Journey Of Self-searching-on Carver’s Short Stories In The Light Of Lacanian Theory

Raymond Carver focuses on the revelation of the blue-collar family problems,especially the emotional problems in marriage. Critics both home and abroad are dedicatedto the studies on Carver’s writing style or contents. However, fewer researchers aredevoted to the exploration of the dynamic construction of the protagonists’ psyche.This paper employs Lacan’s famous theoretical concepts in the Theory of Mirror Stageand The Theory of Desire to explore the dynamic ego-construction of Carver’s characters.Through the analysis of Carver’s short stories, this paper attempts to draw the tentativeconclusion that driven by the sense of lack, namely desire, the protagonists in Carver’sfictional world are going through three distinctive ways of self-searching: narcissisticself-searching, aggressive self-searching and alienating self-searching. However, theconstruction of ego-ideal is a dynamic but infinite life journey.This paper provides a new perspective to the interpretation of Carver’s fictional world.To some extent，carver’s stories reflect the problems existing in the readers’ real life. Thus,there is still much space to probe into from the psychoanalytical approach, especially fromthe perspective of desire.