Fear In the Damp and Dark Gap Essays -- In the Damp and Dark Gap

Fear In the Damp and Dark Gap The usual signification of the French feminist's "gap" transformed by Jack Bushnell from silent entrapment to a meaning that signifies the "gap" as that which frees the other and allows for the generation of a voice of the other's own Circus of the Wolves. The famous masculine--self and feminine--other opposition will be freely utilized with the man and the circus representing the former and Kael and nature the latter. Gaps appear literally and figuratively throughout the text and with each appearance its meaning slowly, slowly, alters in the previously stated manner. Jack Bushnell says in a "Note from the Author" that the of the wolf (other) is "a natural world as distinct and separate from the human (self) world as possible." The place of the Other, in other words, is separated, banished, and excluded from the sphere of self. The circus and the man be self insofar as they confine, harness, and attempt to stand the beauty and wonder of the ot her by conforming the other into the mold and way of self. Before going further, it should be noted that any appearance of anthropomorphizing the wolf is only that –appearance. It is the place of the Other that receives the essences of human and not Kael in and of himself. Since Kael occupies the place of the Other the anthropomorphic transgression will seem to apply to the wolf when no actual transgression has occurred. Still, however, Kael must come to sense his occupation of the place of the Other. Kael falls into the gap constructed by his oppressors "...the damp and dark at the bottom of the hole frightened Kael." Kael's fear is of confinement and the discovery of himself as other... ...e frees himself through the gap left by his oppressors. The man allows for Kael's escape. He has come to know the beauty and power of the other and can no longer confine it. By obtaining the knowledge that reveals the nature of the gap, Kael has discovered the means of utilizing the "gap" to the ends of freeing the other from the oppression of self. He has found the power of his own language, and its ability to take the self away from its world and into the place of the Other, Jack Bushnell has found in Kael a character that can infuse the gap with the emotive gynergy of other, thus disallowing its existence as a simple lacunary absence without voice. The place of the Other radiates its own incandescent brilliance, seething with the growing volume of the new choral power......O... Â  Circus of the Wolves, Lothrop, Lee, and Shepherd 1993