How would I start to answer 'In Angela Carter's Wise Children, how far does the character of Peregrine embody the carnivalesque?'?

Paragraph 1: Throughout Angela Carter’s Wise Children, the character of Peregrine is described in absurd and fantastical terms. One of the main aspects of his appearance Carter hones in on is his size. He is described as ‘the size of a warehouse, no bigger, the size of a tower block.’ Taken metaphorically, this could suggest that Peregrine has a larger than life personality, and therefore possesses the vibrancy and chaos needed to embody the carnivalesque. However, one of the most prominent techniques employed by Carter in this work is magical realism, and so one could argue that Peregrine is perhaps physically unusual, as this description is but one example of the ways that normalcy is stretched in this novel. This boundary pushing again embodies the carnivalesque, as it implies that Peregrine exists outside of the traditional limits of society.

Paragraph 2: Carter even makes the link between Peregrine and the carnivalesque explicit, describing him using the metaphor of a ‘travelling carnival.’ Yet, one of the most significant tenets of the carnivalesque is subversion, and neither the reader nor Dora is greatly surprised by the behaviour of Peregrine throughout the work. The use of the word ‘travelling’ by Carter illustrates his flighty and unreliable nature; the protagonists do not see him for years on end, and his romantic and familial entanglements (including the problematic places they cross over) are easily dropped, and picked up at a later date. In a novel in which one of the main themes in absent fatherhood, an inconstant father-figure is anything but subversive, and thus cannot be carnivalesque.