Destruction, Construction And Transcendance: Themes Of Death And Disease In Susan Sontag's Fictional Works

The turbulent nineteen sixties in the American scene witnessed conflicting ideas and claims in social, cultural and literary arenas. It is an age after the war calling for a new sensibility in art and literature which are radical and avant-garde, extreme and revolutionary. Susan Sontag, as a new-comer in the New York intellectual circle, adopted a radical renunciation of the outdated shallow traditional realism prevalent in the previous decades. She advocated a brand-new sensibility which prioritizes form over content, and stresses sensual pleasures as a substitute for the old tradition. Much influenced by the high-minded seriousness in European literature, she exhibited a distinct Euro-centric predilection in her own writings and criticism. To expand the scope of literary criticism, she endorsed an all-rounded transparency and sensuality in literature, so that breakthroughs in the form became a must. She tried to break down the barriers between high and low cultures, culture and counterculture, and enrich the humanistic values to restore the long-lost perceptibility in aestheticism. With the backdrop of the social and cultural turmoil, she appealed for new artistic creativity and opposed the traditional way of interpreting a literary work, with the aim to break the rigid interpretation mode prevalent in the old practices of literary criticism and establish distinctly different mode of perception. Her early works displayed a marked shift from the realistic narratives related to realistic details and the psychology to sensations and feelings represented by such nouveau roman writers as Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. Quite contrary to the realistic representation of the realism, the two early novels of Sontag dissolved the plot and characters, and focused on depthless surface narratives.All through her life, many different labels were attached to the controversial writer: novelist, essayist, movie and drama director, as well as social activist. As a nonconformist generalist much influenced by European culture, she maintained an interest not only in the abstruse philosophy, but also for current social issues. Sontag held a preference to being called a novelist and she valued her fictional works despite their limited number: from The Benefactor and Death Kit in the sixties, I, Etcetera in the seventies and"The Way We Live"in the eighties, and a play Alice in Bed in the nineties, and two more novels in the last decade of her life: The Volcano Lover and In America. There was an unusual interval of twenty years between her second and third novel, which reflected her painful readjustments in novel writing. Her later short stories and novels showed a tendency to return to the plot and character and tangible stories that were once abandoned. Owing to the diversity of Sontag's works, the research on them by scholars in China has been mostly related to her essays including such resounding thoughts as"against interpretation"and"a new sensibility". For her fictional works, most of the research has been made for individual works. Very little has been contributed to the theme analysis of her fictional works.The focus of this Ph.D. dissertation is the theme of death and disease in Sontag's fictional works in three different periods and the reasons behind the evolutions. Life and death has always been a concern in literature, and disease, as a common state between the two, is also found in numerous literary works. With a persistent high-minded seriousness in her thoughts, Sontag has kept a unique understanding in her life and writings. In a sense, her obsession with death and disease becomes a perpetual fascinating theme in her novels, short stories and play.Chapter One gives an overview of the writer and the reason for her obsession with death and disease. Her favorite writers have, without exception, profound concern about the fate of human beings and the melancholy contemplations on death and disease. Her love for the theme has been consistent throughout her life since she was a teenager. Her educational background, Euro-centric aestheticism and her rich experience in the literary circles both in France and America, as well as her tormenting experiences with cancer for three times, all left indelible traces in her works. The same theme has been rendered different representations in the fictional works in the three different periods. The two experimental novels in the sixties nurtured in the spirit of counterculture and avant-gardism break away from the classical realistic tradition. Both novels are dream novels which are inquiries of shattered human consciousness by inverting the roles of waking lives and dreams, so much so that they mark a radical and thorough subversion of the values of living and a ready acceptance of the destructive charms of death. The middle-period works return to realism, with autobiographical traces, showing a calm reflection on the nature of death and disease and a courageous denial of death and love of life. The play in the final period penetrates into the female consciousness of an invalid but intelligent woman, and transcends the boundary of time and space, reality and fantasy, truth and imagination, to reveal a more philosophical meditation on death and disease.Chapter Two focuses on two novels in the sixties: The Benefactor and Death Kit. Much influenced by the nouveau roman and European philosophy, the two novels represent the radical stylistic revolution and subversion in the spiritual turmoil of the age. The claim of form over content gives space to the new sensibility, and the prevailing renunciation and the dissolution of subjectivity in the silence of aestheticism correspond well to the overwhelming destruction of death. In the novels, dreams, nightmares, and near-death hallucinations become the object to be examined and the protagonists find themselves more drawn to the charms of Thanatos. The emphasis on the superficial senses and feelings results in the contingency, indefiniteness of meaning and the spirit of refusal to any fixed interpretation, thus giving the works more openness. The powerful dissolution and destruction account for the primordial nature of the death instinct, and all noises and sounds inevitably lead to silence, which is the most avant-gardist stance toward liberating the function of literature.Chapter Three reflects the transitions from the radicalism in the sixties to the more conservative return in the seventies and eighties. The changes in the society force the writer to give up her previous literary claims and return to realism in the form of short stories. What death and disease could do to the individuals, the family and the communities are much explored in the short story collection I etcetera. The author's own experience with cancer is another important reason for her to reconsider the meanings of death and disease. Therefore, there is the first-person narration of one's personal stories reflecting on the implications of death on life, and a troubled couple with a kid suffering psychological problems eager to seek a way out, and the story of a female friend of the narrator killed by illness."The Way We Live Now"portrays the chain effect of an AIDS victim and the ripples created onto his closest friends. The unfortunate experience of the author with cancer marks a water-shed in Sontag's writing, and her life instinct becomes unprecedentedly strong in the stories, even though life is never easy when accompanied by disease and threatened by death. The concern for ethics and moral duties becomes more evident in the stories. In the realistic depiction of people's fighting against death and disease, the implicit message is the indignation at the social stigmas and the metaphorization of such diseases as cancer and AIDS. Chapter Four concerns the eight-act play Alice in Bed. The play penetrates into the consciousness of the invalid and extremely sensitive Alice James, sister of Henry James, and it goes deeper than that. The play transcends the boundary of time and space, fantasy and reality, imagination and truth to render the meaning of death in multifarious aspects. The play has been what the author claims to have been preparing to write all her life, and incorporates in it more mature reflections on life and death and rich experiences in life. It reflects the philosophical meditation on the concept of"being towards death", which helps to deepen one's understanding of life when the meaning of death is realized. One can live a more complete and meaningful life only when one has grasped the essence of death.The concluding chapter makes a summary of the different representations of death and disease in sharply distinct styles over three different periods. Despite the marked differences, the evolution testifies to the author's boldness in embracing changes at time changes, and Sontag has been proved to be a besotted aesthete, a serious moralist and passionate modernist. Besides, the author's attitude towards death is not to be confused with the themes of death and disease in her fictional works.