Displacement, Quest And Reconciliation In The Contingent World

The dual role of writer and philosopher has made Iris Murdoch one of the most influential and unique figures in the British literature arena after the Second World War. During her almost forty-year literature career, she devotes most of her time in the exploration of morality and goodness which are closely connected with our daily life in the modern world. Her novels, though of great varieties, are all carefully structured to deliver her philosophical stance: the necessity of diminishing self-obsession in the chancy world. For Murdoch, the world is beset with contingencies. Any will or effort to impose form on such a world would be delusional and futile. Her characters are often spiritually displaced in a world subject to chances and contingencies. Their wish to perceive its working is constantly frustrated. It is only when they submit themselves to the oddness of the world and pay close attention to the random details can they fully grasp the essence of reality and truth.Taking a psychoanalytic perspective, this study is devoted to the exploration of the recurrent motifs of displacement, quest and reconciliation in Murdoch's works through the examination of the protagonists in the three novels, namely, Martin in A Severed Head, Dora and Michael in The Bell, Harriet in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine. Chapter one displays the disruptive power of contingency, how the characters are thrown into a life which breaks their illusional balance. Chapter two examines the characters' efforts and struggle to restore the balance. Their will and desire in this process are incarnate in different mediums, which will be under close scrutiny in this chapter. Chapter three unveils their reorientation in the world, analyzing how they get reconciled with the fact that the world is not as they had wished with the help of love and goodness.Thus, by disclosing the slow process of the characters' evolution in their morality life, the author aims to present a better picture of Murdoch's moral preaching, to stimulate the readers to inspect their life and to motivate them to get a more thorough understanding of"reality"in order to get freedom.