Historical Representation And Ethical Expression:A Thematic Analysis Of Death Writing In Alice Munro's Major Short Stories

Widely acclaimed for her extraordinary talent in writing short stories,the Canadian writer Alice Munro,up to now,has written thirteen short story collections and one novel,some of which were Dance of the Happy Shades,Open Secrets,Too Much Happiness and Lives of Girls and Women.Munro's works often focus on the daily life of ordinary people,and she is particularly concerned about the life experience and living conditions of ordinary women.The winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 made Munro rise to the upper echelons of the literary world,and the continued interest in her works showed no sign of abating ever since at both home and abroad.However,little attention is paid to the death writing in her works,which is obviously a recurring theme if examined carefully.In addition,even though some researchers made attempts to interpret Munro's works by using Ethical Literary Criticism as an approach,they failed to make it systematic and comprehensive because more often than not,they based their analyses on one piece of work.The thesis examines how Alice Munro expresses her historical consciousness and ethical care in her major stories from different stages of her writing career.It falls into five chapters.To start with,the first chapter gives a general introduction of Alice Munro and elaborates on the previous studies of Munro and her works abroad and at home.Also,the research goals and framework of present study are included.Next comes the body part of the thesis,consisting of three chapters.Chapter Two is devoted to death writing in Munro's major short stories,in which different types of death,including natural death,accidental death and murder,as well as the imageries of death,such as rain,snow,water and funerals are discussed.It turns out that Alice Munro focuses much on the deaths of ordinary people from small towns to express her understanding and thinking of life and death.In her works,the sick body is often an omen to natural death,and the deaths of the sick usually put an end to the suffering and shame the living felt;accidental death can best show the impermanence of life,and thus often change the life trajectory of the living and produce some kind of epiphany in them;and murder as the secret of the living,behindoften lies the pain and violence women suffered.And the oft-used imagery of death in Munro's stories,in most cases,plays the role of rendering the atmosphere,indicating the tragedy of death or covering up the crime of murder.In Chapter Three,the relationship between death and history is examined.The deaths of individuals in Munro's works serve as a window to read the history of personal growth,familial vicissitudes and national struggle.Munro looks back at history by writing about death,which enables her protagonists to build a connection to the past,prompting them to inquire into the meaning of their existences.The first section of this chapter discusses how deaths in “Dimensions” and “Child's Play”(from Too Much Happiness)connect the past and the present,and unfold a story that has long gone.In “Heirs of the Living Body”(from Lives of Girls and Women),we get a glimpse of the history of the protagonists and the author herself through Uncle Craig's death,and the protagonists' fear of death and the questioning of the circumstances of death are revealed.Also,deaths in The View from Castle Rock,“A Wilderness Station”(from Open Secrets)and “Chaddeleys and Flemings”(from The Moons of Jupiter)provide us with another possibility of reading the vast history of Munro's family and of Canada as a nation,where the early immigrant settlers' identity perplexity and status anxiety caused by the “in-betweenness” in the course of pioneering and colonial history find full expression.Chapter Four is to make an explanation of ethical expression behind Munro's death writing from the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism.Based on close reading of such specific texts as “The Time of Death”(from Dance of the Happy Shades),“Dimensions”(from Too Much Happiness),“Fits”(from The Progress of Love),“Meneseteung”(from Friend of My Youth)and “Comfort”(from Hateship,Friendship,Courtship,Loveship,Marriage),the thesis analyzes how death writing in these stories reflects the negligence of ethical responsibility as a husband/wife,a parent or a daughter as well as women's existential predicament,to illustrate,domestic violence,spiritual trauma and ethical loneliness.Moreover,the characters' ethical choices in “The Love of A Good Woman”(from The Love of a Good Woman)are scanned.The thesis states that Mr.Willens' death and that of Mrs' Quinn are the result of their immoral ethical choices.Finally,Chapter Five draws a conclusion of the present study.Through the historical and ethical interpretation of death writing in Munro's major stories,it is believed that Munro's works have a strong sense of history and are of tremendous ethical aesthetics.On one hand,through the lens of death,Munro connects the pastwith the present,the dead with the living,and encompasses the now-distant personal history of the protagonists and the author herself,the history of her Laidlaw branch of the family tree as well as the pioneering and colonial history of Canada as a nation;On the other hand,Munro shows the complexity and ambiguity of ethics and human nature by writing about death,expressing her profound understanding of life and death and also her great concern over female's living conditions and well-being,which make her works achieve aesthetic and ethical transcendence and be of universal significance.