The Postmodern Narrative In A Visit From The Goon Squad

Postmodernism is talked and written about everywhere in contemporary westernsociety. But it is not yet widely understood by people because the concept of it isambiguous. Many postmodern writers try to abandon the traditional writing skills, but trywith some innovative narrative skills, including collage, parody, fragmentary plot,Metafictional techniques, black humor and so on, to express their thoughts towardsreality. Among them, Jennifer Egan, the winner of2011Pulitzer Literatue Prize, has usedpostmodern narrative techniques to tell the story in her novel A Visit from the GoonSquad. The thesis intends to provide her creative narrative skills and to explore her greatconcern about society, culture and people’s psychology. The thesis consists of fivechapters.Chapter one gives a brief introduction to Jennifer Egan’s life, her works and alsogives a brief survey to the literature review of her works, especially the main content ofher novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and different comments of it. Chapter twoexplores what is postmodernism and the characteristics of postmodern narratives. Chapterthree analyzes the employment of postmodern narrative strategies in the novel from fouraspects, which including non-linear narrative, indeterminacy, metafiction and blackhumor. Non-linear narrative is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:fragmentary plot, non-linear narrative time and space, and montage. And for theindeterminacy, the article will mainly analyses the reflection of the indeterminacy fromthree aspects, they are shifting focalization, distorted time and space and uncertainty ofthemes. And the metafictional features are mainly embodied in intrusive narrative,collage and parody. Chapter four discusses the theme of the novel. Chapter fiveconcludes the whole thesis with the summary of A Visit from the Goon Squad’ spostmodernism narrative strategies. Through analyzing the “disordered” form of thenovel, the thesis reveals the main idea of the novel: the development of science andtechnology influences people’s life and culture, and people’s confusion, and helplessnessin the modern society. And this chapter also points out the significance of this study.