Interpretation Of Offshore From The Perspective Of Sartrean Existentialism

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) is one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British literature. Her Booker Prize novel Offshore is short, simple but thoughtful. Its simple plot and touching connotation have made the novel one of the most popular and favorable works since its publication. The writer of this thesis examines the novel in the framework of Sartrean Existentialism.The author of this thesis makes an in-depth analysis of Offshore with Sartrean existentialism, mainly focuses on the characters' living dilemma in the absurd world. She mainly investigates the existential themes conveyed in the novel, including the absurdity of the world, man's alienation and man's anguish and despair. Through the analysis of this thesis, it is found that the Second World War trauma, the alienated interpersonal relationships and the cruel living conditions in Offshore fully demonstrate the absurdity of the world and the characters' anguished and desperate attitude towards life.This thesis consists of three parts with main body coming between the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction mainly covers the writer and her Offshore and its literature review at home and abroad.Chapter One presents a brief introduction to Sartrean Existentialism, including the notions like "absurdity of the world", "man's alienation", "I and the Other" and "man's anguish".Chapter Two aims to demonstrate the absurd social and living environment in Offshore. Sartre summarizes the world as absurd, for he thinks that there is no universally law and absolute values in it and no one knows his place. Human beings are thrown into the world by accident. They can do nothing about the absurd world. The author mainly interprets the characters' absurd living circumstance with Sartre's theory of absurdity from two aspects:the unbearable living facilities of the houseboat dwellers'and Richard's war trauma caused by the Second World War.Chapter Three mainly introduces the characters' alienated interpersonal relationships in Offshore. Sartre discusses his notion "I and the Other", pointing out alienation among people. Sartre states that the absurdity of the world may evoke alienation among human beings or alienation within a man himself, making people feel anxious and desperate. People always feel threatened, painful, confused and uneasy by the Other, so the conflict and alienation with others is inevitable. In the novel, the characters living in houseboats suffer from the misunderstanding and prejudice of the people on land, which makes the houseboat dwellers miserable. Besides, the houseboat dwellers' families and relatives put salt on their wounds, too. Nenna's husband Edward, her sister Louise, her daughters Martha and Tilta even can't understand her and make Nenna's life more suffering.In Chapter Four the author analyzes the characters' anguished spiritual world in order to demonstrate human beings' inner anguish and helplessness. Connecting with Sartre's notion of anguish, the author of this thesis analyzes the characters' inner anguish and helplessness in the absurd world. The characters in Offshore are a group of "half-half" people. Half of them desire to live normally on land and the other half refuse to move back to the land. On the one hand they desire to live on land because lives on land are more convenient. On the other hand they refuse to live on land because they cannot adapt to that kind of social life. In addition, they are in fact marginalized and despised by people on land. Both their paradoxical ideas and the cruel circumstance make the characters feel anguished and desperate. In order to protect their self-esteem, they conceal their helplessness and pretend living a good life. Therefore they hold stubborn persistence in their houseboats. The characters in Offshore cannot get rid of their despair and anguish, which makes their lives in dilemma.Therefore, the author of this thesis analyzes the existentialist characteristics of Offshore in detail, reveals its deep existentialist philosophical foundation, demonstrates Fitzgerald's main purpose of writing this novel, discloses man's anguish and helplessness in the novel and provides a quite new research perspective for it.