On The Absence Of The Care For Others Behind The Emotional Abuse In Runaway

Alice Munro(1931-),the 2013 Nobel Prize winner in literature,is widely considered as the greatest contemporary Canadian short-story writer.Her masterpiece Runaway(2004)won Giller Prize in 2004 and Man Booker International Prize in 2009.This novel collection is noted for its insightful realistic angle,irony-tinged skill and sharp yet unobtrusive description which deal with the daily life of underclass.By describing those people's living predicament and psychological state,Runaway reveals the staleness,degeneration and darkness of modern civilization.Plenty of academic attention has been paid to Munro's narrative arts,feminist thoughts,archetypal analysis and theme etc.However,there are few studies that thoroughly examine the emotional abuses and the ethical issue of the Other in Runaway.The author of this thesis finds there are a lot of descriptions of emotional abuses in Runaway.To be specific,the emotional abuses mainly conduct by words,looks,gestures,or in writing that infringes upon the personality,the dignity or the psychical integrity of a person.After dissecting the emotional abuses in Runaway,the thesis holds the view that those phenomena originate from the absence of the care for the Other,including the loss of the ethical responsibility to the Other and the repression on Otherness.This point of view can be seen in two elements: plot and characterization.Therefore,by using Lévinas' s Ethics of Other as the theoretical backing,the thesis aims to elaborate on Munro's care for Others behind phenomena of emotional abuses in“Runaway”,“Chance”,“Soon”,“Silence” “Trespasses” and “Tricks”,and to draw the ethical inspiration from Munro to the modern civilized people.The thesis is divided into three parts,namely an introduction,a two-chapter main body and a conclusion.In the first part,an introduction to Alice Munro and Runaway,literature review,thesis statement,an introduction of theory,explanations of key terms and thesis structure are included.The main body contains two chapters.Chapter one explores the phenomena of emotional abuses in plots to highlight the loss of the ethical responsibility to the Other in interpersonal relationships.Interpersonal relationship is ethical relationship,which is built upon the ethical responsibility to require the Self to respond to the Other's calling.While in the development of those plots of “Chance”,“Runaway”,“Soon”,“Silence”,and “Trespasses”,people in partnership,conjugal relationship and kinship fail to shoulder their due responsibilities during the process of emotional abuses.Chapter two demonstrates the repression on the Otherness based on the characterization of emotional abusers and tries to find out the nature of the abusers.In“Runaway”,“Tricks”,“Chance”,“Silence” and “Trespasses”,the emotional abusers are subdivided into abnormal abusers,invisible abusers and apathetic audiences.Under those abusers' different impacts,the Other is not allowed to exist and all otherness are reduced to the sameness.From above analysis,the study comes to the conclusion that the phenomenon of emotional abuse originates from the absence of the care for Others.By revolving around social weaker groups and revealing various emotional abuses they loaded in daily life,Munro implicitly and earnestly exposes the uncivilized existence in modern civilization and indicates an ethical redemption for human beings: to heal the abuse-saturated world with respect,responsibility and care.For the significance,academically,prior to this study,there has not been one that analyzes the emotional abuses in Runaway by using Emmanuel Lévinas' s Ethics of the Other.Therefore,the thesis has a certain innovation.Realistically,people in modern era are still confronted with brutality,torture and injustice,the thesis aims to lead people to rethink the driving forces of those great problems and to unfold the moral enlightenment that Munro delivers: only when the Self shows unconditional care and shoulders ethical responsibilities to the Other in their encounter,justice and peace in the world would be possible.