Reinvention or Just Playin’ Around?: Donald Barthelme’s Use of Language in The Dead Father

In Barthelme’s novel The Dead Father, published in 1975 (just a year before Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School), the character the Dead Father and his son Thomas, two women Julie and Emma, and nineteen other men, embark on a quest to find the Golden Fleece. The Dead Father believes attaining the Golden Fleece will restore his youth; however, the Fleece turns out to be Julie’s pubic hair, which she denies him touching. And Thomas and Julie reveal they have been leading the Dead Father to his own burial all along. According to critic Carlos Azevedo, the novel works as a parody of a quest, or even as an anti-quest, as well as an allegory on several levels. Several ways this allegory can be read include the Dead Father as representing the paternal authority that each son must bury before he can become a father himself. This idea comes from Freud, and is emphasized through the novel’s frequent Oedipal allusions. The Dead Father can also represent faith in patriarchal spirituality, like Christianity, as shown through various biblical allusions throughout. Also, the Dead Father can also be read to represent modernism, in the artistic and literary sense, with Thomas symbolizing a turn towards something new, like postmodernism (Azevedo 9).

In his essay, “Uses of Language in The Dead Father” Azevedo identifies how Barthelme plays with language throughout the novel in order to reinvent language. Azevedo describes language as a possible subject of the novel, similar to other “postmodernist writers… [who] explore the instability of verbal constructs....and...the role of language shaping and mediating the world” (Azevedo 6). In other words, postmodern writers often play with the limits of language to think about how these limits, and conventions, impact culture and society. Just as we’ve learned from I-rig-ER-ay, there is no escape from the social and political implications of language or how language can burden its speakers with history. Like many postmodern writers, Barthelme plays with language hoping to come as close as possible to cleanse or somehow free language for its histories. Reading this novel and thinking about language as subject also emphasizes the self-reflexivity of his work, another identifier of postmodernism. As we’ve talked about, especially with Jameson’s chapter on Video, postmodern writers often call attention to their own techniques, causing readers to notice the elements with which reality can be created and manipulated. In The Dead Father, Barthelme uses techniques such as chiasmus, cataloging, and word play to question the possibility of whether a reinvention of authority is possible. Even though this novel is about destroying patriarchy, in the end Barthelme seems ambivalent, or unsure, about how such reinvention might actually begin.


Right away in the novel’s first passage on page 3, the Dead father is described using the rhetorical technique chiasmus: “dead, but still with us, still with us, but dead” (DF 3). (For those unfamiliar, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, chiasmus is a figure of speech, from the Greek meaning “crossing,” which two or more clauses are related to each other in inverted parallelism, which overall emphasize a larger meaning. For example, you’ve heard JFK’s famous line, "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Here, “you” and “country” are crisscrossed in order to emphasize the patriotic statement. Barthelme uses chiastic structure to emphasize the Dead Father’s ambiguous state of being. He is both alive and dead, the father and the destroyer. Azevedo describes The Dead Father as “the personification of all shapes of order and coherence, including language; he is the embodiment of the meaning to be sought and the control to escape from” (Azevedo 9). For example, on page 11, after a disagreement with Thomas and Julie, the Dead Father slays a grove of cardboard musicians. Let’s take a look at this passage. Here, not only do we get one of Barthelme’s masterful lists (very fun to read aloud), but also a chiasmic structure in which the Dead Father shows his authority by imperially slaying cardboard musicians from different countries, and is reproached by Julie’s sarcastic dissent. This illustrates how the Dead Father is both dominating and ridiculed, mirroring Barthelme’s larger chiasmic structure in the novel, in which he denies the old conventions of narrative, by reflexively using them to reinvent them.


This passage is also an example of one of the novel’s many inventories, or epic catalogs. But Barthelme’s catalogs are very different from what you might find in Homer’s Odyssey. Azevedo says, “There is no reality here but mainly discourse, an inventory which draws attention to itself as a mere word display, interfering with narrative transmission” (10). The disrupting effect of such a long interruption to the narrative allows readers’ attention to be refocused on the use of language itself, again emphasizing the novel as anti-epic, anti-quest, and instead proposing new alternatives to the traditional. Other inventories in the novel include the list of types of fathers (136-137) and the grocery list for the mostly absent Mother (169). The same effect of disruption, and emphasis on language as merely language, is also achieved through the Dead Father’s speech on pages 49 to 51. Let’s take a look here. The Dead Father delivers an incomprehensible speech! The only occasion for the speech seems to be that the Dead Father “has prepared some remarks” and the audience patiently lights their cigarettes and listens (49). At the end of the speech, the audience applauses, and Emma asks, “What did it mean?” The Dead Father replies, “it meant I made a speech” (51). This passage is meant to draw our attention to a meaningless or illogical use of language, which reminded me of Gertrude Stein’s line of poetry (“ a rose is a rose is a rose”...”, in which words are said and repeated to the point their lose their meaning and become defamiliarized. In the case of the Dead Father’s speech, his language is not persuasive, political, or motivating, but literally empty and meaningless, somewhat like the noise we discussed with Pynchon. This reiterates Barthelme's critique of paternal law, as he calls for possible reinvention.


