Modern Individual Writing In Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News

In the 1990s,a unique female writer emerged in the American literary filed,namely Annie Proulx,who published her first novel at the age of 53.Unlike the dystopia and meaninglessness of life that were the main themes of the literary world at that time,she drew on the historical writing of the third generation of the French school of annals to describe the minutiae of ordinary people’s daily lives,to explore the fate of small people on a realistic level,and to give her own unique insights on how to regain the value of the individual in an America where the environment is deteriorating,the economy is depressed,and racial discrimination is rampant.This thesis concentrates on the individual writing style of the character Quoyle in Proulx’s 1993 work The Shipping News to reveal that in the modernized society.The individual can gain his or her right of free choice and obtain a place in such a world on the basis that he or she establishes his or her own individual identity,finds where he or she stands,builds up individual consciousness,confronts the logic of capitalism’s alienation,and assumes the responsibility given by society.The introduction of this thesis introduces Proulx’s works and summarizes the literary theme of her concern for the fate of the individual,proposing the theme of the Proulx-style individual in her novels.Only by redefining the place and value of the individual in the social structure can we save our dignity as human beings in this era of so-called "structural abandonment".The main part focuses on analyzing the characteristics of Proulx’s writing style,and concludes Proulx’s means of artistic expression of portraying nobody from a civilian narrative angle with text analysis,pointing out that the colloquial language,the fractured structure,the metaphor of the subject’s point of view,and the humorous exaggeration are all used to highlight the survival of Quoyle as a modernized individual.The purpose of these techniques is to portray Quoyle’s transformation from nobody with no sense of individuality and abandoned in the American civic order to a socially responsible and civic-minded editorin-chief of a newspaper,outlining the transformation of the individual in modernized society from three perspectives:individual consciousness,individual identity,and individual space.After putting forward the proposition of Proulx’s individual,the thesis author explores the relationship between individual and society by charting Quoyle’s journey through his social migration to re-integrate himself as an individual into the social order and become the guardian of Newfoundland after his refreshment in Newfoundland,Canada.The thesis author aims to illustrate that only when an individual develops a connection with the place,builds an emotional attachment to the place and its people,culture,and history,and consciously assumes responsibility for its protection,becomes the guardian of its local order,and is integrated into the social system,can the individual achieve true growth and salvation from three perspectives:Quoyle’s retrospective identification with local history,his interactive recognition with others,and his internalization of his understanding of the culture of the sea.At last,the paper explores the survival of the individual in the modernization process and endeavors to explain the significance of the Proulx-style individual,which is to give the individual the right to free choice on the basis of the aforesaid conclusion.From Quoyle’s life experience,the acquisition of the right to free choice requires the individual to establish a reasonable survival mechanism and develop an emotional identity with the individual,society,and culture,and to actively participate in the process of social affairs,to take up one’s responsibilities to family,community,and nation with a sense of civic responsibility,and to have the awareness and means to cope with the risks of modern society in order to live valuably in what Ulrich Beck calls "risk society" and practice the happiness of free choice.Of course,the modern individual is not a utopian vision;being an individual always face social risks.Proulx understands this,therefore,in her series of novels,she both gives hope to individuals and warns them that if they go beyond the reverence for nature and respect for society,man,nature and society will gradually die out,just like Mockingburg Street and Newfoundland.This is undoubtedly a great inspiration for mankind to reflect deeply on the relationship between man and the ecological environment,to reposition the individual in modernized society,and to think deeply about the survival of the alienated individual in the capitalist process on the basis of the harmonious coexistence between man and nature.