A Study Of The Relationship Between The Individual And The Collective In Doris Lessing’s African Fiction

Doris Lessing is a prominent and prolific contemporary British writer, who is regardedas the “ever-green tree” in British literary circles. Concerning about Lessing’s Africanfiction, the relationship between the individual and the collective is Lessing’s main concern.Lessing believes that “man is both individual and collective”. Her works are mainly abouthow to keep individual’s subjectivity with the influence of the individual and the collectiveon each other. The paper takes the Africa land in The Grass Is Singing, The GoldenNotebook and African Stories as the setting. Concerning about different groups which areignored by critics, the paper explores the problems people living in Africa had to face: theconflict between the native men, the white and the native women. The conflict between theSelf and the Other is applied to analyze the relationship between the individual and thecollective: the relationship between the white and the whole on African land, therelationship between the minority within the white and the white as well as the relationshipbetween the native women and the native men as well as the white. The paper, through theidentity shift between the Self and the Other of the native men, the white women and thewhite, attempts to further analyze the relationship between the individual and the collective.The individual and the collective are in a inharmonious statement and life on African landis in fragmentation.