Image Study

In A Confederacy of Dunces, images did not prove an extremely important role, but they were there throughout. The main purpose of the images in the book was to show the oddities of the characters – mainly Ignatius, the massive hero of the novel. Four of the images I have selected characterize Ignatius: his Belch, his Fat, his hot dogs and his fat. (For the record, I am aware that that rhymed.) The fifth characterizes a smaller character in the novel, Burma Jones: Smoke.

Let’s start with Burma’s Smoke:

Throughout the novel, Jones never spoke. He never said or yelled or asked or screamed, he blew smoke. For example, when he was at a bar he normally attended the book says how he “aimed some smoke over the bar, ‘I mean I’m glad…’” to be more explicit, the book illustrates Jones’ speaking by evoking some image of his release of smoke. This was simply used, but frequently used, because Jones always seemed to be smoking.

Next comes ole’ Iggy. Ignatius is a huge man with horrible acid reflux and an odd sense of fashion and choice of work. Toole used images to display these grotesque features in Ignatius.

First is his green hat. Ignatius wears this odd green hunting hat, much like the one worn by Elmur Fudd. When he gets a job at the hot dog vendor and is required to wear a ridiculous pirate costume, he concedes to wear all of the costume except the pirate hat. He wears his normal hunting hat even with the pirate costume. This leads into the next image, the Paradise Hot Dog. Paradise Hot Dogs is the hot dog vendor where Ignatius is employed in the later parts of the novel. He consumes so many of these hot dogs during each of the shifts that hew works that he leaves work sometimes with less than a dollar wage. These hot dogs represent his basic world view: success is not attained through money, or happiness. It is attained through living with medieval morals. He is highly educated, yet he chooses to work selling hot dogs. Next come the image of his burps. Often, like with Jones’ smoke, the author says that Ignatius “belches” or “burps” his comments. This adds to Ignatius’ disgusting appearance, since he would never dare to upset his valve and hold in a burp when he is in the company of other people, or as he sees them, “Mongoloids.” Lastly is Ignatius’ huge being, his fatty content, his beer-less beer belly. Whenever people first lay their eyes on Ignatius they notice his size. He is massive, and through the novel he himself notes (not self-consciously I might add) “My stomach is getting out of bounds; the seems of my vendor’s smock are creaking ominously.”

All of these images are employed to the eccentricity, if I may, of the characters. They point out the flaws in ways that only a third person point of view may note, seeing as they come from the eyes of many of the other characters.