The Research Of Initiation Theme In The Autograph Man By Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a new star in English ethnic minority literature and has attracted widespread attention with her debut White Teeth.As a productive writer,she pays close attention to issues like immigrants and ethnic minorities.Her second novel The Autograph Man portrays the living dilemma of the protagonist Alex Li Tandem in modern London.Today,with the development of pluralism and globalization,people around the world are facing cultural exchanges and conflicts.As an ethnic minority in multi-cultural London,the protagonist was faced with more challenges and difficulties in initiation due to his distinctions with the mainstream white culture.Smith sharply captured the problems of the growth of minority teenagers in the context of globalization.Her work The Autograph Man was written in the context of interracial and intercultural globalization.By setting the background in London,she observed the growth of interracial teenagers from a global perspective,which provided more space for interpreting the growth of teenagers in the modern world.Based on Bakhtin?s initiation theory,the thesis firstly discusses the protagonist?s growth objectively from the perspectives of space and time.Then,by combining culture factors in the process of the protagonist?s growth,the living predicaments that the ethnic minority young people are facing in modern society is probed and revealed.At last,by incorporating the elements in traditional initiation story writing,this thesis argues the initiation theme in The Autograph Man from the point of writing techniques.All these efforts are made to provide a new angle in the study of Smith?s works.This thesis takes The Autograph Man as the research object,Bakhtin's initiation theory as the theoretical basis,and combines close reading to explore the initiation theme in the book.By tracing the hardships and struggles that the protagonist Alex endured during his growth,the author will place the protagonist under the environment of globalization and discuss the process of his initiation.