Absurdity,Alienation And Free Choice-an Interpretation Of The Existence Predicaments In NW From The Perspective Of Sartre’s Existentialism

As a new star shining in English literature,Zadie Smith has published five novels so far.The novel NW is the second book of her “Northwest London Trilogy”.Once published,it received great attention and was selected as one of the top ten books by the New York Times in 2012.The author uses a unique style of writing to depict four protagonists in different personalities,creates a picture of reality in her imagination,and exposes the spiritual crises and survival predicaments that individuals face in the multicultural society.This article is to analyze NW based on Sartre’s existentialism,mainly from the three basic concepts of “alienation”,“absurdity” and “free choice”.Five parts are contained in this article:Chapter one briefly introduces the author Zadie Smith and her work NW,combs the research status of Zadie Smith and her novel NW at home and abroad,and expounds on the theoretical framework of the thesis.Chapter two mainly describes the predicaments faced by the protagonists in social relations.There are many contradictions in the process of human interaction with family and society,which shows absurdity around northwest London.The main manifestations are indifference among family members and antagonism among social communities.Chapter three focuses on the spiritual alienation faced by the protagonists.Affected by the absurd society,people are reduced to the products of loneliness.Their hearts become more and more contradictory under the confrontation between reason and desire,and in the separation between the individual and the self,people’s spirits gradually show the characteristic of division.The absurdity and noise of the protagonists’ external worlds are intertwined with the spiritual crises of their inner worlds,pushing the four protagonists into the abyss of predicaments.Chapter four reveals the four protagonists’ free choices in predicaments.Both Natalie and Felix make their positive choices: Natalie creates a path that belongs to herself through her efforts;Felix is aware of his problems and predicaments and is ready to choose to start a new life.However,when the brand-new life beckons to Felix,he accidentally gains eternal freedom due to being murdered by his compatriots;Leah and Nathan make negative choices: Leah chooses to escape from reality and immerses herself in her world to gain inner peace;Nathan’s free choice is self-abandonment: To drift into the waves of an absurd world.Chapter five is the summary of the points mentioned above.It seems that Zadie Smith writes the ordinary lives of four lower-level characters in a multicultural society through the novel NW.As a matter of fact,it reflects the true portrayal of ordinary people living in modern society,which embodies the author’s in-depth exploration of human survival predicaments and critical thinking about the meaning of human existence.