The Lost Childhood Imprinted In The Mind

As one of most remarkable novelists in Irish literary history, Roddy Doyle is famous for his insight in catching the problem with far-reaching significance in contemporary Ireland. In 1993, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the top award of British literature——The Booker Prize. It has been regarded as his most influential work. Different from other novels, Doyle uses the eyes of a 10-year-old boy to look at and explore the world around. The protagonist Paddy has natural instincts of children. He likes playing tricks on others and he often finds happiness from other people's agony. However, with the deterioration of the family relations, Paddy begins to scrutinize everything once more, and he experiences the bewilderment and sadness in his parents'failed marriage. Though the subject of this novel is children, the novel goes beyond the frame of child's novel, and enables the readers to sense the collision of old and new marital values in the interim period of Irish society and the bleak humanity.This dissertation consists of five chapters: Chapter One is the background information, including a general introduction of Irish literature, the biography of Roddy Doyle and his major works. Chapter Two presents the definition of Postmodernism, the features and the development of Postmodernism and different schools. Chapter Three and Chapter Four, both as the major part, analyze the postmodern narrative techniques in the novel: non-plot structure, multiplicity of narration and Black Humor. Chapter Five is the conclusion: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a typical postmodernist fiction. It criticizes the long-time confinement of marriage by Roman Catholicism in Irish history and thus can have a profound impact.