| Margaret Atwood is a writer of great influence in contemporary Canadian literary circles.The Blind Assassin,as one of her masterpieces,won the Booker Prize in 2000,the authoritative British literature award,marking a new level of her creation.Since then,the work has received widespread attention.Throughout the book,it is not difficult to find that death is a recurring theme,for most of the characters in the work end in death.However,critics seldom involve research on the theme of death.In addition,reading Atwood’s works as a whole,we can find that she is a writer with a strong historical consciousness,and this consciousness is also reflected in The Blind Assassin.Based on the above,this thesis studies the death theme of The Blind Assassin from the perspective of New Historicism,following Atwood’s steps into a vast and true space of history and humanity.New Historicism is a method of literary criticism that emerged in the 1980 s.It is committed to lowering capitalized history and pluralizing singular history,advocating that history and text are an intertwined network.Also,it focuses on the power operation system to show people’s survival plight.By studying the death theme of Atwood’s The Blind Assassin from the perspective of New Historicism,readers can further understand the interaction of cultural,social,and historical factors reflected in the novel,and understand the novel’s questioning of the mainstream values of Canadian society.It also shows the author Atwood’s great concern for Canadian nationality and female issues.This thesis is composed of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The main contents are as follows:The first part is introduction.It first briefly introduces Margaret Atwood and The Blind Assassin,then offers a literature review of this novel at home and abroad,and finally puts forward the significance and innovation of this thesis.The second part is the main body,which consists of three chapters:Chapter One explains the death in The Blind Assassin and divides the death types of the characters in the novel.In Atwood’s writings,the types of death can be divided into two dimensions: natural death and unnatural death.Through the presentation of these two ways of death,the author reveals the plight of ordinary people living in Canadian society.Chapter Two discusses the power operation behind death,and explores the root cause of death in depth.Facing oppression,people choose to subvert and resist,but the containment of power makes it impossible for them to achieve substantive results.It can be said that all members of society living under the network of the power operation are the victims of that.The author expresses her humanistic concern for others and her doubts of authority.Chapter Three focuses on the analysis of the effects of death.First of all,death makes people realize their blindness and indifference,and begin to reflect on themselves and learn from it.After that,they criticize the society and express their doubts and dissatisfaction with the mainstream ideology of the society.In the end,they expose the hypocrisy of authority and the lies of the media to the public,and call on the public to wake up and actively pursue freedom and equality.The last part is conclusion.It summarizes the whole thesis.Through the research on the death theme of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin,it is believed that Atwood is a writer with great historical consciousness and humanistic care.On the one hand,when describing the death event,the author shows the social and personnel picture of an era through various appearances of death,giving the novel a strong sense of historical reality.On the other hand,by constructing a close connection between death and history,the author deeply reflects the people’s survival plight under the social background at that time,trying to awaken people’s clear understanding of their own living environment,and at the same time permeates her concern and thinking about Canadian nationality and female issues. |
PDF Full Text Request