Illusion And Disorientation-A Metafictional Reading Of Raymond Carver’s Short Stories

Raymond Carver,who wrote five collections of short stories,four books of poetry,and several essays during his lifetime,is one of the most influential American novelist of the second half of the twentieth century.Literary creation is generally closely related to the social background of the author.The mid-twentieth century was a time of materialism,lack of faith,and entertainment supremacy,when people were increasingly unable to distinguish the line between truth and falsehood,realistic and illusion.Meanwhile,they became convinced of the importance of reflection,questioning,criticism,and negation.So a wave of self-reflection emerged in Western culture,embodied in metafiction,became an important branch of postmodernism.However,metafiction has long escaped the notice of scholars,which furthermore led to the failure of full realization of the theoretical values embedded in his works.These metafictional features are apparently worth uncovering as they show that Carver once adopted them for the construction of his narratives.This paper selects nearly forty of Carver’s short stories for an investigation of the metafictional elements and strategies prevalent in Carver’s short stories,such as the revelation of textual fictionality,intertextuality,fragmented narration,and endings,based on the theory of metafiction and other artistic characteristics,by way of close reading and textual analysis.The study reveals that Carver’s works contain a large number of metafictional techniques,which strongly reflects his perceptions and feelings about his characters and the world he writes about.In the fictional revelation,Carver rebels,dissolves,and subverts the traditional novel,showing that reality is a fictional reality and its uncertainty.And the author believes that Carver’s works create tensions between truth and fiction,in which Carver unveils the sense of illusion,disorientation,alienation,absurdity and disorder of the real world full of spiritual crisis.So the new perspective is conducive to broaden the breath of the study of Carver and help us understand the artistic achievements and influence of Raymond Carver’s works.