From Fragments To Integrity

Accompanied by the study of the novel s content and theme, this dissertation attemptsto interpret Sky Lee s Disappearing Moon Café from the perspective of narratology,especially from the narrator, narrative perspective, narrative time and narrative place, toanalyze how the fragmental narrative form reflecting the variation from fragments tointegrity in Chinese Canadian s personality, family, community and life, which hopes to fill avoid in the study of this novel.Disappearing Moon Café (1990) has been enthusiastically received by mainstreamcritics and the public since its publication, and was nominated and won many awards. It isthe first contemporary Chinese Canadian English novel that has broken the historical silenceby its ethnical theme and caught mainstream critical attention by its excellent writing skills.It is a semi-autobiographical family saga that delicately depicts the living conditions anddiaspora experiences of four generations of Chinese Canadian immigrants on theunaccustomed earth. Being called as a voluminous ethnic immigrant epic, it reveals thefragmental relationships between feminism and male chauvinism, discrimination andassimilation, encoding and decoding.The theoretical framework draws mainly upon various narrative theories proposed byGerald Genette, Linda Hutcheon, and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. Accordingly, thisdissertation adopts their systematical and coherent theoretical approaches to appreciate thenovel from narrator, narrative perspective, narrative time and space in order to gain anin-depth knowledge of the theme.Sky Lee delicately designates the narrator Kae Ying to compose a metafiction, andspecially utilizes the form of narcissistic metafiction and historiographic metafiction tofulfill her contemplation on narration and history that are fragmental in form but integrate inmeaning. She also borrows the form of Künstlerroman that enables Kae Ying to restore thehistorical integrity from the fragments of truth as well as achieve the personality integrity.As to the narrative perspective, the author finally reveals the integrated and objective realitythrough the repeated use of the fragmental personal perspective. She also gives voice to themarginalized groups and gradually melts all generations into integrity by using integrated communal narrative perspective and eventually gives them with complete personalities. Asto the narrative time, the author applies the fragmental narrative time to allude toimmigrants fragmental lives, and exemplifies the integrate lives of the new generationthrough the interaction between past and present. In terms of the narrative space, the authorhighlights the dialectical relationship between fragment and integrity through thecomparison between the suffocating closed space and the inclusive open space and finallyshows the integrity of the family. Thus we can draw a conclusion that by applying variousnarrative strategies the author fully expresses her theme about the variety from fragment tointegrity.