dignitaries, “they realized that they were in the presence of no ordinary mortals” (Rubenstein and Larson 247). But the language in the quotation is ironic—ironic not in the sense that the people should not feel that way but that they do not feel that way at all. There is no majestic procession, only the umbrella understanding that the procession is supposed to be majestic. Likewise the mayor is not venerated; he is bald fat one in blue” (Rubenstein and Larson 248). [...]

[...] The image is studied as if catastrophe could be used to tell us some deep truth about ourselves, and the image is also studied, for the narrator, as if catastrophe could tell us some deep truth about the other. The lack of a self-conscious narrator-character and the lack of a serious self conscious Rolf during the mudslide catastrophe leave the reader with a sense of hopelessness, because any consciousness gained is unconvincing, a simulation. It is like listening to a person who watches too much day-time TV. [...]

[...] Each character is conscious of his role as maintainer of the image, the illusion, and each character has certain inducements to maintain that role and dispense the image. Both get paid, the mayor keeps his power position. Though the show is understood to be a show it is performed anyway, both in Street-Sweeping Show” and in Laugher.” Both characters are like Allende’s President and are even like Allende’s narrator and Rolf Carlé, though the latter two likenesses are not as obvious.[2] Second it is helpful to look at the mayor’s role in his city. [...]

[...] There exists a need to preserve the image, and the Laugher works to reinforce this. Perhaps Böll has chosen the subject of laughter to critique not just banal work that comes with consumer society but the emergence of entertainment consumption in consumer society. With entertainment consumption, not only is the illusion of sameness necessary (as it is with consumption), but added to consumption is the consensus that everyone is merry, or at least adequately entertained. Perhaps at some point the illusion of sameness, being an illusion, began to create depressed subjects, and so came the need to show mass gaiety. [...]