On The Spatial Narrative In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Cormac McCarthy is regarded as the successor to Hemingway and Faulkner. As a prominent writer of contemporary American literature, McCarthy has received numerous awards for his literary achievements. The Road is McCarthy’s latest book and has won him the highest honor in his career up to now. Consequently, scholars home and abroad have shown great enthusiasm in this novel with many researches being carried out from different perspectives.As early as 1945, Joseph Frank has put forward the concept of spatial form,which marks the beginning of the development of spatial narrative theory. French philosopher Henri Lefebvre also developed a series of theory on social space and production relations, laying a solid foundation for spatial criticism. Based on these theories, the thesis will focus on a spatial perspective that is different from previous studies. The thesis boasts its creativeness in the interdisciplinary study connected with spatial criticism in sociology and geography as well as the application of the theory of spatial form.In addition to the main body of the thesis, the introductory part includes background knowledge of the author, a literary review on the study of the novel and the scope of present study.The main body is divided into three chapters in accordance with Lefebvre’s conceptual triad which includes "spatial practice","representations of space" and"representational spaces":Chapter One corresponds to the level of spatial practice which includes productive and reproductive activities of human in space as well as the places and spaces in certain social contexts with their spatial characteristics. Based on this presupposition, this chapter comes with an analysis on the geographical space in the novel and the identity crisis and moral conflicts which the characters in the novel are confronted with during the process of their survival or production.Chapter Two based on the understanding of the level of representations of space embarks on a research into the step-by-step procedure of McCarthy’s demonstration on a new approach in the human-space relationship through his narrative of the geographical space. McCarthy’s proposal for an interactive and interdependent human-space relation is in accordance with the claims of sensuous geography on the level of representations of space.Chapter Three is related to the level of representational spaces which transcends the conception of McCarthy on the level of representations of space as well as return to the fundamentals of spatial practice. In the context of the thesis, representational spaces can be interpreted as the spatialized text of the novel.The conclusion part makes a summary of the spatial features of the novel as well as the possibility for further studies.