A Postmodernist Interpretation Of The Protagonist’s Desires In The Member Of The Wedding

Carson McCullers, one of the most important American writers and outstanding Southern novelists, created numerous excellent literary works in her entire life. Her classic work, The Member of The Wedding, tells a story of a fragile and imaginative adolescent girl, Frankie, who is trapped in her loneliness, but keeps finding her way out. Then, she makes up her mind to attend her brother’s wedding, and then runs away with them; however all of these are just her impracticable fantasy. Frankie finally comes back home with her family.Because of its various forms and diverse styles, postmodernism has successfully captured artists’mind, and become beloved of scholars in every field. Its features mainly include dissolution of binary oppositions, resistance to grand narrative, and rejection of determinacy. As a talented successor of Lacon’s theories, Zizek devotes his life to the study of ideology, fantasy, and desire. He interpreters their interaction and in what way they influence the reality, in his straightway words, to make people comprehend those obscure and abstract philosophical theories much more deeply.The thesis will analyze the desire of the heroine in The Member of The Wedding from the Postmodernist point of view by using Zizek’s theories. By analyzing postmodernist features, this paper explores how heroine’s desires are reflected in those features. The four parts of this thesis are, namely, Chapter One which encompasses not only a brief introduction of Carson McCullers and her classic work, The Member of The Wedding, but also the literature review at home and abroad, and innovation point of the thesis, Chapter Two in which some important Postmodernist theories, as well as Zizek’s desire theories are introduced, Chapter Three, the main part of the whole thesis, that interprets the desire of Frank through Postmodernist features, namely, indeterminacy, depthlessness and deconstruction, and the fourth part, the conclusion of the entire thesis. This thesis interprets the formation, transition, and sublimation of heroine’s desires, respectively, through the Postmodernist point of view, to make readers better comprehend how Postmodernist features that exist in this work incisively embody the heroine’s desire.