The imaginary

The imaginary

I am going to talk about the notion of the imaginary in literature. First of all, I would like to give a definition of this term: the imaginary in literature is the idea of the unreal, it can be expressed through the strange, the wonderful, the fantastic, science fiction, or it can be related to such notions as the absurd or madness. To illustrate this concept, I am going to talk about several texts: first, chapter 5 of Alice in Wonderland, a novel by Lewis Caroll, where A        lice talks to a smoking caterpillar and grows and shrinks when eating biscuits, then, chapter 7 of The Picture of Dorian Gray where the portrait of Dorian changes for the first time after he has done something terrible, and finally, the poetic short story the Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, where a grieving man is troubled in his thoughts by a speaking raven that says “nevermore”. All 3 texts show elements of a magical world, where the rules of science do not apply. And one could wonder what effects it has on the reader. To answer this question, I am going to talk about the way the wonderful is expressed in these texts, then, I will show that they are based on reality, and finally, the effects they produce.

The strange and the wonderful

All 3 texts show presence of the strange and the wonderful, that is to say, some things which seem weird or unusual:

• In Alice in Wonderland, she has the ability to grow and shrinks each time she eats a piece of cookie, which seems surreal. The animals are personified: they speak; they have whole conversations with her, the caterpillar smokes, he is aggressive with Alice, all typical human traits.
• In The picture of Dorian Gray, the fantasy is placed mainly on Dorian and his portrait. He never ages whereas his portrait takes on every mark that his soul is darkening. Furthermore, the wish pronounced by the main character is realized, and that seems magical.
• In the Raven, there is a fantastic and gothic atmosphere. The Gothic and Fantastic elements that permeate the poem are most evident in the second (“bleak December” => gothic, “dying ember/ghost” => fantastic and gothic), fourteenth ( fantastic = “the air grew denser”/”seraphim”), and eighteenth stanzas (“demons” => fantastic and gothic).  These passages are the most explicit in terms of the division between the real and unreal.  These two concepts are juxtaposed in a concrete way through the narrator who is real and the raven who seems unrealistic because he is anthropomorphized (he speaks). It is fantastic because there is a hesitation on the part of the reader and the main character in distinguishing reality from unreality. 

Based on reality

Those elements of the unreal all illustrate very real concepts:

• Alice’s fantastic animals and eating of the biscuits deal with the very real concept of growing up. Indeed, in the passage where Alice grows so tall that her head is above the trees, a pigeon mistakes her for a snake because her neck is so long and attacks her both physically and verbally. By being too tall, which is a metaphor for growing up too fast, she appears to be threatening to the pigeon as if the world of the adults is threatening.
• Dorian Gray’s portrait shows the theme of ageing. DG doesn’t age; he seems immortal, whereas the portrait takes on both his physical ageing and his mental darkening. The wish Dorian has made show everyone’s fear of ageing and dying. It also shows a willingness to stay handsome in a society that values beauty.
• In the Raven, the fantastic illustrate the loneliness and sorrow of grief. It shows how much grief is a process that can occupy every thought, every feeling, every minute of every hour, how it can be maddening. Poe said that he chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a "non-reasoning" creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven because it matched the intended tone of the poem and he said that the raven is meant to symbolize "Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance".

Moreover, all the wonderful and fantastic elements are instilled in the texts through real life objects or animals: cookies and a caterpillar for Alice, a painting for DG and a raven for Poe.

The strange and fantastic leave us wondering

Using fantastic elements can be a tool for the writer to write about human condition:

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