An Interpretation Of The Lowland From The Perspective Of Narrative Ethics

Jhumpa Lahiri(1967—)is one of the most famous contemporary Indian American writers.By virtue of great writing skills,she has won a good reputation at home and abroad.In 2000,with the publication of the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies,she became the youngest winner in the history of Pulitzer prizes.After that,she continues to publish her second collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth and two full-length novels The Namesake and The Lowland.As an immigrant writer with different cultural background,Lahiri is adept at depicting the marginalized life of immigrants as well as the misery suffered by them both physically and psychologically.Throughout her literary creation process,the concern for underlying ethical issues cannot be underestimated.The Lowland(2013),Lahiri’s second full-length novel,won the National Book Award and the Man Booker Prize in the UK upon its publication and won enormous attention for her.The novel is set against the backdrop of the Naxalbari movement,an armed peasant revolution that took place in India in the 1950 s and 1960 s,and focuses on two brothers,Subhash and Udayan,to reveal the different ethical choices made by the subaltern class in the face of the Naxalbari movement and the ensuing subversive consequences for individuals and families.Using James Phelan’s narrative ethics as the theoretical basis,this thesis aims to explore the construction of ethical values in the narrative text of The Lowland,including the ethical values of the characters,the ethical implications behind the narrative forms and the ethical obligations of the actual author Lahiri.This thesis is composed of five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction of Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri,the current researches on her novel The Lowland,as well as the theory of narrative ethics by James Phelan.The second chapter,based on “the ethics of the told” by Phelan,analyzes different judgments,actions and choices made by the main characters in The Lowland after a series of conflicts between characters or between characters and society in the context of the Naxalbari movement,in the hope of exploring the ethical values on the level of story.The third chapter,with the help of Phelan’s “ethics of the telling”,interprets how the implied author skillfully arranges the narrative progression,employs spatial images and how the narrators switch the narrative perspectives so as to convey the ethical implications on the level of discourse.Chapter Four,in virtue of Phelan’s ethics of the writing,aims to disclose the ethical obligations of the actual author Jhumpa Lahiri in the writing process,especially the different ethical obligations that Lahiri undertakes in choosing to work on homeland writing,focus attention on the subaltern class of India and write stories of Indian immigrants in America.Chapter Five concludes the thesis with a summary of the ethical implications of this novel on the level of story,discourse and the ethical obligations of the actual author Lahiri.