ISOLATION AND THE NATURE OF LOVE IN CARSON McCULLERS'S THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE

The paper tackles the novel of Carson McCullers The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, through examining the nature of love whether it is an agape or an eros ; in both cases love leads to isolation, for it thrives on destroying the other's communal self. The fiction of Carson McCullers is gothic, grotesque, and bizarre that preferred to dwell on her ostensible preoccupation with morbidity rather than the psychological aspect of her works. The novel, indeed, dwells in the uncommon romance between the manly giantess, Mss Amelia, and the effeminate little hunchback Cousin Lymon, a ludicrous parody of courtly love, where the rules of male lover and female beloved are scrambled and in which all the social amenities are scrupulously observed. Cousin Lymon deserts his benefactor-lover, who used to feed him and dress him in grand style, and leaves her despairing in resignation over her rejected love, and turns a recluse in the end. Rejecting a self-negating and demanding love suggests replacing it by self-fulfilment and a resorting to companionship, McCullersseems to praise Agape "the brotherly love of God", the heroic act in her novel is to love on an individual basis. This facilitates the full realization of one's own potential, from which the community can benefit. Accepting differences within the self is difficult at best in the literature of this period when the prevailing attitude is one of conformity and the individual who resists is deemed "maladjusted", "misfit", and even "grotesqu". Social values and illusory escapcs only distract these individuals from self-realisation, It is love only that offers support and at the same time generates a fear of leaving the one vulnerable; a kind of commitment to life. The paper focuses on the nature of the Miss Amelia-Cousin Lymon, Miss Amelia- David Macy, and Lymon-David Macy relationships and self definition of each one of them.