Among the many monologue-like conversations that take place within the pages of John Hawkes’ Travesty, several eerie and continual themes arise, providing the readers insight regarding the absurd and mad mind of the speaker, as well as the overall intention of the author. The speaker touches on ideas of time and space—within the hour and forty minutes that the group spends racing down the road, an overwhelming amount of conversation occurs, stretching and distorting the perception of time, as well as their location with respect to time. The speaker also mentions with subtle importance the “elbow” body part, most often in instances relating to injury and pain. Interestingly, the skin around the elbow lacks significant nerves to feel pain—an attempt to pinch or pierce this skin offers only numbness, which reflects the nature of the speaker’s mind: numb to all feeling and emotion. He further discusses sexual encounters, love, sadness and joy; but among them all, one of the most significant themes, is an uncomfortable emphasis placed on the concept and preference of darkness. Every phrase that houses the word “light” is always and immediately followed by a counter, bringing the story back into the hollow of darkness and night, where the speaker finds his confidence and comfort. Such a bias gives the story a distorted, unbalanced, and asymmetrical sentiment, revealing the speaker’s madness and the author’s desire to express the absurd through the thoughts, words, and actions of a madman.
There is a certain passage in the text that concisely demonstrates this point. It is the moment in which the speaker offers a noteworthy speech in recognition of the headlights, beaming out before the speeding car, and the only object breaking through the darkness within that moment. He asks the terrified passengers, “Do you see the how the outer edges of the cone of light shudder against the flanks of darkness?” (Hawkes). This question implies the submission of light to the darkness, as if darkness were the ultimate authority and victor in this absurd story. This implication completely contradicts what is generally accepted as a natural human mindset, one that is not mad or drunk on distortion and absurdity, but that values light, goodness, and sanity. It is clear that in the mind of the speaker himself, darkness does have authority, and reigns over his thoughts and actions. Moreover, the distorted perspective that arises in the dark reigns over the story itself, demonstrating the author’s apparent intent to draw attention to absurdity in the human mind.
From the shadowy beam of the headlights, the speaker points out objects in passing that, from his dark and tainted perspective, appear to be distorted, maimed, and unnatural. “Note that clump of wild onions in the dark, and that blasted tree, and that jagged boulder stuffed into that trough of moss…and that olive tree [which] is only beautiful because it is so deformed” (Hawkes). It appears that the author is shouting from behind these words that this is all absurdity. Hawkes draws attention to the fact that perception is everything, capable of leading to conclusions that may be true or that may be grotesquely untrue. In the light of day, a significantly different perspective, such objects would be considered beautiful, and different diction would be used to describe them, such as “a patch of onion grass,” “an aged and rugged oak,” or “a majestic boulder, coarse and covered in moss.” Such would be the thoughts of an individual untainted by the absurd mind of madness and the obsession of dark distortion. However, it appears that this distinction and pensive reaction is exactly the point of this literature, inspiring the question: from where do my convictions about the world, good, and evil arise—from my perception of reality or from reality itself?
November 2, 2018
Works Cited
Hawkes, John. “Travesty.” New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, 1977.