Lost Love In Disordered Order

Margaret Atwood is a renowned contemporary Canadian writer.As one of the most prolific Canadian writers,she is hailed as “Queen of Canadian Literature”.Most of her novels involve her excellent writing skills and give a glimpse into widely focused social problems,hence provoking heated public discussions.The Heart Goes Last is Atwood's sixteenth novel,in which she portrays the survival of Stan and Charmaine with a focus on their life in the town of Consilience,thus reflecting their loss of love in the disordered environment.The thesis attempts to explore the ethical narrative of The Heart Goes Last from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and narratology.Firstly,it analyzes ethical confusion of social system,technology,medicine and sex in the environment and points out that such disordered environment gradually causes the alienation of the two protagonists.Secondly,the thesis explores the ethical predicament and choice of the characters.The two protagonists make ethical selection respectively in different ethical predicaments.Charmaine's three ethical choices and Stan's two ethical choices all reflect their ethical attitudes and different personalities.Finally,the thesis examines ethical narrative in the structure and voice.In the novel,Atwood adopts the structure of “two ethical lines,several ethical knots” and the thought-provoking open ending to imply the ethical themes and ideas of the novel.Besides,in order to further clarify how the complicated gender relationship is unavoidably distorted in the ethical confusion,Atwood combines the alternate narrative perspective with mental description and unemotional narrative voice.The thesis ultimately draws the conclusion that The Heart Goes Last is filled with ethical phenomena and ethical elements,and the ethical theme of it is the loss of love in the disordered order.In the novel,the value of ethical narrative expresses itself in its warning to people in the real world about the ethical disorder in the fictional world,which represents Atwood's profound thought on the development of contemporary human society and human relationship.