Remodeling Of Family Ethics In Graham Swift’s Last Orders

Last Orders,as the Booker Prize winner of 1996,is a masterpiece of contemporary British writer Graham Swift.The novel has distinct ethical dimension in content,showing profound concern for real life.Therefore,this thesis probes into the remodeling of family ethics in Last Orders by analyzing family ethical environment,ethical identities and ethical choices of characters contained in the story from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and in combination of Zygmunt Bauman’s postmodern ethics.Based on research theme and content,the thesis first focuses on the primal ethical environment of the Dodds family to interpret the factors that influence family ties and the fates of characters,including rigid family order,fragile marital tie and disrupted parent-child relation.Then,it analyzes confused ethical identities of the two protagonists Vince and Amy,examining their struggles and loss in ambivalence by revealing identity problems.Finally,ethical choices made by characters through ethical reflection are discussed.Vince ends his rebellion and restores his family ethical relationships,while Amy gets rid of her roles of traditional family ethics for independent personality and value.They remodel family ethics through choice and find their own spiritual home.This thesis tries to disclose that individuals examine ethical relationship and develop moral selves in ambivalence when modern family ethics comes to a conspicuous crisis.Finally,the remodeled family ethics has the manifestation of both traditional emotion ties and individual freedom,which provides an attempt to cure the defects of modern ethics.