Study On The Shipping News From The Perspective Of Kierkegaard’s Concept Of Anxiety

This paper analyzes the American woman writer Annie Proulx’s novel The ShippingNews from the perspective of Danish philosopher S ren Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety.The Shipping News is the second long fictional work of Proulx. It narrates a story of afailed middle-aged man Quoyle who starts a new life in his hometown Newfoundland. Thisnovel brings the author plenty of rewards include National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize fornovel. In The Shipping News, every character is living in anxiety of the past, present andfuture. These anxieties are revealed by the images such as water, white dog, knot and so on.As a basic and important concept in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, anxiety describes theunpleasant emotional state in existence of human beings. However, anxiety is also a positiveenergy that carries human beings forward. The protagonist Quoyle is gradually forming hisself-consciousness and independent personality while he is trying to deal with his anxiety.This paper is mainly divided into three parts.The first part is an introduction to the living and writing experience of Annie Proulx, themain plots of The Shipping News, the current research status of Proulx and The ShippingNews and the significance and structure of this paper.The second part is the main body. It is divided into four chapters.The opening chapter is a theoretical framework, which introduces the main philosophicalthoughts of Kierkegaard and especially his most important concept anxiety.The second chapter analyzes the causes of the main characters’ anxiety in this novel. Theinitial background of The Shipping News is a city Mockingburg where has been eroded byindustrialization. Modern civilization distorts and depresses the human nature. Human beingsgradually lost their selves in such an environment. These are the reasons for people’s anxiety. The third chapter analyzes the appearances of anxieties of the main characters in thisnovel. Quoyle is anxious about the deficiency of love, Quoyle’s daughter Bunny is anxiousabout the death, while Quoyle’s aunt Agnis is anxious about the nightmare happened in herchildhood. These anxieties combined with the background of a capitalist economy seizedNewfoundland express the author’s nostalgia for the “how-to” genre and her worry about thealienated modern world.The fourth chapter analyzes the salvation of anxiety in this novel. The characters escapefrom their initial anxieties and return to the organized life by the power of nature and society.The characters of this novel learn to live harmoniously with their anxiety and find their ownplaces in the world during the process of searching for their identities.The third part is a conclusion of this paper. The author of this paper points out thatanxiety is a normality of human beings at a moment when religion is lost. However, anxietyhas its positive meaning. To some extent, anxiety might direct human thoughts to a higherplane.