earticle

영어

This essay illustrates how the unique narrative structure of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man reflects the confusion, anxiety, and fear of what William Whyte Jr. referred to as the “organization man.” According to this concept, men in the 1950s were guided by two oppositional ethics—the “protestant,” individualistic ethic and the “social,” group-oriented ethic. While the protestant tradition still valorized the myth of the self-made man, conformity dictated their everyday lives. Man had to prove his masculinity through financial success, but at the same time they were expected to be family-oriented, kind, and understanding—to have traditionally “feminine” qualities. The Shrinking Man is Matheson’s sarcastic but not unsympathetic commentary on the organization man’s attempt to find imaginary solutions to his perceived masculinity in crisis. In the first part of the essay, the double structure of the novel—a narrative of the past, from week 1 to week 64, and a narrative of the present, the week 72—is examined in relation to these separate spaces. The narrative of the past shows Scott’s conformist life on the surface, while the narrative of the present reveals his subterranean life where he fulfills his individualistic, masculine dream. The structure helps the novel keep its distance from Scott Carey’s “heroic” achievement in the basement and underlines the irony in his reclaimed masculinity, which is considered in the second part of the essay.