Disorientation:An Archetypal Approach To Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Salman Rushdie,a winner of Booker Prize for Fiction,made his first geographic shift in his writing career from the Indian subcontinent to the western world by the novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet.It is partly a story of emigration,of the loss of the city Bombay,the country India,or even the East,which is described by Rushdie as "disorientation" in the very first chapter of this novel.He rewrites the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,using plot,character,and setting and imagery archetypes as a trope to point both to the situation of the artists and the external world,which results in the characters’ internal and external disorientation as well as the loss of the East,attempting a redefinition of postcolonial migrant identity reconstruction,etc.This thesis sets out to investigate the complex ways in which the archetypes are employed to shed light on the mental worlds of the creative artists and whereby on the theme of "disorientation" and identity reconstruction that is the major task of the postcolonial migration in modern times.Via the analysis of archetypes in the novel from perspectives of plot,character and setting,the author will probe into how,transcending the limitations of time and space,eluding the basis of binary opposition of human language and thought,Rushdie is able to enhance the novel’s readability and its artistic charm,as well as to convey his ideas and concerns about "reorientation".