On The Alienation In The Society Of The Spectacle In England,England

Julian Barnes is one of the British writers of international repute nowadays,and has been acclaimed as one of the threes giants in British literary circles,together with Martin Amis and Ian Mc Ewan.In 2011 he was awarded the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending.His works mostly revolve around the theme of love,history,truth,death and so on,reflecting a deep concern for human beings.England,England was published in 1998 and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in the same year.In the novel,Barnes creates with imagination the future of Britain based on the current situation of his motherland,which shows the profound analysis of the capitalist society greatly influenced by consumerism and the living conditions of the people within it.This thesis attempts to analyze the alienation in the society of the spectacle constructed in the novel with the critical theory of the society of the spectacle and the concept of alienation.The society of the spectacle is in essence full of alienation.The alienation of time is revealed through the analysis of the way characters live their lives in societies with spectacular time and cyclical time respectively,which reflects the false living conditions of them.And by establishing an emotional intimacy with the heroine Martha,Paul,a member of the project,constantly tries to overcome the alienation between himself and his own labor in leisure time so as to pursue his true self.In terms of the alienation of space,the construction of theme park “England,England” is completely driven by capital,which leads to the opposition between the space and human nature.Meanwhile,the operation of power in the structure of panopticon causes a general identity crisis of employees on the island.Through the continual adjustment of the way of getting along with the people around her and the questioning of her personal identity,Martha tries to get rid of the alienation between man and nature and between individuals.The alienation of culture focuses on the distortion of the way national cultural heritage of England is presented under the influence of consumerism and its deconstruction of traditional Englishness.Martha actively pays attention to the nature of history and things with cultural connotations in the theme park in this process.Meanwhile,she promotes the restoration of folklore in her twilight years as a witness to the vanished British folklore and attempts to construct her identity from the national level.The alienation in the novel reflects Barnes’ concern about the plight of individuals and the cultural crisis in England greatly influenced by consumerism.Although the characters’ resistance to the alienation of various dimensions all ends in failure,the heroine Martha’s unremitting pursuit of self-identity,which deserves more attention,confirms Barnes’ firm belief in the progress of human society.