Магистрант Дадашова Г.Ф.

Региональный социально-инновационный университет

Paradox in short stories

Paradox as a figure of thought, more exactly a figure of contrast [Screbnev 2000: 161] can be observed at different levels: lexical, syntactical, textual. At the same time the linguistic nature of paradox is not clearly determined. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying stylistic devices which help realize paradox in the plot of a literary prose text. Paradox plays an important part in foregrounding, i.e. such principle of text organization when the author attracts the reader's attention to some text fragment, to some important information. Very often paradox is contained in the title, the beginning or the ending of the story or the novel. A famous example is Agatha Christie's novel "The Murder of Roger Acroyd", where the narrator who takes part in the crime investigation, turns out to be murderer himself, at the end of the text.

From pragmatic point of view, paradox can be investigated on the basis of maxims of conversational cooperation suggested by H.P. Grice [1975:41-45]. The first maxim is the quality maxim, which means that we must try to say what is true. If this maxim is flouted in literary communication, the author wants to achieve some pragmatic, aesthetic aim. Grice singles out such tropes, as metaphor, hyperbole, irony as the examples of flouting the maxim of quality in fiction. Paradox as the stylistic figure of thought has some connections with these tropes and can also be regarded from this viewpoint, as deliberate flouting of the maxim.

Besides its stylistic and pragmatic functions, paradox can realize poetical function. Reuven Tsur [2002: 290] considers "that good poetry is paradoxical, that is it consists in the fusion of incompatible or discordant qualities".

Paradox as a device of foregrounding is often applied in the short stories of O. Henry and S. Leacock, K. Chopin and A. Bierce, in the plays of O. Wilde and essays of G. Mikes. In modern prose paradox plays a significant part in the short stories of F. Forsyth, R. Bradbury and other writers.

The short story "Zoo" by a modern American writer Edward Hoch is mainly based on paradox. The paradox is realized in the final sentences of the story. The text describes the distant future and how Professor Hugo brings some strange creatures from other planets to the Earth. Among these creatures are horse-like spiders from the planet Kaan. The Earth people watch them with awe and admiration and agree that this had been the best Zoo ever. In the second part of the story the horse-like spiders return to their planet, and the father and the child tell the mother their impressions from the trip and the Earth people: "It was the best Zoo ever".

Due to the distant cohesion of the two text parts, the paradoxical effect is produced: the Earth people view the creatures from other planets as the zoo while these creatures regard the Earth people as the best zoo. In the plot the paradox is based on reversed parallelism. Traditionally, reversed parallelism is realized in a pair of sentences, but in this case it manifests itself in the text structure, in the change of the subject and the object of description. Explicitly, the two parts seems to contain antithesis (the Earth people - the Kaan creatures), but implicitly the text leads the reader to the opposite idea - the idea of equality, tolerance. A very humanistic idea - the equal attitude to different living beings irrespective of their appearance, gender or color of skin - is expressed mildly, ironically, but clearly. It is also interesting to note that the title word Zoo is used without any article, which emphasizes the general, philosophical sense of the text.

The texts can contain paradox not only in the ending, but in other parts of the plot. Agatha Christie made use of paradoxical endings in her novels and short stories. I would like to single out the fragment in the middle of the novel "The Clocks". Here the narrator describes a bookshop. The essence of the paradox in this fragment lies in the fact that it is based on the extended anthropomorphic metaphor (books -> people): Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down. The effect of the extended metaphor is enhanced by the syntactical device of reversed parallelism which helps to ironically describe the disorder in the shop and the helplessness of the shop owner: He had the air of one who has given up an unequal struggle. He had attempted to master the books, but the books had obviously succeeded in mastering him. The role of the bookshop in the plot is not so significant. It is the setting of one episode. It is here that Colin Lamb, one of the main characters and a friend of Hercule Poirot, has secret meetings with his chief. So the ironic description of the shop and its owner only slows down the plot development a little. However, it becomes a small image of the whole messy picture of the investigation of the murder. And only after Poirot takes the matter in his hands, the investigation acquires certain clarity.

The paradoxical character of the title in the story "Wedding Night" by the contemporary American writer Tom Hawkins can be understood only retrospectively. The title and the ending are united by distant lexical cohesion: Some good marriages don't last long. The words wedding and marriages belong to the same semantic field. Using the term "strong positions" [Arnold 2002:69], we can say that these positions have cohesion which is enhanced by the frame repetition of the first paragraph at the end: I have worked at this bus station magazine stand since nineteen fifty three, waiting for the right girl to come along. Within this frame is a story of an ordinary man. Once he saw a young woman, who was very tired and looked like a hippie. The man bought her food, offered her his room to have a rest and sleep. She was so touched: She stroked my hair and said my heart was full of love.

When the young woman went to sleep the man lay down on the floor beside her. At night he "woke up on fire", so he went to bed beside her, and the girl was completely dressed. The man only touched the skin inside her clothes, but the girl didn't wake up. In the morning she was gone. This accidental meeting of two lonely people meant very much for the man. For him it was like a meeting with the girl of his dream, and the night with her - like a wedding night. Therefore, explicitly the title can be regarded paradoxical in relation to the content of the text, as there was no wedding at all. But implicitly, the title has an important pragmatic effect, it can be considered a kind of hyperbole, because the title words emphasize the role of the meeting of two people. From this viewpoint, the story is a parable of love, of sympathy, of the attempt to overcome loneliness.

As we can see, the most important part of the plot for realizing and foregrounding such device as paradox is the ending. The unexpected ending in the stories by Forsyth, Hoch, Hawkins helps to establish the cohesion with the title and also gives to the text interpretation and overinterpretation, as Umberto Eco puts it [1992].

As the above analysis of the paradox in the plot of short stories shows, this figure can be realized by different stylistic devices. Such devices include reserved parallelism, antithesis (most often), oxymoron. We believe that the investigation of paradox on different language levels is promising and exciting as it reveals the peculiarities of human thinking and, also, features of the author's individual style.

Bibliography

1. Screbnev, Y. (2003). Fundamentals of English Stylistics. Moscow: Astrel: AST.

2. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, III: Speech Acts. R.Cole and J. Morgan (eds). New York: Academic Press: 41-58.

3. Tsur, R. (2002). Aspects of Cognitive Poetics. In: Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text, Analysis. Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 297-318.

4. Eco, U. (1992). Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5. Арнольд, И.В. (2004). Стилистика. Современный английский язык. Москва:Флинта; Наука.