An Interpretation Of Saving Fish From Drowning From The Perspective Of Derrida’s Deconstruction

In American contemporary literature, Chinese American writers, as the non-mainstream writers, have been widely known and well received. As one of the most eminent Chinese American writers up till now, Amy Tan(1952-) touches the reader’s heart deeply with the unique perspective and the broad sense of her works.Different from her previous works which focus on the relationship in Chinese American family or between mother and daughter and the description of female characters, Saving Fish from Drowning is regarded as a great breakthrough of her writing style. It goes beyond Amy Tan’s other works in both writing theme and ideological level.This thesis employs Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory to help the readers fully understand the novel by deconstructing three pairs of binary oppositions in order to profoundly discover the connotation and theme behind Tan’s creation. Derrida’s deconstruction aims to subvert the logocentrism which is also known as the Western metaphysics, and reverse the hierarchy of binary opposition in Western traditional mindset, removing the dominant and privileged term of classical opposition and attempting to seek the possibility of pluralism and establishing a new equal relationship.This thesis at first gives a brief introduction of Amy Tan’s life experience and her works in Chapter One. And then it briefly describes the breakthrough of the content and theme of Saving Fish from Drowning. Chapter Two is the literature review at home and abroad. It briefly enumerates and summarizes the recent researches on this novel. Chapter Three is about the theoretical background. It focuses on Derrida’s life experience, the origin and development of deconstruction theory and mainly introduces the deconstruction of logocentrism and the subversion of binary opposition respectively. Chapter Four analyzes the deconstruction of three pairs of binary oppositions in the novel, life/death, the West/the East, and the civilized/the uncivilized through the deconstructionist approaches. It firstly illustrates thedeconstruction of binary opposition between life and death through the experience of the ghost narrator Bibi Chen before and after she is dead. Then it refers to the deconstruction of binary opposition between the West and the East by breaking the stereotypes of the East in Western culture. Finally, it comes to the deconstruction of binary opposition between the civilized and the uncivilized. This part subverts the logocentrism of the civilized and calls for the equality between the modern civilization and the tribal culture as the representative of civilized and uncivilized.The conclusion part briefly reviews the whole thesis and lists the limitations of the thesis and gives some suggestions for the further study.This thesis illustrates how Amy Tan deconstructs the conceptual hierarchies of the three pairs of binary oppositions and demonstrates to the readers that the subversion of the three pairs of binary oppositions not only stops at the surface of the contradictions between the deconstruction and the conceptual hierarchies, but also helps the readers understand the deep connotation behind Amy Tan’s novel writing. It finally expresses the vision of the pluralism of human civilization and the peaceful coexistence of all cultures.