2022 IB Diploma Extended Essays

sarcastic tone of both quotes suggests the residents’ mocking attitude and self-awareness towards. By including humor throughout the novel, Pollock manipulates the tone and atmosphere of its characters and settings. The humorous aspect of the ‘Grotesque’ can form a quicker attachment between readers and the characters as it creates a sense of intimacy – so that ultimately just as much pain and sorrow can be felt. Pollock explores this by including a reoccurring theme of one’s dissatisfaction with life throughout the novel. Although never clearly stated, it is an obvious topic that surrounds Knockemstiff . For example, in I Start Over, Big Bernie states he “crave[s] junk food like a baby craves the tit. … [he’s] beginning to believe that anything [he] does to extend [his] life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.” 7 In the simile of him craving junk food “like a baby craves the tit”, the baby acts as an allegory for his subconscious wish to start over as he thinks that anything he does in life is “going to be outweighed by the agony of living it”. Likewise, in Giganthomachy , where “the damp, gray sky cover[s] Southern Ohio like the skin of a corpse,” 8 the simile suggests the way its characters are trapped in this small town along with their potential, stunted and numb – as lifeless as the skin of a corpse. The image of corpses ‘is used not only to describe literal death, but also to symbolize spiritual death.’ (Weisel, n.d.). In saying so, the simile of corpses represents the ‘living dead’, suggests that the residents of Knockemstiff are just living for the sake of existing – hopelessly and without purpose. These techniques encapsulate the overarching theme of the discontent and frustration towards the life, Knockemstiff offers, which then leads to the self-deprecating decisions that are made throughout the novel, ultimately resulting in moral deterioration.

7 (Bullock, 2008) Knockemstiff pg. 163 8 (Bullock, 2008) Knockemstiff pg. 178

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