Some of Barthelme’s most obvious and extended departures from conventional and logical language are demonstrated by the novel’s four dialogues between Julie and Emma, which appear in a entirely different tone, style and structure from the rest of the novel (23-27, 60-64, 86-90, 147-155). In these passages it appears the young women discuss more than one topic at once, on everything ranging from their college majors to the hyperpersonal topics of sexuality. One way to read these conversations is to think about how Barthelme is situating the reader’s role in the dialogue, as active participant, voyeur, eavesdropper, etc. In her essay “Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father: “Girls Talk” and the Displacement of the Logos” critic Jeanette McVicker describes the women’s four conversations’ as “teasing] the reader into participation, but in a totally manipulative way” (364). By the nature of these dialogues, the reader cannot tell who is speaking or when, or how the lines are inflected, or perhaps if some of the lines are even spoken aloud at all. Overall, this causes the reader to feel at odds with these passages, and as if she has fewer tools to understand them. McVicker finds the third conversation between the women the most conventional, or linear. I disagree; I find the first and second more accessible. But in the third one, McVicker points out, there are recognizable topics, such as spirituality, nature, and childhood, but even so, the conversation as a symbol of communication does not hold because the text communicates very little. The reader’s role here is ambiguous, just like the nature of the Dead Father himself. Does the reader follow her traditional conventions for reading, or begin to develop new tools to access these passages?

Another way to read these conversations is by considering the historic alienation of the female voice in patriarchal society, or as an attempt to displace patriarchy. In this way, readers feel a sense of alienation while trying to make logical sense of the conversations. But readers could also recognize how Julie and Emma are subverting the traditional rules of dialogue and narrative. Traditional conventions include things like a linear and logical structure, and use of dialogue tags to identify who is speaking. McVicker points out how at the end of the first dialogue, one of the women says, “women together changing that which can and ought to be changed” (24). This clue allows readers to make the connection that again, Barthelme is interested in the idea of disrupting authority. But later, near the end of the last dialogue, the line, “not getting anywhere, not making any progress” (151) is repeated twice, questioning Julie and Emma’s tactics in reinventing power structures, and whether they are actually able reinvent anything substantially as women in a world still controlled by men.

In the novel the women's’ experience is described much differently than Thomas’s, who seems like the “new” Dead Father in training. Traditionally, patriarchy does not allow any kind of dissent or difference, as it threatens the paternal law (McVicker). Thus, the binary of order (of the powerful) and opposition (of the powerless) is established and difficult to break. During Julie and Emma’s second conversation, the women illustrate their sexual difference, and marginalization, by discussing self-respect (63). Let’s turn to page 63 and take a look. Here, McVicker notices how the women have “been stripped of their self-respect by their (non)-status within the patriarchal order...and this is how their demoralization expresses itself (371). In other words, this passage shows how females have lost dignity and self-worth after centuries of living under paternal law. Additionally, McVicker points out during the last conversation one of the women says, “Asked if I wanted to play. I noticed that all of the pieces were black” (149). Thus, the women noticed that paternal law, or the game, is not stacked in their favor, and in actuality, very much against it, so through these four dialogues, they’ve decided to discuss, or communicate, in a way that operates outside of the rules. This opposition can also be read in how the dialogues are written, outside of conventional narrative. But, if under paternal law, there is the right way, and the highway, this is a clear binary system. So if Julie and Emma chose the highway, or dissent, they are still working within the binary of paternal law, just not in the way that is expected of them. In this way, I believe Bartelme is pointing out how complete reinvention from paternal law may not be possible but is necessary to still question and critique.

This tension between the old and new, and whether an alternative concept is possible, is one of the main threads of the novel and extends into the novel’s text-within-a-text, “A Manual for Sons.” The “Manual,” is introduced on page 108-109 as a “frayed, tattered, disintegrating….printed on pieces of pumpernickel...translated anonymously from English to English….given as a gift to Thomas and Julie.” Thus, this text’s status and authority is questionable, and we can read “Manual” as satirical (McVicker). Throughout “Manual,” women are seldom mentioned, but when they are, they are described as a threat to men or as objectified, sexualized, and Lolitia-fied daughters. In the “Manual”, Barthelme is ridiculing the marginalization of women within paternal law, pointing to women’s only roles as virgins, wives, or prostitutes, as we have discussed before with Irig-ER-ay’s essay “Women in the Market.” While Barthelme’s satire criticizes the perpetuation of such oppressive law, he does little to offer practical solutions. Instead, Barthelme suggests, tongue in cheek in the section “Patricide,” “it is not necessary to slay your father, time will slay him..Your true task as a son…[is to] become your father, but a paler, weaker version of him...Fatherhood can be, if not conquered, at least “turned down” in this generation--by the combined efforts of all of us together” (145). Thus, Barthelme seems ambivalent about any sharp, radical change, but instead seems to offer a more subtle and enduring kind of resistance.

