A Truth about 'Deformed' Love in Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

카슨 매컬러스의 '불구적' 사랑에 관한 통찰 -『슬픈 카페의 노래』를 중심으로

This paper aims to examine a truth about love - the close relationship between a person's passionate love and that same person's loneliness and suppressed desires, a relationship that Carson McCullers (1917-1967) portrays in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. McCullers, one of several brilliant writers from Southern America, managed to overcome her cruel situation and showed deep insight into the human condition, particularly in regard to the relation between love and isolation. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, like her other works, examines the spiritual isolation and the agony of love that three lovers experience. The love in this story is a triangular relationship among the three main characters, Amelia, Lymon and Marvin Macy. The distinctive characteristics of love described in this story are that each character falls into blind and passionate love for the person he/she loves, no matter how the beloved responds. Love also changes the lover, not the beloved, revealing the completely opposite nature of the lover. The opposite nature and the inner secrets that the love reveals about the lovers reflect their frustrated and suppressed desires, which is femininity and motherhood for Amelia, non-violent masculine power for Macy, and physical attraction and power for the hunchback, Lymon. These suppressed desires are rooted in the deep sense of frustration that they had to experience in their childhood. In short, the seemingly unconditional love of the main characters is not an ideal, altruistic love, but a reflection of their inner desires. This story, however, does not seem to criticize this kind of love but simply tries to give an honest picture of what love might be. It also admits that 'deformed' love is still better than no love (and consequently no stimulus) because what really damages and causes decay in human beings and in a community, is the state of boredom.