Uncertainty In Sontag's Death Kit

As a remarkable contemporary American novelist,essayist and literary icon,Susan Sontag is regarded as “The American Public Conscience” and “The Most Intelligent Woman of American”.Along with Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt,she is viewed as one of the most important female intellectuals in the west.Death Kit,published in 1967,is her second novel.It is regarded as one of the most interesting and successful experimental novel in the 1960 s.Critics mainly analyze the theme of the novel from the perspectives of Existentialism and Psychanalysis,while the basic characteristic of postmodernism—indeterminacy reflected in the text has been neglected by most of them.This thesis probes into the uncertainty in the novel mainly based on Hassan's theory postmodernism,focusing on exploring the uncertainty in characters,language and narration,which are indispensable to make the elaborate labyrinth in the novel.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part includes the introduction about the Susan Sontag and the novel Death Kit,the literature review and the theoretic basis.The second part is divided into three chapters.The first chapter explores the uncertainty in three main characters: Diddy,Hester and Incardona through their multiple-faceted,conflicted and ambiguous personalities.The second chapter analyzes the novel from the perspective of language.By experimenting with language,Sontag presents us different kind of fictional worlds.The third chapter probes into the uncertainty in narration,which Sontag has overturns the traditional way to narrate the story.It draws the conclusion that this novel is a typical postmodern work reflecting Sontag's desire of getting rid of the constraint and conventions of traditional writing and her profound concern about the uncertainty of time,life and fate of individual and society.Meanwhile,in a labyrinth of uncertainty,it is impossible for the people who are always reserved to themselves and depending on others to find way out without judgment.