Indeterminacy: The Characteristic Of Postmodernism In Water For Elephants

Water for Elephants，the best seller around the world, is the masterpiece of thecontemporary American writer Sarah Gruen. The novel narrates an appalling and romanticlove story which happened in an American traveling circus with three persons and an elephantin1930s from the perspective of post-modernist narrative art. The novel reflects the delicaterelationship among people during the Great Depression and constructs a novel filled withgrassroots’ life experience and true feelings of human beings. In the novel, the characteristicof indeterminacy of post-modernism is well embodied.This thesis consists of three parts.The first chapter is a brief introduction of Sarah Gruen and her masterpiece Water forelephants. This chapter focuses on the author and her novel (her life, creation, text, andfeatures) and the research of the status of Water for elephants at home abroad; based on theliterature review, the characteristics of indeterminacy in postmodern novels is discussed. Thesecond chapter is the analysis of indeterminacy in Water for Elephants: the theme, the plot,the images and the language, revealing the fictional essence of the novel. The third chapterfocuses on the detailed cultural interpretation of the indeterminacy embodied in Water forelephants. It aims to interpret the characteristics of indeterminacy from three perspectives: theCircus: multidimensional symbols in the paradoxical image；the Elephant: multiple meaningsof personality image；and Jacob: multiple shifts of “I” as a narrator’s. Human sadness andlove can be showed in Elephant’s tears, and its indeterminacy characteristics imply some kindof determinacy.The indeterminacy is one of the basic characteristics of postmodern literature. Water forElephants, as a postmodern novel, shows the narrative features of postmodernism and theauthor’s unique artistic skills by using the rich and open implications and meaningful artisticforms.