A Deconstructionist Analysis Of Donald Barthelme's Snow White

Postmodernism, which is a complicated term or set of ideas, has emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-20^th century and especially in America. Postmodern novels are widely accepted by readers around that period. Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) is widely recognized in the United States as one of the major figures in contemporary postmodernism. He is a key and central experimental writer who is good at juxtaposing incongruous elements of the contemporary language and culture in order to make his stories humorous and unsettling. Believing that traditional forms and structures of art and literature are inadequate for expressing the special needs and concerns of the modem world, Barthelme has tried to promote new writing techniques. His works reflect his belief that "the principle of collage is the central principle of all art in the twentieth century in all media" (Bellamy 47). He boldly tries the modern techniques like fragmentation, collage and nonlinear narrative, joining playful form, extreme fancy and daily routines to disclose the nature of anti-fairy tale of the modern life: nihilism, vulgarity and the doomed failure of the heroes.His Snow White is the representative work of experimental fictions. It is a parody of the world-renowned Grimm's fairy tale Snow White. Barthelme adopts the techniques of collage and fragmentation to retell the story, standing on the basic plot of the latter one with characters a little different from those in the fable. His Snow White is no longer a pure love story of prince and princess. These writing techniques offer us a new perspective to understand postmodernism and Barthelme's works. Barthelme's writing is characterized by the absence of plot and character development, disjointed syntax and dialogue, parodies of techniques, intellectual jargon and cliches. With the help of the characterization and the invention of language and structure, Barthelme expresses his own opinions on the issues of postmodern lives, such as plural culture and world concern.This thesis is intended to analyze Snow White from the deconstructionist perspective and shows the deconstructive nature of the novel in three aspects including the textual form, the meaning of language and the textual content. Deconstructive criticism which sprang up from 1960s opposes logocentrism and phonocentrism, denies the existence of any hierarchy, structure, or ultimate value and meaning, and seeks after intertextuality and playfulness, which are fully embodied in Barthelme's works. The thesis contains three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. Its main body consists of three chapters in all.Chapter One attempts to illustrate the center-dissolving strategy applied by Barthelme to deconstruct the textual form. The philosophic tradition is based on the dualism of binary oppositions, that is, logocentrism. By subverting the binary, Derrida destabilizes the hierarchy and thus dissolves the existence of center. The analysis will show that the form of postmodern works is quite different from the traditional form and meanwhile disclose the nature of anti-plot shown in Snow White. Some postmodern techniques to manifest the nature of anti-plot include collage, fragmentation and confused narrative perspectives.Chapter Two deconstructs Snow White from the perspective of the meaning of language on the two levels: language strategies and tropology. All meanings are only meanings in reference to, and in distinction from, other meanings; there is no meaning in any stable or absolute sense. Meanings are multiple, changing and contextual. In his Snow White, Barthelme makes language untrustworthy, thus challenging the conventional hierarchies of meaning and stressing the indeterminacy of the text.The last chapter shows how Barthelme employs parody as a strategy to deconstruct the textual content in Snow White. The author parodies Grimm's Snow White from the aspects of structure, story and characters, undermining the traditional image of hero in the fairy tale and revealing that the centre of traditional moral education has shifted in the postmodern ideology, from center to edge, from integrity to fragments, and from meaning to nihility.In conclusion, with his deconstructive strategies, Barthelme successfully deconstructs the textual form, the meaning of language and the textual content of his postmodern novel, Snow White. This thesis successfully illustrates the theme of anti-tradition, anti-plot, anti-fairy tale and anti-hero in Snow White and meanwhile reveals the chaos of the postmodern world.