Analyse de "Ice Palace"

THE ICE PALACE an explanation

I. Introduction

The IP was written by FSF at 23 when he was already married to Zelda Sayre Having grown up in the Middle West and the East, he married a Southern Belle and this short story reflects much of his concern with the impact of the Civil War, the cultural divide between the North and the South and his final disenchantment with the South. There is an autobiographical element in the complex treatment of the main protagonist Sally Caroll Happer based on his wife Zelda Sayre.

II. The plot

SC Happer from Tarleton, Georgia has decided to marry Harry Bellamy from a nameless Northern city .Sally Caroll is on a quest for identity for she has “a divided self…there is the sleepy old side …and there is the sort of energy”.She loves Harry because she hopes to fulfill this energetic side of hers with him and she goes up North to meet with his family and arrange the wedding .

III. South versus North

The story‘s real conflict is cultural and reflects the long- standing opposition between the North and the South antebellum (avant la guerre de Secession) and ever since the Civil War. Both regions have their characteristics

A. The South

In chapter 1 and 6 heat and dust characterize the South (cf vos cours ) as well as inertia. Sally watches the car approaching “sleepily, she yawns.The town seems to be retiring into utter and finite coma”.

When Harry considers that some Southerners are “degenerates because they have lived so long with the coloured people that they have gotten lazy and shiftless ,SC explains that it is the climate that deprives people of any energy. The distorted language”mawning”=morning reflects her tiredness.

The South is also a place “of languid paradise and dreamy skies” it is liable to elicit (susceptible de susciter) love and desire Harry and SC kiss passionately in the Southern cemetery.

Love and desire is also essential in Southern women’s lives. The women are typical Belles from the South such as depicted in “Gone with the wind” who enjoy “half affectionate badinage and flattery” and” expect a certain amount of gallantry” from the beaux

In the South History and tradition are of utmost importance because the Civil War has left its mark on Dixie land = the Deep South.

“Girls are brought up on memory rather than on money”.

SC feels at home in the cemetery where all the dead Confederates are buried She enjoys the nostalgia conveyed by the cemetery. She admires the sculpture of Margerie Lee (after the general who led the confederate army) who died at 29. She embodies the typical Southern belle as depicted in “Gone with the wind “.”A lot of men went away to war meaning to come back to her”.

SC is deeply attached to Southern ethics “the past standards of noblesse oblige, courtliness and chivalry”

B. The North

The Northerners do not have the same close link to their past as the Southerners. Harry asks SC not to despise him because his family can trace back their history to only 3 generations.

SC likes categorizing people and according to her distinction, Harry , the Northerner is “canine, which implies a certain amount of masculinity”, unlike the southerners who are” feline “, which also involves “subtlety”.

The cold climate has a detrimental impact on the inhabitants ‘mood and morale. They become like the Scandinavians “they’re freezing up” they’re growing like Swedes. Ibsenesque . ..getting gloomy and melancholy . Scandinavians have the largest suicide rate in the world.”

The climate is fatal and propitious (propice) to create the ice palace where SC ‘s identity crisis is resolved . The ice palace is the ultimate expression of death and entombment (mise au tombeau ) “ the North offering sacrifice on some mighty altar” “she feels an icy breath of death , damp souls …haunted this place” she fears she might “freeze to death and lie embedded in the ice like corpses she had read of”

IV. Transition

From this analysis of the opposition between the North and the South it can be inferred = deduced that there is an apparent criticism of the North since it is evocative of cold and death and the point of view adopted to relate the story is

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