Absent centers in Robert Coover's the Origin of the Brunists

Robert Coover?s The Origin of the Brunists (1966) analyzes the formation of a religious cult in a small mining town, West Condon, after a mine explosion kills nearly a hundred people, destroying all sense of order and security that previously existed. Confronted with a trauma of such devastating results, in order to compensate for their sense of insecurity and desperation, some of the townspeople come together, forming the group, the Brunists. They interpret this explosion as a divine message about an approaching apocalypse. However, this interpretation, this fictional belief, turns into ?reality,? becoming the defining and determining factor for the townspeople. This is the main irony Coover analyzes in his works about human lives, that is, how human intervention is imposed upon the world to make sense of and to symbolize it, and what the consequences of this intervention are.In order to analyze this intervention, this dissertation focuses on two theoretical bases; firstly, the postmodern narration and history writing, and next one of the most significant contemporary philosophers, Slavoj Zizek?s two significant themes or concepts, the Real and the fantasy. Through a reading and analyzing of the novel with these theoretical bases, I have shown how narrations function as buffer zones against traumas and fears, and how this function usually turns into self-made prisons for people.