Miserable Fusion: Deconstructive Strategies As Observed In The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four And Five Under Textual And Narrative Analysis

The complicated background of Doris Lessing with immigration and multi-culture has differentiated the features of her writing from regionalism. She has never ceased to think about life and future of human beings. She converts her writing to the field of science fiction in her later years, where she attempts to seek the exit for the divided civilization. The Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five is result from her search.Space fiction is a specific type of writing Lessing invented. Due to the abundance of her writing, researchers on her works have emerged one after another. However, only a few studies on her space fiction for many researchers regard them as worthlessness. In fact, most of her writings at her earlier life stage are taken as Bildungsroman and are loose in structure. As a matter of fact, both the writing skills and the theme of her space fiction in this period have reached a new height. As a typical mythological novel among the space fiction series Canopus in Argos:Archives, the Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five is full of the warning and prophecy.Deconstruction is a sort of strategy invented by linguist Jacques Derrida to dismantle the meaning of language. It is employed to dispel the logos-centric items among a set of binary oppositions to liberate thoughts of man. The advocators of deconstruction deem all candidates for the literal can be shown to be metaphorical. The concept of "the death of author" is precisely in accordance with the notion of "implied author" in some studies of narratology. The setting of character, plot and even background contain metaphorical meaning to provide more clues for a grander theme. Lessing avoids the omniscient viewpoint in narration and converts the narrative perspective to seek for a theme in depth.This dissertation aims to research how Lessing dismantles the traditional logos-center to bridge the divided civilization. Under the textual analysis, this dissertation explores how Lessing deconstructs the West-Centrism and dispels the meaning of civilization and men's Utopia. Through the settings of zones, Lessing obscures the boundary between east and west to further deconstruct the West-Centrism. Lessing builds some binary images and displays various conflicts by means of "Marriage". The way she presents the conflicts is the way she deconstructs the civilization. Lessing constructs women's Utopia and deconstructs the function of motherhood to counter the traditional men's Utopia written by male writer. In the narrative, Lessing displays the story via the voice of a Chronicler who is not really omniscient in perspective. To express the painful process of cultural fusion, Lessing switches the narrative perspective from the Chronicler to others, thus the third person voice is deconstructed.