| William Golding is a great British novelist in the twentieth century.His novels,with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art,illuminate the human condition.In Golding's works,the language is plain while the content is deep.The plot of the novel is usually not eventful or colorful,but profound and thought provoking.As an anti-utopian writer,Golding constantly explores the existence of human beings in many of his works,and explains his thoughts on freedom and suppression.He is good at describing the bright and dark side of human nature,analyzing the cause of the tragedy,and weaving his ideal of a better life in the works.Darkness Visible is such a work.The novel consists of two protagonists,one is Matty,an orphan suffering from the Second World War,the other is a beautiful,wealthy girl Sophy.Matty represents the light of human nature and Sophy represents the darkness of human nature.In a series of struggle between brightness and darkness,the brightness finally overcomes the darkness.In the novel,the anti-utopian argument is sound.When utopian literature attempts to depict a beautiful picture of society,anti-utopian literature brings people to hell and shows utopianism is conceptually flawed.Golding interprets his understanding of freedom and truth in the novel.Standing on the opposite side of utopia,his novel gives a broad condemnation on utopianism.This thesis studies the anti-utopian theme of Darkness Visible,resorting to the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin's theory of pluralism and freedom and placing the novel against the tradition of British anti-utopian literature.The first chapter introduces the background and status of research on William Golding's Darkness Visible.It summarizes the comprehensive survey of researches at home and abroad and the main contents and academic significance of this study are introduced.In the second chapter,this thesis summarizes the development and the main themes of the anti-utopian literatures in the United Kingdom.At the same time,it explains the causes of William Golding's anti utopian thought.In the third chapter,Isaiah Berlin's theory of pluralism is exploited to construct arguments on utopian monism in the novel.This thesis reveals Golding's satire on monism in the novel and also analyzes the causes of the victory of pluralism theory.Starting from the view of Isaiah Berlin's freedom theory,the fourth chapter distinguishes positive freedom and negative freedom and reveals Golding's criticism of utopian freedom.It is palpable that utopia advocates the positive freedom which is the very suppression of freedom.The fifth chapter studies the theme of anti-eschatology in Darkness Visible.In the novel,Golding illustrates the empty and blind optimism of utopian eschatology.Also,he discusses the salvation in the novel and overthrows mono-theism in eschatology.He highlights that salvation is human-oriented,rather than God.In the conclusion part,this thesis summarizes Golding's negative ideas on utopia in Darkness Visible,reaffirming its anti-utopian themes and the desire on reconstruction of a civil society.William Golding shows his exploration on human nature and his deep concern over social and national development,all of which have far-reaching implications for contemporary social construction and human development. |
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