Abstract
The previous two chapters have examined how the counterculture’s ‘Great Refusal’ manifested itself within anti-heroic subversions of the capitalist and cowboy figures in selected novels of the 1960s. While these two archetypes occupy an important place in American culture, the Christ or Christlike figure is both more central and significant. This chapter, therefore, attempts to explore key fictions that undermine a puritanical, exclusive concept of the biblical Christ through the construction and utilization of a ‘new’ anti-heroic Christlike figure that is radical and inclusive. This original fictional creation is bereft of the ‘exhausted’ mythological overtones of the Christian prototype, replacing them with its own, uniquely humanist reconstruction.
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Notes
Herbert Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy, trans. Joris De Bres (London: NLB, 1972 ), 160.
Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in America and Canada ( London: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992 ), 442.
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Carl Oglesby, “Rescuing Jesus from the Cross,” CoEvolution Quarterly, 39 (Fall, 1983): 30–39, p. 36.
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution ( 1941; repr., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968 ), 86.
Marguerite Alexander, Flights from Realism Themes and Strategies in Postmodernist British and American Fiction ( London: Edward Arnold, 1990 ), 156.
Peter J. Reed, “The Later Vonnegut,” in Vonnegut in America, ed. Jerome Klinkowitz and Donald L. Lawler (New York: Jerome Klinkowitz and Donald L. 1977 ), 160–175, p. 164.
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Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours ( Boston: Beacon, 1992 ), 71.
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© 2008 David Simmons
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Simmons, D. (2008). Sinner or Saint? The Anti-Hero as Christ Figure in the American Novel of the 1960s. In: The Anti-Hero in the American Novel. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612525_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612525_4
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