Журнал «Филоlogos»

THING AS A TOOL OF COMMUNICATION IN TRUMAN CAPOTE'S PROSE OF THE 1950S

Author: Lyubimskaya O.M.

The present paper deals with the peculiarities of communication and the associated phenomenon of silence in Truman Capote's works. The specificity of silence is represented through relationships of two equally important categories in Capote's artistic world: "a word" and "a thing". Capote’s characters of 1950's are characterized by a shadowy appearance in the outer world at the level of formless feelings, they are not engaged in a dialogue with the outside world and, on the contrary, try to avoid any verbal expression. At this stage of creativity, Capote's characters "speak" the unclear language of inner experiences. They "splash out" their vague feelings in the form of barely tangible, verbally unspeakable feelings. The projection of inner experiences outward, the fixation of these sensations in the object is one of the main ways of Capote's characters communication, based on the principle of the substitution of the word for the thing. The thing in the Capote's artistic space becomes a tool for objectifying the unspeakable and unspoken sensations. Typically, the characters of postwar American prose are distinguished by a sense of their fragility under the pressure of external irritants. However, unlike contemporary writers, for example, Salinger, whose characters feel the hostility of the material world and, as a consequence, find the rescue in their inner, speechless reclusion or in the idea of escapism, Capote's characters do not escape from the world of objects, but, on the contrary, find deep comfort in merging with it. The thing of Сapote's characters becomes a continuation of themselves, the characters are completely identified with it. The objects that Capote's characters choose for merging are home everyday things and nature. Due to the fact that Capote' characters experience the world at the emotional-sensory level and avoid any verbal expression, their inner sensations go out in the form of sensory elements such as sound, smell and color. In this regard, the thing in Capote's world acts as a shell that fixes a vague stream of feelings. The thing animated with feelings performs the substitutive function of the word, which has lost its credibility in Capote's artistic space.