THE POSTMODERNIST STRATEGIES IN “SNOW WHITE”
...rative conventions of traditional romantic, realistic, and even modernist writing, but also evokes a parodic effect. Snow White is a playful counter-cultural parody of the popularized traditional fairy-tale. Set in the modern-day world, Barthelme presents Snow White not as a virginal maiden, but as a tall seductive woman who habitually makes love in the shower with her attendant dwarfs. Very different from their fairy-tale prototypes, these dwarfs occupy themselves by washing buildings and by "tending the vats" in which they prepare their father's recipes of Chinese baby food. Snow White self-consciously waits for her prince figure--Paul--who is busy trying to come to terms with his destined role, his heroic form. After a series of humorous, self-conscious meditations, he enters a monastery, then quits, journeys around the world, and finally returns to New York. There, he sets up a complex underground surveillance system, complete with trained dogs, to watch over Snow White, who in turn is being conspired against by the villainous Jane-- the wicked stepmother figure. True to form, Jane attempts to poison Snow White, but Paul intercepts the drink, drinks it himself, and dies. Barthelme engages in parodying a famous fairy tale and pokes fun at contemporary society by challenging conventional meaning, philosophic thought, and psychoanalytic notions. There also are parodic allusions to Freudian and other theories, and various literary works. For example, a subtitile parody to Freudian theory as the main source of the modernist vision of the world: The value the mind sets on erotic needs instantly sinks as soon as satisfaction becomes readily available. Some obstacle is necessary to swell the tide of the libodo to its height, and at all periods of history, whenever natural barriers have not sufficed, men have erected conventional ones. Such parody makes Snow White acquire an identity, which is balanced between the traditional innocent world and the contemporary modern world; between the physical and the spiritual; between the past and the present. 3. Irony Irony is a broad term referring to the recognition of a reality different from appearance. Verbal irony is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning. Irony is likely to get confused with sarcasm, but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less harsh in its wording, though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness. Its presence is marked by a sort of grim humor and “unemotional detachment” on the part of the writer, a coolness in expression at a time when the writer’s emotion appear to be really heated. Characteristically it speaks words of praise to imply blame and words of blame to imply praise. In Part 1, Snow White, seven dwarfs and Paul, who comment on Paul’s painting and personality with irony. Paul thinks his new work is “a dirty great banality” and “one of my poorer things”, Snow White praises, “they’re getting poorer”. Paul admits with satisfaction, “descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever been.” Paul is thought “certainly a well-integrated personality”. Barthelme uses irony here to ridicule postmodern painting art and artist. Snow White writes “a dirty poem four pages long” to reject the hackneyed and stereotyped expressions at the beginning of the fiction. She said the poem “free, free, free” and the theme “one of the great. In fact, her dirty poem is language garbage. Barthelme uses Snow White’s mood of rebelling the hackneyed and stereotyped expressions to satirize the vogue of western modern history. The function of such ironies is not only to evoke a mocking effect, but also to ridicule some artistic form of representations. 4. Language Games Language games are more or less subtle playings upon the meaning of words or speech sounds. Reading Snow White, we can find Barthelme’s innovative language organization. 1). Creating New Words For Barthelme, these are means, not ends, in his battle against stale language; his rejection of conventionality is in the interests of offsetting what he calls the "blanketing effect of ordinary language". Referential language that is already stale becomes, for him, "a model of the trash phenomenon". Snow White's disquietude about words themselves, for example, reveals a frustration precisely at enclosure within worn-out vocabulary: "OH, I wish there were some words in the world that were not the words I always hear!". As if granting her wish, Barthelme has her declare, "I am tired of being just a horsewife!". These statements reflect Snow White's struggle against a world oversaturated with teleological discourses. 2). Extending Words Barthelme attempts to involve extending words beyond their already determined meaning and denotations by combining the literal with the figurative. After declaring that "THERE is a river of girls and women in our streets," the dwarfs observe that the neighboring town also has "a girl-river there they don't use much". The word "river" modifies "girl". “Girl-river” contains a lot of meanings, reasoning, and implications. By including these playful moments in Snow White, Barthelme exposes the subversive power within linguistic and imagistic domains. 5. Collage In the pictorial arts collage is generally referred to the technique by which materials not usually assoc...