The Character’s Identity Construction In Modiano’s Novels

In the 1960s,Patrick Modiano started to make his appearance in the french literary.He wined the Nobel Literature Price at 2014 and became the fourteenth winner of France.There is a long-lasting theme in Modiano’s novels-the theme of character’s identity construction.In his novels,lots of characters are trapped in identity dilemma,and they can’t find their identity by some particular reasons.At the early stage of his career,Modiano paid attention to real identities such as nationality and occupation.At the later period,he expanded the scope and meaning of identity,and he fastened his eyes on character’s social relationship and isolation.Rue des Boutiques Obscures and Accident Nocturene are the representations of two periods on the issue of identity.The protagonist of Rue des Boutiques Obscures,Guy Roland,lost all his identity information because memory loss,and the protagonist of Accident Nocturene,"I",wanted to get rid of the chaos which caused his identity problem,so they had to march on the way to build their identity.This paper takes Rue des Boutiques Obscures and Accident Nocturene for examples,searching the identity construction of characters in Modiano’s novels those are under different identity scope and background.In Rue des Boutiques Obscures and Accident Nocturene,the three major dilemmas that Guy and "I" get into are:identity breakage,multiple identity,sense of nihility.The process of identity construction includes psychological,behavioral and deep-seated allegories of character’s identity construction.On behavioral aspect,finding identity makes characters obtain testify of being.On psychological aspect,it allows characters acquire complete cognition about themselves.These two aspects jointly make up self-identity.Those deep-seated allegories means series of profound paradoxes and ontology that Modiano unfolds behind the theme or phenomenon of identity.The whole process of character’s identity construction emerges three paradoxes:reality and illusion,remember and forget,deconstruction and construction.The results of character’s identity building reflect Modiano’s exploration of ontology which is dialectical relationship between ego and the other in his novels.