A Study Of The Construction Of Memories In Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road To The Deep North

Richard Flanagan is one of the most prominent contemporary fiction writers in Australia.On14 October 2014,he was awarded the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.It is a signal moment not only in his own career,but also in the international reception of Australian literature.Writings about war is not exactly a rarity in Australia.Richard Flanagan’s novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North is yet another addition to the catalogue of war experience literature.The novel’s anti-war sentiment is far from unique in Australian literature.Its novelty lies in its graphic account of the miserable experience of Australian POWs dying in droves while constructing the railway track,for the Japanese eager to move troops from Thailand through Burma to pave the way for the invasion of India.As Flanagan’s father is one of those prisoners during war time,this novel is written based on his father’s own experience.However,not only the memories of the Australian prisoners,but also that of the Japanese and the national governments of Australia and Japan are presented in the novel.This thesis analyzes the construction of memories from the perspective of cultural memory theory.The thesis consists of three parts.The introduction part reviews the present research on Richard Flanagan and his novels,with a particular focus on his work The Narrow Road to the Deep North.Besides,this part also outlines the theory of memory,laying the solid foundation for the textual analysis.The main body of this thesis analyzes memories of the different subjects,the writing strategies which are adopted by the author to depict these memories,and the relationship between memory and history,before coming to a natural conclusion.Chapter one discusses the different memories of the construction of the railway in the novel.As the victims of the traumatic event,the Australian prisoners’ memories are all of pain and suffering.However,the Japanese,who are the perpetrators,reconstruct their memories to defend themselves.In their memories,they are the qualified Japanese soldiers who try their best to finish the glorious mission given by the Japanese Emperor,and the war victims as well,for the reason that Japan is the only target of nuclear attack.Australian officially-sanctioned memories are also not the same as that of the prisoners.Rather than focusing on the prisoners’ traumatic memories,the national government of Australia prefers to memorize the great war hero,which is considered to be more beneficial to the national identify.Chapter two analyzes the narrative strategies Flanagan adopts to depict those different memories.The narrative focalization of this novel is not fixed.The narrative with third-person zero focalization vividly shows the differences between memories of different subjects.Besides,through multiple internal focalization,the conflict between memories of the Japanese and Australian prisoners is emphasized.The alternating narrative time coincides the features of the victims’ traumatic memories,and more importantly,highlights the conflict between the current national memories and the memories of those prisoners who witnesses the war.Also,the rhetorical device of irony is used by the author to reveal the internal contradictions of the perpetrators’ memories,then deconstruct their legitimization.Chapter three delves into the reasons why there are differences between memories,and the relationship between memory and history.The official memories of both Australia and Japan are voluntary.Australian national memories are sanctified to build a better national identity,focusing only on the war hero instead of the prisoners.In order to escape the blame and maintain the international image,the national government of Japan reconstructs its memories to change the image of wartime Japan from that of a perpetrator to that of a victim.The involuntary memories of the prisoners presented in the novel function as the moral witness to challenge the official memories.The boundary between memory and history is not fixed.Those individual memories,which are covered up by the national narrative,thus can be transformed into the field of history under certain conditions.After analyzing the memories of different subjects,the thesis comes to the conclusion that memory serves as a kind of reconstruction of the past,so the different subjects have different memories.Flanagan’s novel challenges the official historical narrative of both Australia and Japan,aiming to make the prisoners’ memories be well known,and be accepted as a part of history.The best solution to the problems of dealing with the traumatic events is not forgetting,but the so-called dialogic remembering,which transforms a traumatic history of violence into an acknowledgement of guilt.On the basis of this shared knowledge,the two subjects can coexist peacefully,rather than be exposed to the pressure of periodical eruptions of scandals and renewed violence.