The Abyss

There is nothing outside of language. That is, if you are a structuralist. John Fowle’s protagonist in Mantissa seem to be just this. When the novel opens, Miles Green awakes from a coma. His health is measured by tying the signified to the signifier. “Her mouth began to announce names, people’s names, street names, place names, disjointed phrases. Some were repeated. He had perhaps heard them before, as words; be he had no idea what relevance they were supposed to have, nor why they should increasingly sound like evidence of crimes he had committed.” (pg 5). The medical world has put an importance on language. To make a connection between the signified and the signifier will determine the health of the patient. Saussure argues that this relationship is arbitrary. That is, it doesn’t exist. The signifier (sound, image) and the signified (concept or idea) really have nothing to do with each other.

We see this idea illustrated in the conscious of Miles Green. The arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified is described as an abyss. “He tried to attack word to person, person to self; failed…Nothing. No past, no whence or when. The abyss perceived, and almost simultaneously, but irremediability. He strained desperately, a falling man, but whatever he was trying to reach or grasp was not there.” (pg 5). Miles Green, after falling unconscious for a period of time, is able to recognize that there is no relationship between the signified and the signifier.

So what is John Fowles trying to tell us? Is it a commentary arguing for or against structuralism? We see many theories such as psychoanalytic theory being introduced into the novel in the following passages. However, one cannot miss the structuralist ideas being illustrated in the opening passages of the novel. It seems as if Miles Green may be designed to be a hero; the absurd practices of the medical world (of course a metaphor for a literary idea) seems to be something Fowles is arguing against. Perhaps later in the novel this uncertainty will be explained.