Disability and grotesque in Of Mice and Men and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The aim of this thesis is to examine the concepts of disability and grotesque in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1937) and Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940). This thesis also aims to illustrate the first appearance of disability in American literature and its impacts and consequences socially and historically in the first half of the 20th century. In this case, it is important to express that there has been a biased point of view towards disabled people; disabled people have been discriminated and they are accepted as a major problem by society. Disability Studies which has emerged in the 1990s focuses on a general perspective towards disabled people rather than the medical model. The most important theorists in Disability Studies such as Davis, Stiker, Qicke, Titchkosky, Garland-Thomson, and Longmore have brought critical analyses toward a general perspective. They expanded the scope of Disability Studies. Thus, the scope of Disability studies started to demonstrate the social and cultural conditions of disabled people. Based on the views of some significant theorists, both Of Mice and Men and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are examined in line with the theories of Disability Studies. In addition, In Western literature, the appearance of physical disability is often accepted as grotesque. The term 'grotesque' appears in our literary works and has become one of the main features of the Southern Gothic. Besides, the concept of 'grotesque' is examined in the historical process both in art and literature. According to Wolfgang Kayser and Mikhail Bakhtin's views, the idea of grotesque has been changed and started to be used as an aesthetic genre. In the modern era, the purpose of the grotesque is to demonstrate modern issues such as gender, race, and disability with the contributions of Kayser and Bakhtin. For this purpose, this thesis gives general information about disability and disability studies by taking into account the historical development of disability and clarifies common grounds between disability and grotesque. The concepts of disability and grotesque are exemplified in the works of John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers through the characters.