The Christ-figure of the American West
A Study in the Use of Typology in Glendon Swarthout’s Bless the Beasts and Children
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31973/d0v5e644Keywords:
adolescents, buffalo, Christ , typology , West, BibleAbstract
Typology is simply defined as the study of types and an interdisciplinary area of knowledge which can be widely encountered in anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, statistics, theology, architecture, sociology and politics. In literature, it is both a structural device for novelists and a mode of interpretation for researchers. As such, some researchers tend to apply typological interpretation to works of literature whose writers have not intended to structurally use typology in their productions in the first place. Others highlight the use of typology in literary texts whose writers have been deliberate in using typology as a structural device in their works. The present paper belongs to the second camp. It ultimately aims to show the use of typology as a formal principle in Glendon Swarthout’s Bless the Beasts and Children. Swarthout was intentional in relying on typology. He delineates his protagonist as a Christ-figure of the American West depending on the picture of Jesus Christ as sketched in the New Testament and resting on four technical strategies. The study typically adopts typological criticism as an approach for argument and a backbone for its methodology. It concludes that Swarthout uses typology to prefigure a Christ-figure in his novel for secular purposes related to his mind, time and environment.
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