An Interpretation Of John Banville’s The Sea—from The Perspective Of Repetition Theory

John Banville, an Ireland modern writer, is famous for his great literaturetechniques and talented writings. Peter J.Conardi speaks highly of him as “thewriter’s writer”; Finn Fordham praises him as “the master of style”. Banville istalented at wording, and his works are abundant in elegant language, especially TheSea which is the winner of Book Prize in2005. The Sea literates a story about growthand senility, and makes an exquisite exploration of grief, memory and calmness. It issafe to claim that the novel involves not only the compromise to loss in life, but alsoextraordinary meditation of memory and cognition. The Sea has gained a host ofrecognition since its publication. However, up to present, some researches done bycritics and scholars focus on book reviews, and there are a few special academicresearches on this novel; there is room for expanding in the aspect of researchingperspective and depth. Therefore, this thesis interprets The Sea with J.Hillis.Miller’srepetition theory to analyze the repetition patterns and their functions in the novel inthe hope of exploring how Max’s mentality changes by way of repetition patterns.First of all, this thesis introduces research background, and the purpose andsignificance of the research. Secondly, it presents literature review. It holds asummary of criticism on John Banville and researches on The Sea home and abroad.And then it elaborates definitions of repetition and development of repetition theoryand focuses on Miller’s repetition theory that is employed in this thesis. Millerdivides repetition patterns into three groups, namely the repetition of verbal elements,the repetition of events and scenes, and an author may repeat in one novel motifs,themes, characters or events from his other novels. Additionally, he puts forward twoforms of repetition—Platonic Repetition and Nietzschean Mode of Repetition. In thefollowing part, the thesis concentrates on the analysis of repetition patterns in The Seabased on Miller’s repetition theory. It begins with the repetition of verbal elements,metaphors, events, scenes and motifs. It deeply illustrates them step by step andexplores how Max’s mentality changes by use of these repetition patterns. A set ofrepetition patterns reveal Max’s different mentality, and reconstruct Max’s past life and witness his growth and senility. Finally it summarizes the whole thesis.The Sea is abundant with variant repetition patterns. The repetition of events,scenes and motifs in the whole text intertwines the whole novel into a complex tissueof repetitions. Besides, the analysis of these repetition patterns is the evidence tosupport Miller’s repetition theory. Through repetition patterns, the change of Max’smentality and meditation on life are taken to readers. It is worth of appreciating thephilosophy of life in The Sea.