On The Postmodernistic Narrative Techniques In Drabble’s The Ice Age

Margaret Drabble is one of the well-known modern British novelists whose works concern a lot on contemporary British society and the lives of its individual members. Furthermore, she puts insight to the whole human being’s life under the shadow of industrialization and modernization. The Ice Age is the only novel whose protagonist is not a female but a male. In the novel, she shows us a vivid picture of Britain during the Cold War. Owing to financial crisis, diseases and difficulties in family and career, the middle-aged men suffer immense stress in the modern world. People can’t move a step in the frozen time. Based on her published novels, some critics regard her as a realistic or traditional writer. Although, the author also denied herself as a postmodernist, we could find that her writing has been influenced by this new trend.The paper studies her work The Ice Age from postmodernism perspective and tries to dig out postmodernistic narrative features in the work. They are fragmentation and dismemberment; pluralism and indeterminacy; self-referentiality and intertextuality. The author analyzes separately these features by close reading. First, discussing fragmentation and dismemberment in The Ice Age by finding the exact examples of Intrusive Author, symbolic images and flashbacks; secondly, pointing out pluralism and indeterminacy of characters, plots and themes in The Ice Age. In the last part, the thesis finds out the techniques of self-referentiality and intertexuality in The Ice Age is a partial result of the influence of her family background, personal experience, rival sisterhood and social activities.