In The Dead Father, Barthelme uses various techniques and world play to explore the possibility of a reinvention of the authority of paternal law. While Barthelme plays with the concept of destroying patriarchal structures, the novel itself can be read as not unenjoyable beginning to the discussion, while most particulars are left vague and incomprehensible.


Works Cited

"Definition of Chiasmus in English:." Chiasmus: Definition of Chiasmus in Oxford Dictionary (American English) (US). Oxford Dictionaries, 2016. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Azevedo, Carlos. “Uses of Language in Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father.” Uses of Language: Creation, Research, and Teaching in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at FILLM, Porto, 26-27 October 2001, altered 2004. Web.

McVicker, Jeanette. “Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father: “Girls Talk” and the Displacement of the Logos.” boundary 2. 16 2-3 (Winter-Spring 1989): 363-390. Web.

Zupan’s The Ploughmen

       And he told the deputy that the gulls began to arrive. They appeared first as minute white tufts against the green of the river trees and he turned and made a pass going away and then suddenly they were among the furrows behind the plow, as though lie the soldiers of myth they sprang from the ground itself. He wondered how they found him and thought they may have followed the dust cloud or perhaps like wolves or hounds on a blood scent the could smell the new-turned earth. He threw the tractor into neutral and sat watching as the birds gorged themselves on tiny infant mice he had exposed from under small rocks and glistening worms as long as garter snakes, and crickets and partridge nestlings and even above the pothering of the engine he could hear the gulls scream. There seemed to be no communion among them. They fought over every mouthful, the most successful of them gagging down pieces that would have choked a hyena and in the chaos of screeches there were times it seemed they would set upon one another until one gruesome bird remained, engorged and wallowing through the furrows unable even to raise his bloodied wings to fly.  (40)

Kim Zupan’s The Ploughmen explores humans’ relationship to the land and how this relationship affects us. While Val’s wife Glenda is “swallowed up whole” by the land, both Gload and Val himself find solace and comfort in the land’s beauty, formidability, and ironically enough, its privacy. Working as a motif throughout the book, the gulls in the passage above represent humans’ unapologetic voyeurism, or, how we incessantly compare ourselves with others in order to feel accepted, loved, or better about our own situations. Like gulls, Zupan recognizes how we prey upon the disadvantages of others in order to feel adequate about our own lives. But both Val and Gload recognize this human flaw and instead seek a simpler and less judgemental relationship with their surroundings.

Val and Gload bond over their shared love of the Montana landscape and the comfort it provides them; however this comfort is often interrupted by the judgements of others. Just as the gulls “gorged themselves on tiny infant mice...exposed,” Deputy Wexler preys upon others’ misfortune to obtain power, which Gload points out to Val midway in the novel, and which Gload seems to rationalize explains his preference for Val’s companionship. However, Val is guilty of this “gorging” himself, as he must document the deaths of the hikers to make his living. This “gorging” also explain Val’s severe reaction at the doctor's’ party early in the novel, in which he cannot keep himself from comparing his own life with the affluent and feeling threatened by their wealth, good looks, and hold over his wife Glenda. In this way, both Val and Gload are aware of how “there seem[s] to be no communion among” men, demonstrated by their withdraw from conventional society.

While Gload attempts to differentiate himself from this metaphorical “gorging” by making a life literally murdering lots of people, Val struggles to find connection with others, and is plagued by the guilt and unresolved feelings from coming upon his mother’s suicide as a child. In this way, Val cannot escape seeing himself as the “one gruesome bird remain[ing]...unable to raise his bloodied wings to fly” or overcome this event’s hold on his psyche. It isn’t until the near end of the novel that Val begins to show signs of self-recovery when he cannot photograph the corpse of a teen girl who took her life by burying herself. For Val, this change in behavior not only represents his acceptance of his mother’s death but also his ability to finally forgive himself from the guilt and misfortune of his discovery of similar scenes. 

Zupan’s critique of the current human condition is reminiscent of Laurence Shames’s “The More Factor” in which he explores our relationship with excess. While Gload is a serial killer, readers can empathize with his rejection of conventional society and him seeking unlikely companionship with Val, which might be what saves Val from getting “swallowed up” by his own despair.