Exploration Of Self-identity:The Theme Of Escape In Runaway

Alice Munro,a short story writer from Canada,has fourteen short-story collections and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.In Runaway,her later work,Munro focuses on the theme of female escape which has drawn much attention from the international literary world.She uses concise language to describe the stories of women in different classes and different age.Suffering from both physical and mental oppression,they choose to escape from their boring life,but they have to return to the reality finally due to all kinds of attachments.This thesis analyzes the process of protagonists' exploration of self-identities from different perspectives.As the title indicates,this short-story collection highly summarizes the theme that Munro wants to express.By taking Runaway as the research object,this thesis aims to explore different protagonists' spiritual progress between escape and return from the perspective of the escape theme through the detailed analysis of the text.This thesis includes three chapters besides the introduction and conclusion.The introduction part firstly gives a brief introduction on Alice Munro and her works,presents the studies concerning Munro and her works both at home and abroad,and then explores the cultural context of the Canadian identity and the life experience of Munro and reveals the Canadians' confusion of self-identity and their desires to escape.The first chapter discusses the women who escape from their original families.Though the biological family construct individual's self-identity,the female protagonists in Runaway can't feel love and belongingness in it.Thus,they choose to escape from it to pursue their new lives.The second chapter concerns the women who escape from sexual relationship.While Carla wants to get rid of male authority,Grace wishes to pursue a free life due to dissatisfaction with the harmonious sexual relationship.However,both of them failed due to nostalgia and compromise.The third chapter deals with women's escape from self-restraint.Juliet,Robin and Tessa,though with different gifts and hobbies,are not accepted by their familiars.Therefore,they choose to gain self-identities somewhere else though escape,but all of them go to self-destruction in the process of escape.The last part is the conclusion which reveals that the theme of escape runs throughout the process of women's quest for self-identities in Runaway.Although all the escapes fail,an opportunity is provided for the female protagonists to learn more about themselves and they have an overall recognition of self-identity through escape so that they can deal with their confusions positively.