A Sartrean Existential Reading Of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road To The Deep North

Richard Flanagan,one of the most prestigious novelists in contemporary Australia,is the third person who has won the Man Booker Prize in the Australian by his sixth novel—The Narrow Road to the Deep North.This novel takes a doctor’s life as main line to tell a story about the Australian prisoners of war building the Death Railway for Japan during the World War Two.Flanagan adopts the multiple narrative perspectives to narrate every character’s life experience,showing his sincere concerns about the human’s existence in the world.Basing on the Sartre’s existentialism theory,this thesis analyzes how the main characters in the novel fall into existential predicaments caused by practicing bad faith to face the absurdity and anguishes in the world and demonstrates the extent to which they achieve self-authenticity by pursuing freedom in making their different self-explorations.By employing Sartre’s existentialist formula,this thesis firstly analyzes how Sartre’s idea that the world is absurd,and the life is anguish is presented,trying to explore the deep reasons for characters’ dropping into the predicaments.And then,the thesis discusses the existential predicaments of characters caused by their practices of bad faith which Sartre believes,is not the real state of human being in the world.Finally,basing on Sartre’s theoretical concepts of “situation” and “authenticity”,this thesis explains the substance of human’s existence from the two aspects of characters’ different self-explorations to the predicaments and the different endings it caused.When confronted with the existential plights,individuals are not powerless,they can break through the plights through positive self-exploration and create the meaning and values of their own life by means of freedom and responsibility.By doing so,they can finally achieve self-authenticity.Otherwise,the negative exploration imprisons individuals in the predicaments forever,eventually they will become the non-authentic existences.Through the analysis of The Narrow Road to the Deep North from the perspective of Sartre’s existentialism,the author’s writing intention and his concerns to the human’s existence in the world can be better presented.For him,everyone is the victim of the war,but only when one actively finds his true self and meanwhile bravely bears all the responsibilities,can he become an authentic existence,achieving the redemption for himself.The Narrow Road to the Deep North is such an existential novel that conveys Flanagan’s appealing to the returning of humanity and true self.