A Study Of The Racial Writing In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel written by American author George Saunders.Based on an anecdote about President Abraham Lincoln,the novel tells the story of Lincoln’s visit to the cemetery at midnight to embrace his deceased son,when the ghosts in the cemetery awake and roam in the “bardo”,surrounding the father and son with a cacophony of voices lamenting their fate.Through the representation of historical anecdotes,the novel exposes the individual sufferings of coloured people under the history of racial oppression in the United States,insinuates the evasiveness of official historical narrative on the racial issues,and thus expresses an appeal for racial equality.Nevertheless,at the same time,the construction of the novel is not immune to the influence and infiltration from this racist discourse in contemporary American society,and its thematic presentation and ideological expression are thus characterized by the coexistence of both radical and conservative,progressive but also restrictive.This thesis analyzes Saunders’ reflection on racism in Lincoln in the Bardo.Drawing on the functional localization and connotative interpretation of literary text of New Historicism,the thematic expression and its interaction with contemporary social discourse of the novel are presented from three perspectives: “subversion”,“containment” and “negotiation”.The thesis is divided into five parts: the induction part includes a brief introduction to George Saunders and the novel,a review of the current research at home and abroad,an introduction of New Historicism and an overview of the organization of the thesis;the main body is divided into three chapters,with Chapter One focusing on the subversive connotations of the novel,namely the deconstruction of official history authority and the exploration of marginalized racial voices.Chapter Two is primarily concerned with the suppression and containment of subversiveness in the novel by the dominant social discourse,namely the pervasive role of reigning discourse in the novel’s textual practice.Chapter Three is dedicated principally to the deliberative thematic expression of the novel in the context of the combined forces of subversion and containment,exploring the re-examination of the issues between racial equality and national unity in the novel.The last part is the concluding part that synthesizes the illuminating implications of the novel’s racial writing for understanding contemporary racial discourse of the United States.Lincoln in the Bardo is highly pioneering and experimental in its narrative,which is rebellious to the dominant social discourse,but at the same time remains conservative in its thematic expression under the influence of dominant discourse.The fact that being a member of the white,the middle class and the cultural elite,Saunders is deeply concerned with the survival and expression problems of the lower class and marginalized groups in society.His writing is both radical and conservative,critical of racism and late capitalist culture,yet inevitably limited by individual experience and social class.Ultimately,the novel places its hope for a solution to the contemporary racial issues in the United States on a great,genuine human emotion and collective identity,which reflects the aesthetic value of the novel as a literary creation,but also reveals its limitations in social criticism.The interpretation of the racial writing in the novel facilitates the examination of construction of racial discourse within the contemporary American society,as well as the understanding of individual expressions of American writers in a social context where racial conflicts are becoming increasingly acrimonious and sophisticated.