Satire in Love in the Ruins Part I

L. Lamar Nisly, "Percy's Edgy Satiric Fiction" in Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics, and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux, and Percy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011.


Tom More says about the United States in the future: "The Center did not hold" (LIR 16). There have been certain criticism about this novel. Rodney Allen describes the novel as "broad, highly topical humor and heavy-handed allusions" (William R. Allen 78). John Edward Hardy observes Percy's "exaggerations, distortions and oversimplifications" in the novel which includes characters that are "types of one sort and another--representatives of social or professional classes, absurd mouthpieces for prejudices and pernicious ideologies--rather than fully individualized human beings. But that is what characters in satire supposed to be" (John Edward Hardy 111). Martin Luschei thinks that the novel works as "comic therapy" because "there is a connection between humor and wholeness. Whose ox has not been gored in this book" (The Sovereign Wayfarer 231). Love in the Ruins is different from his first two novels, but Percy was trying to do something different. Percy did explore different ways to create in his writings. The novel does present Percy's satirical attacks against certain broad themes.

Nisly thinks Percy acts as a canary in Love in the Ruins to warn of a coming disaster. Percy asserts, "The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end" (Message 101). Percy describes his approach in the novel: "Increase the polarization, increase the mannerism or the psychic upsets, the anxieties of the liberals and the constipation of the conservatives. You know, that's really the business of the satirist and the futurist: to exaggerate so that things will become more noticeable" (CWP 45). In the novel, Dr. Tom More understands that his "society" is coming apart by noticing the "vines sprouting everywhere and people divided among the Lefts (liberals), Knotheads (conservatives), and Bantus (militant blacks)" (170). As More awaits the end of the world, he prepares three rooms in the abandoned Howard Johnson for three women who he loves. These three women symbolize various responses to the 'Chaos." Lola with her land and her big house represents the old Southern way of life; "Moira, who works at the Love Clinic, seems to represent an etheral sexual presence;" (170) Ellen is a Presbyterian is interested in doing right more than believing in God. She seems to stand as a contrast to the "craziness" around her. The main protagonist, Dr. More is tempted to make a Faustian bargain with the devil for the success of his lapsometer. It can diagnose the patient, but not yet cure the patient. He wants to win the Nobel Prize for his invention. He is tempted to sign over his invention to Art Immelman, the devil character, in exchange for funding his project.

There are several satirical attacks in this novel The attack against Southern Stoicism is not as prominent in this novel compared to other novels. Instead of having a particular character representing Southern Stoicism, he shows the emptiness of the Southern way of life as represented by Dusty Rhodes and his daughter, Lola. She tells Tom, "When all is said and done, the only thing we can be sure of is the land. The land will never let you down" (LIR 238). Tom verbally agrees with her,but in his mind he acknowledges, that "I never knew what that  meant" (LIR 238). Lola represents a return to the old Southern ways with a stratified society with the need to protect "Southern womanhood" (170). Percy seems to be satirizing this nostalgic idea of returning to a former time. The next post will look at the target of scientism in Love in the Ruins.