Identity Anxiety of John Banvilles Novel the Sea

Jin Zhang

《World Scientific Research Journal》 7卷12期 (2021/12) Pp. 8-11

https://doi.org/10.6911/WSRJ.202112_7(12).0002

摘要

Banville is an outstanding Irish writer. His novel The Sea, which won the British Booker Prize in 2005, tells the story of Morton, a man in his sixties, who fell into depression after his wife died. He left London where he lived with his deceased wife and returned to Ballyless where he spent his childhood with his parents, hoping to find the answer to his life by revisiting his hometown. However, no matter where he hid, he couldnt save himself from emotional difficulties. Starting with the theme of identity anxiety, this paper attempts to analyze the journey of self‐exploration and identity dilemma embodied in the novel.

關鍵字

Identity anxiety ； Identity construction ； Trauma theory

參考文獻

Banville, John: The Sea (Picador Press, London 2005).

Caruth, Cathy: Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1996).

Sontag, Susan: Illness as Metaphor (Farrar, Straus and Ciroux, New York 1978).

Sontag, Susan: AIDS and Its Metaphor (Farrar, Straus and Ciroux, New York 1989).

B.B. Chen: The Construction of the Self in John Banvilles The Sea from the Perspective of the Gaze, Anhui Literature, (2011) No.5, p.44-45. (In Chinese)