Uses of Violence

In this course, we’ll explore the use of violence in short stories and fiction. We’ll look
at how violence, be it emotional, political, or physical, can serve to develop conflict
and character in fiction. How does fictional violence serve to disrupt and unsettle
not only the narrative, but the reader as well? To explore this, we’ll move from the
philosophical exploration of violence in works by Dostoyevsky and Moravia to the
more raucous display in Cormac McCarthy’s Westerns and Highsmith and
Thompson’s noirs, from the repressed, lurking violence in short stories by writers
Such as Carver and Gaitskill to the textual violence found in postmodern writers like
Acker. Along the way, we’ll meet assassins, prisoners, skinheads, schoolgirls, and
gangsters. How and why do these characters excite or repel us? How far can we
push the characters in our own fiction, and how far should we? How can violence
illuminate the larger political or societal forces that exist in specific moments of
history? How does violence in fiction create an often unexpected, yet deeply
significant, catharsis and consequence?