On The Cultural Semiotic Meaning Of Loneliness In Dirt Music

Hailed as the living treasure of Australia, Tim Winton has won Miles Franklin Award four times(the highest literary prize of Australia) and has been twice shortlisted for the nominations of British Man Booker Prize. As a well-acclaimed writer, Winton is second to Peter Carey in Australian contemporary literature in the international stage. Besides, he is honored as Cormac Mc Carthy of Australia. Most of his works are set in the Western Australia and concerned with the struggling state of marginal people. In addition, he devotes himself to social activities of ecological protection, which shows strong sense of responsibility as a great writer. What’s more, his language is tinted with the color of prosaic beauty, and the themes of his works focus on loneliness, ecology, religion, existentialism and transcendentalism.Dirt Music is the seventh novel written by Tim Winton. Published in 2001, this work made a stir in literary area and helps him win good reputation. Dirt Music mainly tells three people who are entangled in triangular relations and thus experiencing endless suffering and struggle. In the process of revenge, these three people introspect themselves and gradually understand the true meaning of life. By close reading, it is not hard to find that loneliness is one of the keywords and themes of this novel. Winton explores the complicated meaning of loneliness from the perspective of society, psychology and ecology under the background of the whole society. In his eyes, loneliness does not merely refer to the common emotional experience, but also contains various metaphorical meanings between people and themselves, people and nature, people and society. The theme of loneliness in Dirt Music is different from the lingual sign proposed by Saussure, but contains abundant cultural connotations. As one representative of existential perplexities, what is the cause of loneliness? What does the cultural meaning it contains? How do we understand loneliness in modern society? These questions are the research points of this thesis.This thesis consists of five parts:The introduction mainly introduces Tim Winton and his work, Dirt Music, theory of cultural semiotics and literature review. Chapter One mainly analyzes the social semiotic meaning of loneliness from the other walking in the crowd, the wander entangled with the past secret, and the escapee seeking special freedom, and thereby getting the further understanding of loneliness caused by the imbalance between people and society. Chapter Two concentrates on the psychological meaning of loneliness from Freud’s personality structure, which deals with the unstable relationships between ego, superego and id. Chapter Three aims to explore the ecological meaning of loneliness from the conflict between people and nature to return to nature, eventually to get merged with nature as oneness so as to acquire the poetic inhabitation. The conclusion part summarizes the three semiotic meanings of loneliness in Dirt Music. Loneliness doesn’t only result from the imbalance of interpersonal relationships, but also is the metaphor of the disharmony between people and themselves, between people and nature. The intention of the modern Odyssey in Dirt Music is that people should understand loneliness from the cultural dimension, only in this way can they get rid of alienation and acquire real happiness and freedom.