Self-construction In John Banville's The Sea

Since he won the Booker Prize in 2005, John Banville has gradually commanded world-wide attention, and is recognized as "one of the finest stylists at work in the English language". An increasing number of critics have begun to study Banville's works. As for The Sea, most critics and scholars have their focus on his supreme prose style, neglecting other themes also reflected in the novel. This thesis intends to analyze the novel from another angle:self-construction, a theme that permeates Banville's other works, and adopts the perspectives of memory, gaze and space to analyze the construction of the protagonist's self-identity.In the introduction, the author gives a brief introduction to John Banvile's life, works and the critical reception of his works both home and abroad, especially The Sea and its background.Part one is mainly about the relationship between the individual's memory and the construction of self-identity. In this part, I intend to explore the relationship between memory and self construction by investigating into Max Morden's remote as well as immediate memory.Part two mainly analyzes the relationship between gazing and self-construction. Here, gaze is divided into different types, gazing others, being gazed by others, the narcissistic gaze and scopophilia. Max gazes at the mirror images, he gazes others, meanwhile being gazed, and he peeps through the desire-laden objects. All these gazes are meant to regain self, to master self. Max struggles to build up his self-identity, but ends up in failure.Part three, based on the theories of space, explores the role of space in the construction of self. The narrator Max is living in a world sustained among anxieties about loss. There are many factors accounting for Max's spatial anxiety, and among them, lacking of a home-safe space, parental nurturance and the past appears to be the main cause. As he loses more in his life, his spatial anxiety accelerates, and his life is fractured. Thus he is not a person of intact identity. His remaining journey forward seems to be bristling with difficulties. Therefore, Max's effort to construct himself turns out to be a failure. Self-construction remains a problem for Max, as well as for all modern man.